One of the most unassuming filmmakers of Britain’s early period (and, with 1960’s astonishing Peeping Tom, its middle period as well), Michael Powell entered the golden age of his career with The Edge of the World. Though he had already made over 20 films by 1937, it represented one of his first successfully realized and self-actualized stabs at what would become one of his chief directorial strengths: the ability to film a very specific and localized environment in a manner that emphasizes its otherworldly fantasias and, paradoxically, remains faithful to the area’s ethnographical features.
To watch the film is to bear witness to Powell’s unique alchemy. Throughout, he infuses a weather-battered island community off the coast of Scotland on the verge of abandonment with off-kilter camera angles, dreamily gauzy cinematography, and a becalmed detachment that lets the characters and scenario do the work for him.
Which isn’t to say that Powell occasionally indulges in a few melodramatic flourishes that he managed to avoid in his masterful collaborations with Emeric Pressburger, including I Know Where I’m Going and Black Narcissus. For instance, he superimposes a montage of mournful reminiscences over a character’s thoughtful close-up on two separate occasions. And for all of the near-documentary-like attitudes that Powell exercises when filming the island’s close-knit community, the screenplay (by Powell and an uncredited John L. Balderston and John Byrd) too often lapses into overly plotty solutions to various conflicts. But in general, The Edge of the World is rife with the sort of miraculously unforced moments of enchantment that one has always come to expect from one of Britain’s most underrated auteurs.
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