The Edge of the World (1937)

by Mark Burell

Last week, I finally saw The Edge of the World (1937) which was Powell's first big movie (and a couple of years before he met Pressburger), a film nearly ethnographic in its focus on the community & landscape of a small Scottish island in the Shetland Islands (he was inspired by the story of the "evacuation" of the people of St. Kilda, who threw in the towel after most of the younger generation left for better jobs & lives on the mainland).

Almost every scene makes use of the dramatic cliffs and fields and seascapes of the island – some of the vertiginous cliff drops similar to the sheer Himalayan drops in Black Narcissus (1947). Laurie also loved this movie – who wouldn't? It's a GREAT rich movie – but she was especially smitten because as a little girl (and just recently she reread it again) she loved a book with a similar setting, tiny little community on an Irish island, called Twenty Years A-Growing, by Maurice O'Sullivan. I just saw in Wikipedia that it was originally published in 1933 in both English and Irish (Gaelige). The book was fairly successful and is still in print today, with many critics (including EM Forster) giving enthusiastic reviews.

The movie is not at all based on this book, but similarly documents a vanishing way of life in a ravishingly isolated island community. (They have to resort to attaching letters to little wooden blocks attached to sheep bladders & thrown into the sea, to be picked up by passing ships, to get a message to the mainland!) Powell's fidelity to his story, the use of non-actor locals throughout, the swooning love for the dramatic landscape, everything combines wonderfully to create a very moving portrait of the people of Foula. And with this first major project, Powell is already spreading the pixie dust around a little, his camera constantly capturing an atmosphere of magic and wonder, the everyday atmosphere for the islanders; you can almost see in their faces (of the locals acting in the movie) how much it has affected them to live their lives in such a rich and challenging place. One of my favorite set-pieces is when an elderly farmer has to rope-climb down a steep hillside to rescue a stranded sheep – very matter-of-fact how he risks his life to get this one animal back up to the hilltop, with the ocean heaving just below. If you haven't seen this, make sure you add it to your list – it's not an Archer's film, but it's a fantastic beginning to a fantastic life in film.

I really want to see The Spy in Black now, not a P/P Archer film but Pressburger did contribute some scriptwork, I think. It doesn't seem to be available except as a Region 2 DVD, so I can't play it on my DVD player. I shall have to scour the interwebs & see if anybody has posted it online. Amazon instant video does have Contraband available for viewing, so I think that's my next Powell movie (and the first real Pressburger/Powell movie).