| Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Pamela
Brown, George Carney, Petula Clark, Walter Hudd .
While awaiting access to England's Technicolor cameras for their
upcoming super-production Stairway to Heaven, the producer-director
team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger dashed off a delightful
"personal" project, I Know Where I'm Going. Young middle-class
Englishwoman Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) is determined to have the
finer things in life, and to that end she plans to marry Sir Robert
Bellinger (Norman Shelley), a wealthy, middle-aged industrialist
whom she does not love. En route to the Island of Mull, where her
future husband resides, Joan is stranded in a colorful Scottish
seacoast town. Inclement weather keeps her grounded for a week,
during which time she falls in love with young, insouciant naval
officer Torquil McNeil (Roger Livesey). Ignoring the dictates of
her heart (not to mention common sense), Joan stubbornly insists
upon heading out to sea towards her marriage of convenience, but
the exigencies of Mother Nature finally convince her that her future
resides on the Mainland. A winner all the way, I Know Where I'm
Going is full of large and small delights, including a wonderful
sense of regional detail and endearing, three-dimensional characterizations
(even the mercenary heroine is a likeable character). The film is
easily one of the best of the Powell-Pressburger films of the 1940s,
and arguably the team's all-time best romantic drama. |