A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ve by no means seen all, or even most, of the films that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made together (mostly under the moniker of “The Archers”, the name of their production company), but I like, even love, the ones I’ve seen. I wrote about their wonderful A Matter of Life and Death earlier this year, and I’d consider The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp one of my favourite films.

Late last year, the BFI ran a series of Powell and Pressburger films, which sadly I missed, living in the wrong country altogether (for BFI series, that is) – but it made me aware of their 1945 romance I Know Where I’m Going!, which was released on the Criterion Collection as one of their very earliest films: it’s the 94^th release in the series, which by now contains more than 1200 titles. More than just being another Criterion release from a pair of filmmakers whose work I’ve liked a lot in the past, I Know Where I’m Going! is set in the Hebrides, so as a fan of Criterion, the Archers and Scotland, I didn’t have to think long and hard about getting the disk.

Sadly, while there is a lot to like about I Know Where I’m Going!, I’m not in love with the film as a whole. Don’t get me wrong: it is charming, sweet and tremendously visually inventive and clever in its first quarter of an hour. (Sadly, that aspect is lost later in the film.) The film is smartly written, its characters are engaging, and it features another wonderfully warm performance by Archers regular Roger Livesey. More than that, even in black and white, the Scottish landscapes in which I Know Where I’m Going! is set are beautiful. And fifteen minutes into the film, I was prepared to love it: it is witty in how it introduces the main character, Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) with an irony that is dry as well as affectionate, yet by no means toothless. Joan is tremendously ambitious – and her early ambitions are mostly for the good life. Good food, silk stockings, nice clothes: these are the things she wants in life, and this in turn means finding herself a husband who can provide them. We don’t see Joan’s romancing of her husband-to-be, the wealthy, old industrialist Sir Robert Bellinger, but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t want him, she wants what he can provide.

Where other filmmakers might ridicule or even vilify her as a gold digger, the script by Powell and Pressburger doesn’t so much judge her for her ambition as it doubts its efficacy: the material goods Joan wishes for may please her in the short run, but are they enough? Enter Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey): when Joan is on her way to the (fictional) Isle of Kiloran, where she is to marry Sir Robert, she meets MacNeil – who, unbeknownst to her, is the laird of Kiloran, even though his title does not mean that he himself possesses the kind of wealth that Joan looks for in her men. Since the weather makes it impossible for Joan to travel those last few miles to Kiloran, she is stuck in Tobermory and surroundings, where she keeps bumping into the man. As is the tradition in films of this kind, the two characters may not immediately like each other, but they are clearly meant for one another.

Which is exactly where my problem with the film lies: in terms of its genre and structure, it is clear where I Know Where I’m Going! will end. Joan and Torquil fall for each other, they try to resist the attraction because of their different aims and outlooks, but finally, they will realise that the other person is who they really want to be with. And both Livesey and Hiller are engagingly acted – but chemistry? I knew that these two characters needed to end up with one another, but I simply didn’t feel it. Which is made worse by the presence of a supporting character, Catriona (Pamela Brown), a friend of Torquil’s: the film makes it clear that she and Torquil aren’t an option for one another, since Catriona is married and her husband is off at war. But the first scene that these two characters share made me wonder: are these two lovers, or were they at some point in the past? If they aren’t: why the hell not? There is an immediate rapport between Livesey and Brown’s characters. Certainly, Torquil is designed to be an upstanding, honourable man, so not much is needed to explain why these two aren’t the lovers that end up together at the end of the film – but next to the chemistry between these two, it is all the more difficult to understand why Torquil should fall for Joan, other than the aforementioned rules of the genre.

Verdict: I may well feel differently about I Know Where I’m Going! if I were to rewatch it. In fact, I rather wish I would, because reading up on the film it’s clear that I’m in a minority here. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I could not become invested in the central romance that the movie hinges on. It does not help that Joan almost gets two other people killed in her quest to get to Kiloran – the scene itself is thrilling and cinematic, and Joan’s folly is reasonably well motivated, but the point is still that she jeopardises the lives of others in order to get away from the man she can’t help feeling more and more drawn to. And I Know Where I’m Going!, while undoubtedly charming, is perhaps too slight to make this work as drama. Joan’s attraction to Torquil is credible, his attraction to her less so. The film failed at making me fall for its two leads as a romantic prospect, but it more than succeeds at evoking the romance of the Scottish seaside landscape, and arguably the way it depicts the people living in this landscape is more effective than its romantic plot. Still, I can’t help but wonder about Torquil and Catriona, and what might have been…