Submitted by
Bob Keser
The Edge of the World
Otis Ferguson
14th September 1938
The New Republic
The new picture from England (at the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse in New
York City) is something to remind you of Flaherty's Man of Aran, being about
the life and gradual extinction of the hardy men and women clinging to the
rocks against the sea, living (but just barely) on one of the islands off
the coast of Scotland. Comparisons will tangle us up, but at least you can
see that while there is no such dull fussing here as there was in the unenlivened
portions of Aran, there is no comparable in mighty effect of wind and sea
and a waste horizon to burn your eye. Michael Powell heard how the last
hatful of people had left their homes on St. Kilda in the Hebrides, and
saw a story in it. So he went to the similar island of Foula, carrying the
usual amount of etcetera referred to in press releases, and spent the usual
amount of etcetera (according to the release, six months and 200,000 feet
of film), and he worked out a story.
The main point is that the island is played out, what with the peat thinning
and trawlers sweeping out the fish; and the little community is split into
a faction for getting away and starting over, and the die-hards who can
think of nothing but that they were born there, and the generations before
them. There are a boy and girl, one in each camp of course,
[Or rather a girl for the boy in each camp to argue with and over]
and the sort
of complications that often materialize out of such situations (alack).
The boy returns rather too patly in time to get the baby to a mainland doctor;
the community packs up to leave the homeland; and old sobersides, for no
particular reason outside of plot convenience, "goes over" the cliff.
But here again, and much more deliberately, the story serves only as a window
on a kind of life. It enlivens the facts to be presented but at the same
time it diverts attention from their simple verity whenever its forced structure
shows through (and strangely enough, the simpler the tale the more chances
it seems to have of looking Simple Simon). Principally we are worried by
and excited over the way things go in the island: the stout homespun sermon,
the village parliament, the trawlers rolling and scavenging out there, the
seamed but strangely peaceful faces looking away into the weather (all but
the principals were recruited from Foula).
Recalling Flaherty's picture of Aran, I can see that many more essential
details of life were brought before its cameras complete. Still it seems
to move more easily this way, the worries of people actually giving point
to the tight, frugal little houses and paths, sheep-pens, and cliff faces,
making the harsh elements and clear air nearer to the senses as one realizes
their doom and elusive promise. The Edge of the World is a sort of halfway
mark between fiction pictures and those semi-fictions we call documentary
in our unguarded moments (P.S., most of our moments are unguarded anyway;
documentaries have to have a story to be more than family albums, and some
of them have stories pretty well developed).
OTIS FERGUSON
14 September 1938
(The New Republic)
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