Like Powell/Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), The Edge of the World is set on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, a place little changed since Norsemen settled there centuries before. Its tiny, deeply religious population scrapes a living as sheepherders and fishermen, but as the younger generation leaves the island in search of a better life elsewhere, and as modern technology encroaches upon the elders' ability to earn a living (modern trawlers gobble up fish near the coast), the future of the island as a habitable community is very much in doubt.

As the film begins, Andrew (Niall MacGinnis) is engaged to Ruth (Belle Chrystall), whose twin brother Robbie (Eric Berry) plans to join those abandoning the island for better wages on the mainland. Andrew's father, James (Finlay Currie) is philosophical about Robbie's plans, but Robbie's own father, Peter Manson (John Laurie), strongly objects as well. The two younger men decide to settle their differences by following an age-old custom: race to the top of the island's steep cliffs. It's a harrowing climb, much of it using the real actors a la the mountain films of Arnold Fanck.

The Edge of the World plays very much a like a short story whose plot is incidental to the vividly rich atmosphere it generates, and how the deeply etched faces of the ordinary islanders is much more important than whether or not Peter will accept Andrew into the Manson clan. It lacks the emotional resonance of the more character-driven I Know Where I'm Going!, but is dripping with cinematic virtuosity and an absolutely seamless blending of experienced actors and nonprofessional locals. Better still, Powell really captures the minutiae of daily life for this island's inhabitants. An early scene depicting a church service nicely illustrates this. Powell shows the tiny dents in the wood of the pulpit from years of banging a small tuning fork to get the congregation's attention. Grandmother Manson (Kitty Kirwan) is too frail to make the journey to the tiny, one-room church, so her family sits her outside the Manson home so she can hear their distant singing. Herd dogs are tied outside, and as the sermon begins to put everyone to sleep, a shadow from the building creeps along like those on a sundial. Perhaps most intriguing of all are the "mailboats," tiny wooden boxes containing letters that islanders apparently threw out with the tide; when found on the mainland the finder would use the enclosed change to buy a stamp and post the letter on their behalf.

The picture doesn't much look like a British film made in 1936. Nearly all of it was shot on location on the (still inhabited) island of Foula (pronounced "Foo-la"), although some tight close-ups appear to have been picked up back at the studio. Powell, cinematographers Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, and Ernest Palmer, and editors Derek N. Twist and Robert Walters use practically every cinematic device at their disposal in 1936, including a wide range of filters, striking hand-held compositions, double exposures (McGinnis haunted by the spirits of long-gone residents) and exciting, fast-paced montages.

Video & Audio

Milestone's transfer, made in cooperation with the British Film Institute, has gone back to the original nitrate camera negative, which is generally in good shape. There are a number of defects however that, one would think, would be easy enough to minimize for home video purposes. For instance, several times during the picture, perhaps most notably at the 39:57 mark, the image flutters suddenly as if the film has slipped out its gate. It would seem easy enough to reposition these misaligned frames for the purposes of this DVD release. Generally though, the image looks very good for its age. The mono sound is fine. No subtitles are offered.

Extras

Almost an essential companion to the picture is Powell's documentary Return to the Edge of the World, a 23-minute, 4:3 show that had book-ended a 1978 reissue of the original film. The bittersweet short has surviving cast and crew reuniting with islanders and their families. With everyone now in their seventies and eighties, Powell, John Laurie, and Grant Sutherland (who plays the burly catechist), among others remember now departed friends and how the experience of making the film changed their lives and had both a positive and negative impact on the island's residents. Another Powell short, An Airman's Letter to His Mother (1941), narrated by John Gielgud, doesn't seem to have much to do with anything here, but is a nice little extra nonetheless, and an effective piece of wartime propaganda on its own.

Additional extras include a commentary track with Daniel Day-Lewis (who reads from Powell's book, 200,000 Feet on Foula, Powell's widow, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and Ian Christie. Press kits for both the original release and Milestone reissue are accessible as a DVD-ROM feature.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. He is presently writing a new book on Japanese cinema for Taschen.