Several years earlier Powell had come across a newspaper article and a non-fiction book (both by the same author) which fascinated him. They told of the evacuation of a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides called St. Kilda. Three dozen people were all that remained of a long, proud tradition - a self-sustaining island life of sheep and fish that had existed for generations but now was losing its young people to the modern, outside world. It was a way of life that simply could not go on any longer, and it died. Powell fashioned a narrative around this concept: a story of a young woman in love with a young man who wants to leave the island to start a new life. Her brother fiercely opposes this, and the men decide to settle the matter by racing each other up a terrifyingly steep cliff - an age-old way of resolving such disputes. Tragedy ensues, and a chain of events leads to the islanders reluctantly giving in to the realities of the world around them.
The story was simple enough, but the shoot was anything but simple. Unable to film on the real St. Kilda because its owner wouldn't allow it, Powell took his unit to Foula, an even more remote island in the Shetlands, far north of the Scottish mainland. Nothing could be flown in for there was no landing strip, and trips even by boat were difficult because of tough currents. The conditions created an unusually strong sense of community among the cast, crew, and islanders, who helped out and appeared in the movie in non-speaking roles. "Nobody who worked on The Edge of the World will ever forget it," wrote Powell years later in his memoir A Life in Movies. "We were a band of brothers."
After several months' filming, Powell found himself in a struggle to finish as an intense gale swept over the island. In a 1942 radio interview he recalled, "Every day brought the winter gales nearer and we stood a good chance of being marooned on Foula for the whole winter. We were cut off for several weeks with no fresh meat, bread, vegetables and worst of all, cigarettes. In those days that seemed like a hardship...At night we used to sit in our huts, which were lashed to the ground to stop them blowing away. We would play games, work or talk while the floor heaved under us and sometimes we listened to my portable gramophone...At the end of October there was a lull in the gales and a relief ship was able to take us off."
But Powell was not quite finished. He still needed reaction shots of the islanders in their boats as the two young men scale the cliffs. The logistics of getting these shots in such an inhospitable sea were extremely challenging, and Powell had tried again and again to shoot them off Foula, to no avail. Eventually Powell brought some Foula islanders to Lerwick, the capital town of the Shetlands, and filmed the close-ups off the coast there. Fifty years later, Powell explained in his autobiography why he went to the great trouble and expense of doing this. "Why didn't I trick these shots in the studio? It was the faces. Islanders have an inner strength and repose that other men and women do not have, and it shows in their faces. The smaller and more remote the island, the greater the individuality." Before returning to London, each cast and crew member received a parting gift from the Foula islanders - a color map of the island with the inscription "From the men of Foula to the men of The Edge of the World in memory of four months comradeship." They stayed in touch for the rest of their lives.
Back in London, Powell worked on the film with his editor John Seabourne for two months before he smartly realized that they were both too close to the material and "blind to its faults." He brought in another editor, Derek Twist, to finish. "It was he who made sense out of our ravings," Powell wrote. "He proved, as I knew he would, extraordinarily sympathetic to our ideas, and particularly to the final sequences of the evacuation of the island and Peter Manson's climb, step by step, to his death on the cliffs."
The Edge of the World, which Michael Powell described as "a folk epic," has the feel of poetry. The heart-stopping cliff sequence may be man vs. man, but it's really man vs. nature, and nature is indifferent, mighty, and punishing, qualities which Powell emphasizes visually in frame after frame. The film's greatest power lies in the way it captures the everyday life of the islanders with deep feeling, tenderness and mysticism (not to mention spectacular photography). The picture feels so authentic, in fact, using a naturalistic cast and capturing remarkable details in every scene, that Italian neo-realism of a decade later comes to mind. At the same time, it is full of visual tricks, startling double exposures, and expressionistic montages.
In the cast is John Laurie, a fine Scottish actor who had recently made a vivid impression in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935) as the farmer who attempts to betray Robert Donat. Laurie would appear in more Michael Powell films and generally played supporting roles throughout his career. The Edge of the World was one of his few star turns, and he made the most of it. Powell himself also appears in the movie, along with his then-girlfriend and future wife, Frankie Reidy. They play a bourgeois couple on a yachting trip who visit the island in the present day. Their skipper, who was one of the islanders, then tells them the story in flashback.
After the movie was released, Powell was sued for plagiarism by the author of the original book that had inspired him, even though the book contained nothing of the narrative thread that Powell had created. Powell won the case but had to pay court costs, which ate up his profits from the film. Nonetheless, the picture only furthered Powell's career and his development as an artist. As he later wrote, "The Edge of the World was a turning point of my life in art, and I found it impossible to return to the world of cheap thrillers." Indeed, producer Alexander Korda saw The Edge of the World and was so impressed that he signed Powell to a contract and introduced him to Hungarian screenwriter Emeric Pressburger. Powell and Pressburger immediately made The Spy in Black (1939) together and would go on to become the greatest writing-directing-producing partners in the history of film, turning out masterpieces like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), Black Narcissus (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948) for years to come.
Powell's widow Thelma Schoonmaker (who is also Martin Scorsese's film editor) has said that "this film for Michael Powell was almost [like] his first-born. He had a passionate love for it which he never lost 'til the end of his days."
Producer: Joe Rock
Director: Michael Powell
Screenplay: Michael Powell
Cinematography: Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer
Film Editing: Derek N. Twist, Robert Walters
Art Direction: W. Osborne, Sydney Streeter
Music: Lambert Williamson
Cast: John Laurie (Peter Manson), Belle Chrystall (Ruth Manson), Eric Berry (Robbie Manson), Kitty Kirwan (Jean Manson), Finlay Currie (James Gray), Niall MacGinnis (Andrew Gray).
BW-74m.
by Jeremy Arnold
