Classic film buffs know where they’re going...
FILM fanatics gathered on Mull last weekend to celebrate the 70th anniversary of a romantic movie which was filmed on the island.
I Know Where I’m Going was released in 1945 and follows the life of Joan Webster, an English woman who travels from her Manchester home to marry a wealthy industrialist on the fictitious Isle of Kiloran.
She meets a naval officer on Mull during her travels and eventually falls in love with him, realising money isn’t everything.
Filming on Mull included scenes at Carsaig Bay, Moy Castle, Duart Castle, Torosay Castle, the Western Isles Hotel and the Gulf of Corryvreckan.
The gathering was organised by Professor Robert Beveridge, formerly of Napier University in Edinburgh but now working at Sardinia’s main university.
Around 30 people gathered at the Western Isles Hotel in Tobermory from all over Britain, as well as from France, Germany, the USA and Australia, with several sequences of the film having been shot there. The commemoration began on Friday with the traditional gin and Dubonnet cocktail made famous by the film – apparently a favourite drink of HM The Queen.
After a screening of the classic film, Professor Charles Barr, a specialist in the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from the University of East Anglia, set the film in its context as one of Britain’s greatest films. Professor Barr had been responsible for arranging the honorary degree awarded to Mr Powell by his university.
I Know Where I’m Going was entirely shot on location in Mull and in the Denham Studios. Because of a prior commitment on the stage in London, its leading actor, Roger Livesey, who played the Laird of Kiloran, never set foot on Mull. His scenes were filmed in the Denham Studios, with some shot on Mull with the help of a double.
On Saturday, the party drove to key locations, such as Moy Castle at Lochbuie, Carsaig House, and the famous telephone box and pier, followed by tea and scones at Inniemore Lodge with Lorna and Cleodi Macdonald.
On Sunday, Steve Crook, director of the Powell and Pressburger Appreciation Society, told the story of how he had recently organised a blue plaque in London outside the former offices of the famous director and screenwriter, and their company The Archers.
Nicolas Maclean shed light on some of the mysteries of the film and put its theme into an historical context, while Florence McBride and Professor Michael McBride of Yale University showed a film Ms McBride had made of the two earlier commemorations on Mull, in 2005 and 2010.
Afterwards, Sir Lachlan Maclean of Duart and Morvern welcomed the party to Duart Castle, called ‘Sorne Castle’ in the film, and made famous by one of Petula Clark’s early performances.
It was a sign of the film’s importance that the film writer Jeremy Arnold had travelled especially from Hollywood to take part in the commemoration, as had Catriona Maclaine from Tasmania, whose name is the same as that of one of the leading ladies in the film, acted by Pamela Brown, who plays a local woman used to living off the land during the war, including skinning rabbits.
Her line ‘money isn’t everything’ is one of the key messages of the film, which contrasts Manchester materialism and ambition with romance and traditional Highland life on Mull.
A bonus for the film buffs was meeting Jimmy Robb at Lochbuie House, who regaled everyone with stories of the shooting of the film when he was a boy.