Original review at
TVGuide
TV Guide review
The Edge of the World (1937)
This well-done Robert Flaherty-style quasi-documentary, beautifully photographed
on the stark, desolate, rocky island of Foula, in the Shetland chain, off
the coast of Scotland, was writer-director Powell's first big success. The
film's featured players and its secondary plot are mingled with the real
occurrences of the island -- here called Hirta, Nordic for death -- and
its fewer than 100 beleaguered inhabitants. The island's economy is dying,
its waters are fished out, its peat supplies are nearly gone. Evacuation
of the islanders to the mainland is urged by Berry over the opposition of
his father, Laurie, and other islanders. Berry falls to his death during
a test of courage with his friend, MacGinnis, who is engaged to Berry's
sister, Chrystall. The guilt-ridden MacGinnis departs from Hirta, leaving
the pregnant Chrystall behind. Many months afterward, he returns to the
island, just in time to save the life of his child. By this time, all the
islanders have accepted the inevitable; driving their sheep and cows to
the waiting boats, they depart. In a final gesture, old Laurie climbs a
cliff to get a souvenir, a rare bird's egg. He falls to his death, emulating
his son. Marvelous for the islanders' craggy faces and the faces of the
island's crags, this is a grim but touching picture. The appropriate choral
effects are done by the women of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir. Forty years
later, the surviving cast and crew members returned to the island to shoot
the documentary Return to the Edge of the World.
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