The Edge of the World
(Movies) WhenJuly 18, 2018 <m>(Wednesday)m>WhereAuditorium at Northeastern Illinois UniversityBuilding E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60625 (US)
Website: http://www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org/calendar/current-season/
Event Details
Wednesday, July 18 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Directed by Michael Powell / 1937
"When the Roman fleet first sailed round Britain they saw from the Orkneys a distant island, like a blue haze across a hundred miles of sea. They called it -ULTIMA THULE, The Edge of the World." After apprenticing for Rex Ingram in the silent era, Michael Powell graduated to directing in the 1930s, turning out disposable "quota quickies," so named because English law demanded a minimum annual number of domestic productions that were effectively audience-proof. The Edge of the World was Powell's first opportunity to make a film of his choosing, a lovely and mystical film that fuses Scottish folklore, sternly tactile landscapes, and a low-key romance between Belle Chrystall and Niall MacGinnis. Set and shot on the isle of Foula, an isolated land grown barren, The Edge of the World is the kind of film where political disputes about evacuating to the mainland are settled by a race up the cliffside - a touch that would play like extravagant whimsy if not for the life-or-death stakes. As Roger Ebert observed, "The cliff-climbing scenes are especially dramatic, and, watching them, I realized that in most climbing scenes the climbers seem heroic. Here they seem tiny and endangered. It is the cliff that seems heroic, and that is probably the right way around." (KW)
74 min / Rock Productions / 35mm from Milestone Films
Short: "An Airman's Letter to His Mother" (Michael Powell, 1941) - 5 min - 35mm