I Know Where I’m Going! **** (1945, Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, George Carney) – Classic Movie Review 618

Writer-producer-director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s typically idiosyncratic 1945 romantic comedy is simply enchanting. The film boasts irresistible acting from the great cast of some of Britain’s most reliable performers of the day, a lovely screenplay with witty dialogue and clever ideas, and glorious landscapes beautifully shot with an eye to arresting symbols.

Wendy Hiller stars as the ambitious and stubborn London heiress Joan Webster, who travels to Scotland to marry the wealthy middle-aged industrialist Sir Robert Bellinger on Kiloran island in the Hebrides. She leaves Manchester for the isle of Mull, where she’s trapped by gale-force weather. There she meets the poor but dashing Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey) and they fall in love.

Colour would have been welcome from Technicolor brio specialists Powell and Pressburger, but it still looks a marvellous treat in Erwin Hillier’s astonishing black and white images. Filmed on Mull, Argyll and Bute, and at Denham Studios, Buckinghamshire. Livesey was starring in a London West End play, so he couldn’t go on location to Scotland and all his scenes were shot in the studio.

Traditional County Antrim song I Know Where I’m Going is sung by Boyd Steven.

A 1996 BBC TV documentary film directed by Mark Cousins, I Know Where I’m Going! Revisited, interviews various survivors of the 1945 film.

Wendy Hiller died on May 14 2003, aged 90.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 618 derekwinnert.com