The Edge of the World (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Edge of the World (1937) – M. Powell

Shot on location at Foula, one of the tiny Shetland Islands off the northwest coast of Scotland, this may be director Michael Powell’s first masterpiece. Some suggest that it is very different from the highly stylized Technicolor pictures that Powell later made with his key collaborator Emeric Pressburger (e.g., The Red Shoes, 1948; Black Narcissus, 1947) – but in truth this seems not too far distant from some of their masterpieces (such as I Know Where I’m Going, 1945, which takes place in the same general locale).  There is an almost surreal pictorial beauty here with land and seascape, flora, and fauna sharing almost equal billing with the human characters of the story (Terence Malick must have taken inspiration here).  Foula is impressive, with its steep cliffs topped by green pastures and rocky coast lashed by the sea but it is a stand-in for St. Kilda, an island in the Hebrides which was vacated by its residents after they decided that their way of life could not be sustained in the modern world.  And this is the plot that Powell pursues – he examines a community that is grappling with whether it can sustain itself as its young people choose to leave for the mainland and better jobs and less harsh conditions.  A young Niall MacGinnis (who I know best from Curse of the Demon, 1957) plays Andrew Gray who wishes to remain on the island with his father (the great Finlay Currie) and accepts a challenge from Robbie Manson (Eric Berry) who wishes to leave – the challenge is to climb the steepest cliff barehanded and the winner will decide the fate of the island.  It’s a nail-biting sequence.  Although Gray wins, his love for Manson’s sister Ruth (Belle Chrystall) drives him to leave the island (and his yet-unknown unborn son).  Soon the whole community plans to leave, but the Manson patriarch (John Laurie) stubbornly resists leaving without first gathering some rare eggs.  The plot itself is almost beside the point here because Powell’s sense of the environment, here at the nearly literal edge of the world (or at least the UK), is spectacularly mystical.  Surely, this would be a destination for reflection on beauty and on human insignificance in the grand scheme of things (some great superimposition shots suggest the same).  Powell’s focus is instead on the loss of culture and community with modernity, a subtle theme that can be traced through his work.