Submitted by
Bob Keser
The Edge of the World
By: Scott Tobias
Director Michael Powell will always be remembered for his 18-year collaboration
with Emeric Pressburger, a collaboration that yielded such literate, cinematic,
and highly influential productions as Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, and
Tales Of Hoffmann. But his career was book-ended by a couple of fascinating
personal projects that have only recently received the attention they deserve.
The first to be reissued was 1960's Peeping Tom, a lurid psychosexual thriller
concerning voyeurism and cinema that effectively ended his career, but which
is now widely acknowledged as his most groundbreaking film. The second,
1937's The Edge Of The World, doesn't have quite the same impact, but as
a formative work, it shows signs of Powell's technical prowess and reflects
a fiercely independent vision that would surface in subsequent efforts.
An uneasy mix of ethnography and melodrama, The Edge Of The World takes
place on a majestic island off the coast of Scotland, home to a tight-knit
community threatened with certain extinction by poor harvests and trawlers
that rob their fishing beds. Perched on jagged cliffs that hover about a
quarter-mile above the ocean, the residents of Hirta (meaning "death") face
the mainland with foreboding glances as they fight their inevitable absorption
into society at large. Their struggles are dramatized in the thinly conceived
story of three friends--lovers Niall MacGinnis and Belle Chrystall, and
Chrystall's brother Eric Berry--whose fortunes are tragically altered by
an argument about the island's future. The conflict leads to the film's
most impressive setpiece, a rock-climbing competition (without ropes up
the steep incline) that climaxes in a flurry of impressionistic montage.
Powell's deep respect for the community's idealism and determination makes
its demise all the more bittersweet, leading to a haunting denouement in
an enveloping shroud of fog.
For this re-release, Milestone Films has also included An Airman's Letter
To His Mother, a touching five-minute propaganda short Powell made under
commission for Britain's Royal Air Force.
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