I Know Where I'm Going!
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| I Know Where I'm Going! | |
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 I Know Where I'm Going! DVD Cover |
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| Directed by | Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger |
| Produced by | Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger |
| Written by | Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger |
| Starring | Wendy Hiller Roger Livesey Pamela Brown Finlay Currie Petula Clark |
| Music by | Allan Gray |
| Cinematography | Erwin Hillier |
| Editing by | John Seabourne Sr. |
| Distributed by | General Film Distributors |
| Release date(s) |  November 16, 1945 August 9, 1947 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English Gaelic |
| Budget | £200,000 (estimated) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
I Know Where I'm Going! is a 1945 romance film by the UK-based film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
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[edit] Synopsis
Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) is a young Englishwoman from a safe middle-class background, but with an ambitious, independent spirit. She travels to the Scottish isles to marry Sir Robert Bellinger, a much older, wealthy industrialist, on the Isle of Kiloran. When a gale prevents her taking a boat to Kiloran, she is forced to wait it out on the Isle of Mull, among a community of people with values quite foreign to her. There she meets Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a handsome naval officer trying to go home for some shore leave. MacNeil, the laird of Kiloran, has leased his island to Bellinger. As the bad weather continues, he takes advantage of the delay to woo Joan, who becomes increasingly unsure about her ambitions.
The film also features Pamela Brown as Catriona Potts, an independently-spirited country woman, Finlay Currie as a dour fisherman and boatman, and an early appearance by Petula Clark as Cheril, a precocious little girl.
[edit] Production
The film was shot in black and white while Powell and Pressburger were waiting for Technicolor film to begin making their next film, A Matter of Life and Death (colour film was in short supply in wartime Britain). It was the second and last collaboration between the co-directors and cinematographer Erwin Hillier (who shot the entire film without using a light meter).[citation needed]
[edit] Criticism
The film has received accolades from many critics:
- "I've never seen a picture which smelled of the wind and rain in quite this way nor one which so beautifully exploited the kind of scenery people actually live with, rather than the kind which is commercialized as a show place." - Raymond Chandler, Letters. [1]
- "The cast makes the best possible use of some natural, unforced dialogue, and there is some glorious outdoor photography." - The Times, November 14, 1945
- "[It] has interest and integrity. It deserves to have successors." - The Guardian, November 16, 1945
- "I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw I Know Where I'm Going!" - Martin Scorsese [citation needed]
[edit] References
- ^ An interesting letter. Retrieved on 2006-11-15.
[edit] Further reading
- Pam Cook, I Know Where I'm Going!, Film Classics Series, BFI Publishing (2002). ISBN 0-85170-814-5.
[edit] External links
- I Know Where I'm Going! at the Internet Movie Database
- I Know Where I'm Going! at the BFI's Screenonline. Full synopsis and film stills (and clips viewable from UK libraries).
- Reviews and articles at the Powell & Pressburger Pages
- Criterion Collection essay by Ian Christie
- I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited at the Internet Movie Database. A documentary about the people and places in the film.
[edit] DVD Reviews
[edit] Region 2 France
- Review by Noel Megahey at DVD Times (UK)
- Review (in french) at DVD Classik (France)
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Powell and Pressburger The films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger |
|---|---|
| 1930s | The Spy in Black | The Lion Has Wings |
| 1940s | Contraband | An Airman's Letter to His Mother | Forty-Ninth Parallel | One of Our Aircraft is Missing | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | The Volunteer | A Canterbury Tale | I Know Where I'm Going! | A Matter of Life and Death | Black Narcissus | The Red Shoes | The Small Back Room |
| 1950s | The Elusive Pimpernel | Gone to Earth | The Tales of Hoffmann | Oh... Rosalinda!! | The Battle of the River Plate | Ill Met by Moonlight |
| 1960s | Peeping Tom (not Pressburger) | They're a Weird Mob | Age of Consent |
| 1970s | The Boy Who Turned Yellow |
| Preceded by Black Narcissus |
The Criterion Collection 93 |
Succeeded by All That Heaven Allows |
