I always find it hard to review Powell and Pressburger films because they speak to my heart more than they speak to my critical faculties, and this early solo effort from Michael Powell is no exception.Shot on the bleakly beautiful Shetland isle of Foula it tells the tale of the evacuation of St Kilda (a similarly remote Hebridean isle) in the 1930s when the centuries old way of life for that isle finally expired as its community began to greet the modern world.At times The Edge Of The World is wistful and lyrical, romantic and poetic, at other times it is documentarian and uncompromising in its approach, not only in depicting the harsh and impossible realities of preserving a traditional way of life in the 20th century, but also in the subject of illegitimacy where it is surprisingly frank, mature and honest for the period. What remains a constant though is the glimpses of just what a cinematic genius Powell was. It's all here right from the start with some truly heart aching cinematography and direction; notably in the suspenseful and gripping scenes of a doomed and tragic clifftop climb and the mist shrouded funeral lament of a community in mourning.Of the cast, made up of actors and islanders (indeed the actors had to set up home there to film for several months) it is perhaps John Laurie, later to be famous for Dad's Army, who is the most affecting as a man who not only loses a son, but loses an entire way of life, both losses which will ultimately lead to his own possibly self sacrificial demise. It's a quiet understated performance and all the more powerful for it.
