The Edge of the World

Released for the first time on Blu-ray, The Edge of the World was Michael Powell's first major feature. Filmed in 1937 on the Shetland island of Foula and using a mix of professional actors and locals, it tells a story which deliberately echoes that of the evacuation of St Kilda which had occurred only seven years before. Whilst this earnest movie lacks the sparkle and bite of the director's later work, its commitment to filming a real community in their locale places it in a realist tradition that stretches from Robert Flaherty to Satyajit Ray. The melodramatic story and occasionally awkward technique are quickly forgotten in moments when the camera gives us an almost magical access to lives and a landscape we could never otherwise know. The rugged island, with its sheer cliffs, phlegmatic inhabitants, and cramped dwellings hunkered down against the ever present wind, seems at times more strange and exotic than the farthest reaches of the earth. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]