ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

JohnHowardReid Director: MICHAEL POWELL. Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. Photography: Erwin Hillier. Film editor: John Seabourne. Music composed by Allan Gray, conducted by Walter Goehr. Art director: Alfred Junge. Camera operator: Cecil Cooney. Special effects: Henry Harris. Assistant director: John Tunstall. Some members of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir appear by arrangement with Sir Hugh Roberton, principal. Sound recording: C. C. Stevens. Western Electric Sound System. Associate producer: George Busby. The producers wish to thank Ian McKenzie of Iona, Gaelic adviser Malcolm MacKellaig, John Laurie for the Ceilidh sequences, and good friends at Colonsay and the Island of Mull. Filmed on the Western Isles of Scotland and at Denham Studios, England. Producers: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger. A Production of The Archers.Copyright 11 December 1947 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. A Prestige picture, presented by J. Arthur Rank. U.S. release through Universal-International: August 1947. New York opening at the Sutton: 19 August 1947. U.K. release through General Film Distributors: 17 December 1945. Australian release through G-B- D/20th Century-Fox: 27 March 1947. 8,175 feet. 91 minutes.NOTES: Although it didn't make the Top Ten, "I Know Where I'm Going" figures on the New York Times supplementary list of four films that "just missed".COMMENT: "I Know Where I'm Going — And Who Is Going With Me." So runs the first lines of the song, heard under the credits of this delightfully winning picture of Scottish life and customs as seen through the eyes of a girl who thought she knew her own destiny. Wendy Hiller is the girl — and a more gracious, charming, completely believable actress would be difficult to find. Roger Livesey is the unintended companion — and his is the most sympathetic and appealing of all his portrayals.The way of destiny is rough, both literally and metaphorically, but the journey takes in some marvelously off-beat yet completely human characters in settings as ruggedly picturesque as the most ardent armchair traveler could wish. Chief amongst the humans (to all of us except The New York Times which doesn't list him at all, though Captain MacKechnie who is on screen for less than five seconds in a montage sequence is billed ninth from the top) is the famous falconer Captain C.W.R. Knight, making what I believe is his only in-front-of-the- camera feature. (He narrated the 1929 Filming of the Golden Eagle and produced the 1930 Sea Hawks). There are plenty of others we could cite as well. They pop up at every turn: a bus-load of shooters, a party of revelers at a "kayley", a stuck-up family of rich Sassenachs, an impoverished postmistress, a calmly philosophical boatman and his too-eager son...It all comes, as they say, to a grand climax, with the plot strands of myth and legend, of Fate and self-determination, of ambition and romance, coming together beautifully in an edge-of-the-seat whirlwind (terrific special effects).Superbly photographed and scored, with an often suitably and delightfully quirky yet imaginative direction (for example the station master's top hat that turns into an engine smoke-stack), I Know Where I'm Going is one of the most original and most entertaining products of wartime British cinema.OTHER VIEWS: Powell and Pressburger here turn their satiric spotlight, impish humor and budget largess on the mercenary designs of a seemingly self-assured young miss who makes a wartime pilgrimage to the western isles of Scotland to marry a wealthy industrialist whose pocket-book has bought the co-operation of every person in the United Kingdom — except God. Superb scenery, both indoors (Denham/Junge) and out (Mull/nature). Lilting music. Great cast. It all adds up to exceptional entertainment. – John Howard Reid writing as Charles Freeman.

gavin6942 Joan Webster is an ambitious and stubborn middle-class English woman determined to move forward since her childhood. She meets her father in a fancy restaurant to tell him that she will marry the wealthy middle-aged industrial Robert Bellinger in Kiloran island, in the Hebrides Islands, Scotland.Martin Scorsese has said, "I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw I Know Where I'm Going!" Now, with all due respect to Scorsese, I would not call this a masterpiece. But it is definitely a solid entry in Michael Powell's filmography. The story is very moving.What was interesting is that I watched this as a double feature with "Edge of the World", completely by accident. But they go together perfectly, both focused on the seaside world of the Outer Hebrides. While the plots do not necessarily go together, the atmosphere does, and that makes it perfect.

Prismark10 From the opening segment from this less known Powell & Pressburger production we feel that you are going to get their insightful but quirky and offbeat film. However I found this to be a slight effort and not very romantic or stirring.Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) since childhood knew what she wanted out of life. She is on her way to the isle of Kiloran in the Hebrides from Manchester to marry a wealthy and elderly industrialist. A marriage of convenience for her.Stranded by bad weather on the Isle of Mull, she meets naval officer, Torquil and is taken by him. She also later finds out that he is the Laird of Kiloran and her fiancé is actually leasing the island from him.Realising that she is falling for Torquil she desperately wants to make it to Kiloran and bribes a young sailor to take her there in heavy storm and Torquil follows and saves the boat from going sucked in a whirlpool. Both discern that they really were meant to be with each other.The film has a picture pretty Highland setting as you see people getting on with island life during the war. They might be poor but they are happy.The problem is Joan has not lost much by trading down from a rich old industrialist to a younger Laird who is more appealing to the heart. She pursuits her aims by selfish means even it results in a young sailor to potentially lose his life. This is not a person to root for in a romantic film, a heroine that appears to be cold and we are unsure that she has seen the errors of her ways.I believe that the film was written quickly and some of the sub- plots such as that of the eagle does look like filler.

mark.waltz Wendy Hiller plays a character who is swirling around in her own whirlpool, who, like Molly Brown, is determined not to let anybody pull her down. She's engaged to marry a Scottish nobleman, but when she shows up in the sea-side village to catch a boat to the island where this unseen character lives, she must face some facts about herself when blowing gales (gusty sea winds) prevent her from getting to that island which spookily looms way out in the middle of the sea. She falls in love with Roger Livesey, a resident of the village she is stuck in, but his brooding nature (like the Moorish Heathcliff of "Wuthering Heights") haunts both of them. Determined not to betray her promise, she makes an attempt to get to the island but a force of nature greater than themselves threatens to take them both down when he tries to take her to the island himself.This moody darkly filmed atmospheric drama with slight comic overtones is a testament to the creative visions of the production team who take a rather ordinary story and make it unique. Hiller is an interesting actress in the cannon of cinematic history in their fact that in America, her somewhat plain appearance could never have made her a star, but she was a favorite of British filmmakers. Her plucky heroine is possessed with inner beauty that makes her seem much more physically attractive than she actually is and as an actress, she is magic. Many stage performers of less than movie goddess like appearance became stars in the theater but character actresses on screen. Actresses like Hiller were appreciated by serious film viewers because they truly looked "real" and represented who the world really was dominated by.