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I Know Where I'm Going!

 

  Written and Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

UK 1945 / Drama / Romance / 91 min / Black & White / Monaural / 1.33: 1 / NTSC/  English Language with Optional English Subtitles.

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.

 
       

Bonus Features:

◦ Audio essay by film historian Ian Christie
◦ Behind-the scenes stills, narrated by Thelma Schoonmaker Powell
◦ The 1994 documentary, I Know Where I'm Going! Revisited, by Mark Cousins
◦ Excerpts from Michael Powell's 1937 Feature The Edge of the World and 1978 documentary, Return to the Edge of the World
◦ Photo essay by I Know Where I'm Going! aficionado Nancy Franklin, who explores the locations used in the film
◦ Home movies of Michael Powell's Scottish expedition, narrated by Thelma Schoonmaker Powell