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The overture takes its tempo from screwball Hollywood, with Wendy Hiller's willful heroine barreling through like Rosalind Russell late for an interview. The train ride to Glasgow—wedding vows answered by the locomotive's whistle, the stovepipe hat belching smoke, the tartan-covered hills—zips from Lubitsch to Vigo, and culminates in the magical first view of the Hebrides. "It never stays fine for long in the isles." Bad weather keeps her from reaching her industrialist fiancé, the sojourn at the tiny village acquaints her with the courtly laird (Roger Livesey), Scottish folklore, and the Archers' inimitable brand of pantheism. Expanding The Edge of the World, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger fill their landscapes with ritual and incongruity, legend and gadgetry, young couples gravitating together and old ones celebrating anniversaries. The phone booth by the waterfall ("It was a dry summer when it was put here") is as much part of the spiritual fabric as the jolly falconer colonel (C.W.R. Knight) or the precocious heiress (Petula Clark) or the worldly sorceress (Pamela Brown). "A little odd, isn't he?" "Who isn't?" The stone hall that rattles from dance and bagpipes and is stilled by a Gaelic chorus, the old castle with the terrible curse that turns out to be a romantic declaration. Myths local and distant (in one, a Norwegian prince battles the sea with a rope made from maidens' tresses) abound in this glowing comedy of "Highland economics," where a working girl and a man-eagle find love in the eye of a literal maelstrom. (The whirlpool swallows the bridal gown, "a mermaid will marry in it.") A work of prayers answered and thresholds crossed, ably recalled by Forsyth (Local Hero). Cinematography by Erwin Hillier. With Finlay Currie, George Carney, Nancy Price, Jean Cadell, Valentine Dyall, John Laurie, Catherine Lacey, Margot Fitzsimmons, and Murdo Morrison. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |