Wow! Such a good movie.

Excellent but underrated film

Beautiful, moving film.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Joan Webster is an ambitious and stubborn middle-class English woman determined to move forward since her childhood. She meets her father in a fancy restaurant to tell him that she will marry the wealthy middle-aged industrial Robert Bellinger in Kiloran island, in the Hebrides Islands, Scotland.Martin Scorsese has said, "I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw I Know Where I'm Going!" Now, with all due respect to Scorsese, I would not call this a masterpiece. But it is definitely a solid entry in Michael Powell's filmography. The story is very moving.What was interesting is that I watched this as a double feature with "Edge of the World", completely by accident. But they go together perfectly, both focused on the seaside world of the Outer Hebrides. While the plots do not necessarily go together, the atmosphere does, and that makes it perfect.

Wendy Hiller plays a character who is swirling around in her own whirlpool, who, like Molly Brown, is determined not to let anybody pull her down. She's engaged to marry a Scottish nobleman, but when she shows up in the sea-side village to catch a boat to the island where this unseen character lives, she must face some facts about herself when blowing gales (gusty sea winds) prevent her from getting to that island which spookily looms way out in the middle of the sea. She falls in love with Roger Livesey, a resident of the village she is stuck in, but his brooding nature (like the Moorish Heathcliff of "Wuthering Heights") haunts both of them. Determined not to betray her promise, she makes an attempt to get to the island but a force of nature greater than themselves threatens to take them both down when he tries to take her to the island himself.This moody darkly filmed atmospheric drama with slight comic overtones is a testament to the creative visions of the production team who take a rather ordinary story and make it unique. Hiller is an interesting actress in the cannon of cinematic history in their fact that in America, her somewhat plain appearance could never have made her a star, but she was a favorite of British filmmakers. Her plucky heroine is possessed with inner beauty that makes her seem much more physically attractive than she actually is and as an actress, she is magic. Many stage performers of less than movie goddess like appearance became stars in the theater but character actresses on screen. Actresses like Hiller were appreciated by serious film viewers because they truly looked "real" and represented who the world really was dominated by.

Have you ever fallen in love with a movie? In love with a film that speaks to your heart and your sense of whimsy? I have tried to recall what led me to this movie, to no avail. But, ohhh, I am so glad this movie came into my life. Because I have waited for such a movie all my life. It's a simple story: A youngish woman travels far from home to marry a rich man. But choppy waters delay her trip from the mainland to her intended's island. It's the atmosphere that makes it somewhat like a fairytale. Gaelic is spoken here and there. The fog moves in and out. The winds stir up the water and the grasses and trees. You can here the "seels" baying nearby. At a ceilidh, folk music is sung and two young lovers reconnect. In a mansion nearby, new money meets old money and the new money is looked down upon in subtle ways. I guess it was the fog that shrouds the landscape. It obscures the romantic tendencies in almost every character. Sometimes emotions erupt, as when a young girl pleads for a boat journey to be aborted so her lover won't die. So many things to watch for in this movie. Roger Livesey is at his best as the correct and courteous Torquil MacNeil, the master of the island he is renting out to Wendy Hiller's "rich man." As Joan Webster, Hiller, is an upward climber. The old money knows this and she resents it. The class undercurrents are numerous. I fell in love with this movie, perhaps, as the dock. When somber music wafts and fog shrouds the bay and the seafarers retreat to their homes, leaving Joan alone on the dock. When the wind snatches her itinerary into the water, its symbolism is not overdone. Perhaps that is what I like about this movie. Nothing much is overdone. People speak like people. Well, Gaelic people. And the upper crust is as much at home with the lower crust. And outsiders have to earn their way into that society. Poor Joan, she can't see that right away. I fell in love with this movie. I think, if you give it a chance, you will too.

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