I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (1945)
I'm slowly beginning to understand why Martin Scorsese loves
Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger so much. (He named two characters in his 1972
"Boxcar Bertha"
after them.) Last year I checked out
"A Matter of Life and Death"
at the Castro, then rented the newly refurbished
"Peeping Tom"
on laserdisc. I recently found this wonderful little film at the new public
library. It's my third, and now I'm a big fan.
It's actually pretty hard to find a movie that's a pure romance, as
opposed to a romantic comedy (the box calls this movie a romantic comedy,
but it's nothing of the sort).
"I Know Where I'm Going"
is the story of a headstrong woman (
Wendy
Hiller) who goes off to a beautiful Scottish isle, Kiloran, where she
plans to marry one of the richest men in the world. She just about gets
to the island when bad weather sets in and no one is able to take her across
the water on the final leg of her trip. So she must wait on the mainland
in a beautiful little Scottish village with a sailor (
Roger Livesey) who happens to be home on leave, and who is also heading
for
Kiloran. A storm comes up, and they must stay at the home of a friend (
Pamela Brown, whom Powell was in love with -- and it shows)
until it blows over.
You know what's going to happen, but Powell and Pressburger
are expert storytellers and handle the situation well. They let the movie
unfold as it will, taking its time. They don't bring up any unnecessary
subplots about evil Nazis bent on destroying true love. It's an amazingly
beautiful movie to look at, both in its set design and in its photography.
Powell and Pressburger seem to have been influenced by Citizen Kane, which
was a highly unpopular film in England at the time. A lot of the shots
even look like Welles signature shots; low angles, deep focus, and use
of shadows.
The film also hinges on superstition for part of its poetry. One of
the key images is an old Scottish castle that is supposed to have a curse
on any member of the sailor's family. The notion of otherworldly forces
fits in very snugly and naturally in this film. The film is asking you
to believe in superstition the way you would believe in true love. The
film has magic woven into it, as in the scene at the beginning where the
gentlemen's top hat turns into a train smokestack.
This is a great film. If you can find it, I would recommend keeping
it an extra day and watching it twice to fully absorb it. And while you're
doing that, I'm going to try and track down more movies by this great
filmmaking team.
RATING: Eight and a half Fellinis
Jeff A.
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