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.

GusF Set against the backdrop of a very distant seeming World War II, this is an excellent romantic drama. The plot is relatively simple but the script by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is very well written and extremely engaging. It presents us with a charming, almost mystical story of the relaxed pace of life on the Hebrides through the eyes of a stubborn Englishwoman who sees little value in it. The direction is as excellent as I have to come to expect from the duo and the film makes great use of the beautiful scenery of the Isle of Mull. The fantastic cinematography, another Powell and Pressburger trademark, is provided by Erwin Hillier on this occasion and adds a great deal to the film.The film stars Wendy Hiller in a first rate performance as the upwardly mobile Joan Webster, a headstrong, independent 25-year-old woman from Manchester who is to be married the exceedingly wealthy and considerably older industrialist Sir Robert Bellenger on the Hebridean island of Kiloran. However, her marriage plan hits a bit of a snag when she is essentially stranded on the neighbouring Isle of Mull for days on end due to a severe gale. She finds it particularly frustrating since she can easily see Kiloran and she could get there in half an hour. Weather permitting. Joan is rather unimpressed by Mull, considering it a bleak and desolate place and an obstacle to her plan. She is incredibly stubborn and does not accept that it is simply not possible to get to Kiloran. At times, she is not a very likable character as she is perfectly willing to put the lives of others at risk to suit herself, even going so far as to compare her desire to reach Kiloran to a rescue operation during a terrible storm. As such, she is extremely selfish person. She always seems to get what she wants and cannot abide it when things do not go her way. It is so heavily implied that Sir Robert's charm and scintillating personality were not the things that first attracted her to him that there might as well have been a ticker tape at the bottom of the screen announcing it every two minutes! However, she softens as the film progresses. There is a great deal of character development in the film, particularly towards the end, as Joan realises that there is more to life than vaulting ambition. For the first time in her life, she recognises that she does always have to plan everything down to the last detail in order to be happy. In fact, this approach can be counterproductive.Roger Livesey gives a typically excellent performance as Torquil MacNeil, the Laird of Kiloran and a Royal Navy officer who seeks to return home for the first time in four years for some shore leave. When they take shelter in the home of his childhood friend Catriona Potts, Torquil becomes attracted to Joan. He takes advantage of the fact that they are cut off from Kiloran to woo her, using all of the charm and wit at his disposal to do so. While Joan is attracted to him as well, she is single-minded to the point of myopia and she sees him as another obstacle in her plan to become Lady Bellenger. In many respects, most particularly his high degree of common sense, Torquil is her opposite number, proving that opposites really do attract. One of the best scenes in the film is their very heated argument in which he attempts to convince her of the dangerous stupidity of taking a boat to Kiloran in such weather and the immorality of putting another person's life at risk for her convenience. It is the more insightful Catriona, however, who points out that Joan is trying to get away from him as she has begun to realise that she is in love with him. He cannot prevent Joan from leaving but his sense of honour and responsibility means that he must accompany her. The two of them and the sailor Kenny barely manage to escape with their lives from the Corryvrecken whirlpool. Although all seems lost at one point, there is a heartwarming happy ending of the kind that a war British weary population would have loved and they are certainly not alone in that.The film has a strong supporting cast. The most notable actual Scots are Finlay Currie as the old sailor Ruairidh Mhór and Livesey's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp co-star John Laurie as John Campbell. Pamela Brown is very good as the wise, sensible Catriona while Catherine Lacey is suitably obnoxious as Mrs. Robinson. The 12-year-old Petula Clark makes a great impression as her rather too precocious daughter Cheril. As a dog lover, I not only loved the customary appearance of Powell's gorgeous Golden Cocker Spaniels Erik and Spangle - one of whom looks just like my dog! - but the beautiful Irish Wolfhounds as well.Overall, this is a great feelgood film which reminds us that you cannot put a price tag on the most important things in life and, more to the point, you shouldn't try.

edwagreen The plot and entire story can be summed up in about 10 minutes. This is so highly predictable. As Joan, the future Dame Wendy Hiller, appeared too old in 1945 to tackle the part of a young adventuress, who from early childhood knew where she was going, or at least she thought so. Her screen companion in this unbelievably dull film is Roger Livesey. He sounds like he has hot potatoes in his mouth, and his voice resembles Nigel Bruce, foil to Basil Rathbone in the "Sherlock Holmes" films.You know that the constant rough winds will not allow Joan and her fiancée to meet, and you know where this is going. Livesey, as a lieutenant, falling for her.Everyone keeps mentioning Kilcoran. You have no idea where this is and what they're talking about. True love is discovered on the high seas.The supporting characters in this disappointing film are very boring as well. While it is true that money isn't everything, neither is this picture worth the money or anything.

James Hitchcock The plot of "I Know Where I'm Going!" was not a particularly original one even in 1945; it owes something to the earlier American screwball comedy "It Happened One Night". It is essentially that old romantic comedy standby "The Girl is engaged to/married to/in love with Mr Wrong, but meets and ends up with Mr Right". (This plot has also been used in some modern rom-coms such as "Home Sweet Alabama").The Girl in this case is Joan Webster, a young middle-class Englishwoman with ambitions to rise in the world. Mr Wrong is her fiancé Sir Robert Bellinger, a wealthy industrialist who lives on the Isle of Kiloran in the Scottish Hebrides. Joan travels from her home in Manchester to Kiloran in order to marry him, but owing to bad weather is unable to complete the final leg of her journey, a boat trip to the island. She is therefore forced to wait on the Isle of Mull for the weather to change, and while waiting she meets Torquil MacNeil, a naval officer who turns out to be the Laird of Kiloran. (Sir Robert is only his tenant).The film has two morals. The first could be summed up as "Man Proposes, God Disposes", or perhaps (given the Scottish setting) as "The best-laid plans o' mice an' men gang aft agley". Joan knows where she's going, or thinks she does, both literally and figuratively. Literally, she knows that she is going to Kiloran. Figuratively, she is an independent young women who knows what she wants from life- to become Lady Bellinger- and is determined to get it. That exclamation mark in the title is perhaps intended to symbolise her determination and her impatience with anyone who might get in her way.Yet in the end Joan never becomes Lady Bellinger- anyone with a knowledge of cinematic conventions could spot a mile off that Torquil would turn out to be Mr Right- and, indeed, never even gets to Kiloran, although she makes desperate efforts to do so, sensing that the growing mutual attraction between herself and in her Torquil is putting her well-laid plans in jeopardy.The film's second moral is "money doesn't bring you happiness". Joan is initially portrayed as a selfishly materialistic girl whose only interest in the man she wants to marry lies in the size of his bank account. In her desperation to get to the island she bribes a young boatman to risk his life by putting to sea in bad weather. Her values are contrasted with those of the people of Mull, who are depicted as being poor in terms of material possessions but richer in spirit. Joan's abandonment of Sir Robert in favour of Torquil, who despite his long aristocratic pedigree is far from wealthy, can be seen symbolic of the triumph of traditional spiritual values over modern materialistic ones.Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who worked together under the name "The Archers" (little suspecting that that title would later be appropriated by the BBC for their radio soap opera about a farming community), have today become revered figures in the history of the British cinema. Although they shared production, writing and directing credits, it was normally Powell who acted as director and Pressburger who acted as scriptwriter. Some have seen "I Know Where I'm Going!" as one of their best films- Barry Norman, for example, numbered it among his hundred greatest films of all time. I have never, however, regarded it as the equal of films like "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp", "A Matter of Life and Death" and "The Red Shoes", and I think there is a reason for this.There have been directors- Stanley Kubrick and Peter Weir are good examples- who have been able to work equally well within the confines of established genres and outside them. Powell and Pressburger, however, strike me as film-makers who were at their best when trying something completely original in films like the three mentioned above. They were, in my view, never quite as good when working within an established genre. Some might think that "Forty-Ninth Parallel" is an exception, but to my mind that film is much wider in its scope than a traditional wartime thriller. "One of Our Aircraft is Missing" and "The Battle of the River Plate", by contrast, are traditional war films and although they are reasonably good films, especially the first, neither of them display the spark of originality which characterises the work of the Archers at their best.Similarly, "I Know Where I'm Going!" falls firmly within the established conventions of the romantic comedy and never quite strives for the heights of originality. As a rom-com it has its strengths but also its weaknesses. As with a number of British films from this period dealing with romantic love the overall emotional temperature seems too cool. Roger Livesey and Wendy Hiller were both rather older than the supposed ages of the characters they are portraying, and are too emotionally reticent to convince us that they are falling passionately in love, a love so strong that Joan will happily renounce a fortune for its sake. Joan also comes across as rather too impatient and forthright to be entirely sympathetic.On the plus side there is some striking photography of the Highland scenery- unusually shot on location at a time when most British films were made entirely within the walls of a studio- and a vivid portrait of life in a remote part of Britain which in 1945 would not have been familiar to most English people or, indeed, to many lowland Scots. There are some good performances from the likes of Finlay Currie and Pamela Brown. (I previously knew her best as the elderly mother in "The Road Mender", so I was surprised how attractive she was in her youth). Overall, this is an enjoyable romantic comedy but not, in my view, the masterpiece it is sometimes hailed as. 7/10