Saturday, March 03, 2007

Michael Powell and his Scottish Islands

Michael Powell, the film director (1905-1990) loved islands of Scotland and undertook film projects which involved island stories.

His first film to use the island theme was The Edge of the World and released in 1935. This is a story based on the evacuation of St Kilda that happened in 1930.

Michael Powell also to Scotland (The Orkneys) to film Spy in Black (1939), but the Hebrides were the setting for I Know Where I’m Going! - a film released in 1945.

furthermore...

As a young man Powell would have read of the evacuation of the island of St Kilda, and felt compelled to turn the story into a film. In fact, it seems that Michael Powell had read some material on the subject by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. The book A Last Voyage to St. Kilda was published in 1931 and so would have been a source for the background to the story.

I Know Where I’m Going (1945) featured the whirpool gulf of Corryvreckan between the Isle of Jura and Scarba.