Submitted by
Mark Fuller
I Know Where I'm Going
The Western Isles
From: The Times
14 November 1945
Since the war the smart, spoiled little rich girl has been taught on the screen that there are values other than money by experience in the services or the factory, and admirable the lesson is, but I Know Where I'm Going, a film written, produced and directed by Mr. M. Michael Powell [sic] and Mr. Emeric Pressburger, neatly reverses the process.
Joan Webster (Miss Wendy Hiller) is not so much spoiled and rich as determined to marry riches, and when she gets on the scottish express to go to the Hebrides and marry her rich man, her life and future seem assured. There are storms off the Isle of Mull, however, and she cannot take the last step to matrimony with the elderly millionaire who has leased the Isle of Kiloran, and Joan finds herself in the midst of a community with the values of which she has little idea. The people are poor, proud, contrary, and although the austere line of the documentary occasionally wobbles off into a false and facile generalisation, they exist on the screen in their own right and not by a snatch or two of Gaelic. It is refreshing to see introduced into the over-tidy world of the cinema such abnormal people as a man whose life is devoted to wild birds, and a girl who is happy in the wilds and knows the jargon of the cocktail party. There is also Torquil MacNeil (Mr. Roger Livesey), the laird of Kiloran, and, although the love between them is worked out conventionally and there is some unworthy nonsense about an ancestral curse, the directors never forget that their film has an idea behind it. The cast make the best possible use of some natural, unforced dialogue, and there is some glorious outdoor photography. I Know Where I'm Going goes to the Odeon Cinema on Friday.
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