I Know Where I'm Going

Highland Fling !
What are the truly great, classic romances on film ? Many would think of "Casablanca", and justifiably so. However, in its own charming, subtle way, "I Know Where I'm Going" deserves a high place on any such list. My wife and I decided to watch this as our "Valentine's Day" movie--a perfect choice.

I suppose the big question is--why is a movie that is so predictable, so great ? As usual, the answer is a combination of fine ingredients--script, direction, setting and performances, both lead and support.

Dame Wendy Hiller stars as a bright, independent and arrogant young woman who "knows where she is going". Actually, she is "going" to a remote island off the west coast of Scotland to marry a much older, but incredibly wealthy man. There is never any suggestion of a relationship between these two people or that they love one another. It is presented to us as an "arranged" marriage, just as this fellow ( we never actually see him on screen ) would set up one of his business deals. Of...

One of the World's Great Films. Really.
This is one of the great romantic movies, and like all of the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger films, it's quirky and original. Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) has always known where she's going. She's headstrong and determined to marry a man who is wealthy and has position. Her fiance is an industrialist (this is at the tail end of WWII), older than she, who is living on a leased island off the coast of Scotland. They're to be married on the island, and Joan takes the train to a small village on the coast, where she'll go across on the ferry. Bad weather sets in and she has to wait at the home of another woman, a woman of common sense and little money, who also has staying with her an old friend and naval commander, Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey).

This is Joan Webster's story, her determination to get to the island, her growing unease with MacNeil because he doesn't fit into her plans, her putting at risk a young couple who are in love and, as she comes to realize, may...

A haunting and treasureable film.
IKWIG (as its creative team of Powell and Pressburger dubbed it) was made on a black-and-white stock right after WWII, when technicolor film and equipment were temporarily unavailable. It was the tale of a London-based woman who has always known what she's wanted all her life, and has decided to marry a wealthy, nice, but elderly business tycoon. ("You can't marry Consolidated Chemical Industries!" sputters her father. "Can't I?" is her reply.) He has rented a sprawling castle on a distant isle of the remote, nature-claimed Hebrides Islands, off the coast of Scotland, and she's traveling to meet him for the wedding, there. Unfortunately, the weather doesn't cooperate, and she's stuck for days one island short of her goal, where she encounters endless local traditions, people, and scenery, along with the young Laird of Killoran. Her desperation to achieve her goal nearly causes the death of several people, and has a profound effect on her understanding of the culture she's dropped into...

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