Original at
The Onion A.V. Club
I Know Where I'm Going! (DVD)
(Criterion)
In his memoir A Life In Movies, the late British director Michael
Powell explained that after WWII, he became interested in the concept of
the "composed film," and began shaping his pictures to have the abstract
emotional resonance of great music, rather than the plainness of narrative.
His first clear nod in that direction was 1947's Black Narcissus,
a spiritual melodrama that climaxes in an exaggerated incident of violence
which Powell assembled, he writes, as "an opera, in the sense that music,
emotion, image, and voices all blended together into a new and splendid
whole." Black Narcissus was the 11th collaboration between Powell
and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, and the sixth of 12 films that the
men
would release under the production credit "The Archers." It remains a
rapturous, near-indescribable work of cinematic art, spun from a simple
story about nuns who travel to the Himalayas to start a school and a
hospital, only to have mountain winds and native mysticism weaken their
confidence and their faith. The title refers to an exotic perfume that
clouds the air around their mission, redirecting the thoughts of the mother
superior (Deborah Kerr) to the sensuous world she meant to leave behind.
Black Narcissus has been preserved in a crackerjack DVD edition by
Criterion, which kept its earlier laserdisc's 10-year-old commentary track
by Archers fan Martin Scorsese and an enfeebled but cogent Powell. Also
noteworthy is a 30-minute excerpt from a documentary about cinematographer
Jack Cardiff, detailing the effort and artistry behind the film's astonishing
color. Black Narcissus is Criterion's third Powell film on DVD,
trailing equally essential packages for The Red Shoes (1948) and
Peeping Tom (1960). Right on its heels, Criterion has issued The
Archers' 1945 feature I Know Where I'm Going!, while their 1951 film
Tales Of Hoffmann will be added in a few months.
[Many months have passed and we're still waiting for it]
I Know Where I'm Going!, a low-key romantic comedy, is a
lesser-known but in some ways even more striking film than
Black Narcissus. It stars Wendy Hiller as a headstrong middle-class
woman who travels to a remote Scottish island to marry a wealthy
industrialist, but is distracted by down-to-earth naval officer Roger
Livesey. The film isn't as deep or ambitious as some of the
Powell-Pressburger films that followed, but it's still a delightful
love story, blessed with attractive leads, lovely locations, and witty
dialogue. Easily the equal of any contemporaneous Hollywood romance,
Where I'm Going features an underlying motif of eschewing
materialism for more sublime pleasures -- driven home by Livesey's
classic line, "They're not poor, they just haven't any money." The
theme is underlined by Criterion's generous helping of featurettes,
which all draw from the dewy-eyed reminiscences of a cult fan base
that continues to respond to the film without exactly knowing why.
Just as Powell intended. -- Noel Murray
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