I Know Where I’m Going!

Among the jewels in the crown of post-war British cinema are the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger whose rhapsodic melodramas The Red Shoes and Black Narcissisus were rediscovered by cinephiles in the 1970s, in large part due to their hallucinatory use of saturated color. Last screened at LACMA in the 1977 Powell-Pressburger retrospective, this ironically titled, early black and white masterpiece stars brilliant stage actress Wendy Hiller (in one of her rare screen performances) as sophisticated career gal Joan Webster who loses her way, her resolve, and her heart while stranded by a storm en route to the Isle of Kiloran where she is to marry “the richest man in the England.” The journey, the British landscape, and the afterlife figure prominently in the Powell-Pressburger oeuvre but the misty Scottish coastline, with its gothic castles and ancient legends, provides a perfect setting for this romantic tale that is permeated with a sense of the supernatural. “Despite its wartime setting, I Know Where I'm Going! is a not a period piece: it is a modern folktale, complete with hero, maiden, a curse, and a difficult trial that pits them against death. By daring to mix a love story with fantasy elements, the film argues for intuition and destiny rather than planning and strategy, and for not being too certain of anything.”—Bright Lights Film Journal.
Bing Theater | Included in double-bill, $5 admission for this film only | Tickets: 323 857-6010 or purchase online.