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Reviews Michael Powell's 'The Edge of the World'
Reviewed by James MacGregorThe
Edge Of The World, a black and white classic film of 1937, filmed in
Scotland’s remotest island community, has been released for the first time on
DVD by the British Film Institute. The film has been printed afresh and the DVD
package comes with a wealth of supporting documentary material that shows just
why this was such a remarkable testament to its director. Michael
Powell is now recognised as one of Britain’s great film talents and is lauded
by industry legends like Martin Scorsese, but then, he was just another hard
worker, on the London film treadmill, turning out quota quickies, made at that
time to support main features The
other remarkable thing about this film is the exceptionally high production
values Powell achieved, using low budget methods. For insight into this alone,
this is a package that will repay careful study by any of today’s new
filmmakers. The
Edge Of The World
is the story of the remote Scottish island community in the island of Hirta, now
on the verge of extinction. The islanders struggle to maintain their traditional
way of life in the face of encroaching, threatening, economic forces whose grasp
seems to reach into every cranny, drawing people into its whirlpool of
prosperity. Modern fishing trawlers from distant places are clearing the shoals
right up to Hirta’s very shores, ironically a threat many Scottish island
communities perceive as happening all around them today. Powell’s
inspiration for the film was the story of the distant island community of St
Kilda, a storm-tossed rugged island west of the Outer Hebrides evacuated by its
people in the 1920’s as no longer viable. Powell had seen film of the
community and its way of life in the last few years, before the decision to
leave became inevitable. He loved Scotland and knew other Scottish islands could
easily suffer St Kilda’s fate. This
was a universally understood background for a film drama to play out against.
New attitudes versus tradition values, progress and new technologies versus the
way things have always been, old ideas struggling to resist the new. All Powell
needed was a budget, a small cast and crew and a suitable island. St Kilda
itself was closed because the laird now wanted it left to the seabirds,
undisturbed. It was to Scotland’s next remotest island community that Powell
turned. The laird and people of Foula, twenty miles out into the Atlantic from
the rest of the Shetland Islands, proved to be film friendly and accommodating.
The laird was even prepared to lend Powell his cruising yacht! So it was North
then West, to Foula, that Powell turned, to tell the story of Hirta. The
film that resulted, in its new fresh print, is stunning on screen. Powell was a
master craftsman in the use of natural light. Here his canvas includes stormy
seas, outstacks, arches and towering cliffs almost a thousand feet high, but we
have to keep reminding ourselves that he was limited to the film emulsions of
the 1930’s and to what he could achieve with whiteboards and natural
conditions around, including reflections off water and the “magic hour”
approaching dusk. The
drama unfolds to reveal two rival clans led by stoical traditionalist Peter
Manson (John Laurie) and
the more pragmatic James Gray (Finlay Currie) each holding opposing viewpoints;
struggling to earn an uneasy living or, migrating, in search of an easier life
elsewhere. The
romantic complication is a mutual attraction across the opposing clan divide
between Peter Manson’s daughter Ruth (Belle Chrystall) and James Gray’s son
Andrew (Niall MacGinnis.) Ruth’s brother Robbie (Eric Berry) has sampled life
away from Hirta and wants to leave, but her paramour Andrew is settled on island
life with Ruth, if he can persuade her father to bury clan differences and allow
the match. Tragically, when Robbie and Andrew agree to settle personal
disagreements by means of the traditional cliff race, Robbie is lost to the sea.
The community is united in grief, but Andrew, frustrated in love, is forced to
leave his island home and the island girl he loves. Only after he leaves does
Ruth discover she is expecting Andrew’s child and has to face her father,
still distraught over the loss of his only son. It
is a dramatic set-up that matches Foula’s scenic one and Powell’s choice of
shots plays on the perceptions. High, lofty cliff leaps, shot low-angle, with
his camera canted at 45 degrees disorientate us. Lovers trysts shot in soft-focus, with
sunlight glinting like diamonds from the sparkling water, glimpsed through a sea
of wild iris flags, bending to the wind. Powell commands complete control over
our feelings with scenes like these. The moving, grief-stricken funeral scene is
portrayed tenderly with the accompaniment of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir. Fresh
revealing shots of the islanders bearing one of their precious number to his
eternal resting place, his coffin borne on a bier of the oars from their boats,
remind us that it was the sea that took this island son. Some
of the most startling shots, much admired by Scorsese, were achieved in camera
by double exposure of the film, shooting one subject at lower exposure, then
winding the film back to shoot the second subject, now superimposed over the
first. Thus, Andrew Gray, returning to the now abandoned Hirta is haunted on
screen by the ghostly images of long-departed islanders passing him by. When a
stricken Ruth Manson stares over the towering cliff edge contemplating her
future, we see the swelling seas below washing across her cheeks like waves of
unhappiness. Powell
acknowledges that he is something of a poet. The Edge Of The World demonstrates
that for Powell, film is as much a poetic medium as words. It plucked him out of
quota quickiedom and pushed him firmly in the direction of engaging narrative
and perceptive film techniques. That he achieved this with a cast and crew
numbering just 24, average age 26, is quite remarkable. The BFI package is loaded with extra material,
from biographies to early film of St Kilda. Powell’s nostalgic visit to Foula
in 1978 is documented in Return To The Edge Of The World and some of the
director’s original experiences are recounted by Daniel Day Lewis reading from
Powell’s book 200,000 Feet On Foula. Finally, there is a telling
commentary on the film provided by film critic Ian Christie in conversation with
Powell’s widow, Thelma Schoonmaker, who is Martin Scorcese’s regular editor.
She gives analysis of the film both from her own expert perception as a feature
film editor, but from the many conversations and anecdotes Powell had shared
with her about his 1936 summer on Foula. For Powell, it was held among his most
important professional experiences. He told Roy Plomley and listeners to the BBC
radio programme desert island discs, “I don’t think I shall ever make
another film, however good it may turn out to be, that will mean as much to me
as The Edge of the World.” The BFI is to be congratulated on the issue of this package on DVD. The optical quality is pristine and a far cry from the last TV screening of the film I managed to catch, when it appeared that summer 1936 on Foula was fogged out. The supporting material gives unique insight into Powell’s techniques and achievements as a filmmaker. This package is a must-see learning opportunity for anyone wanting to observe a master filmmaker at work, with virtually no money, yet achieving astonishing results, even in the remotest film location in Britain. We can all learn something from this man. Cat no BFIVD589/Cert U/UK/1937/black and white/ 74mins + extra material/ Academy Ratio (1.33: 1) Buy "Edge of the World" from Amazon.co.uk Buy "Edge of the World" from Amazon.com Buy "Edge of the World" from Sendit.com
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