I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

I Know Who's Going With Me

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy I Know Where I'm Going! on DVD

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.

DVD Details: Shot in black and white, I Know Where I'm Going! (1945, Criterion Collection, $39.95) immediately departs from the Archers' normally striking use of color, but it turns out they made the right choice for this mystical love story. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong bride-to-be headed for the Isle of Kiloran to wed an unseen millionaire. Stopped short by a storm, she instead meets soldier on leave Roger Livesy who shows her the wonders of Scotland. Though it's a given that these two will fall in love, the movie also focuses on the curses, magic, and mysticism of hundreds of years of Scottish history. Hiller not only falls for the hero of the story, she falls for Scotland itself.

The DVD includes a documentary that returns to the locations 50 years later, an audio commentary by historian Ian Christie (whose slow, deliberate English drawl may put listeners to sleep), lots of photos and home movies narrated by Powell's widow (and Martin Scorsese's regular editor) Thelma Schoonmaker. The disc also includes a long, beautiful clip from the recently restored The Edge of the World (1937), one of Powell's first features.

Starring: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, George Carney, Pamela Brown, Walter Hudd, Captain Duncan MacKenzie, Ian Sadler, Finlay Currie, Murdo Morrison, Margot Fitzsimons, Captain C.W.R. Knight, Donald Strachan, John Rae, Duncan McIntyre, Jean Cadell
Written by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Directed by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 88 minutes
Date: July 30, 1996