EDGE OF THE WORLD

Southland Times, Issue 23649, 26 October 1938, Page 8

EDGE OF THE WORLD

MAKING A FILM IN THE HEBRIDES HARDSHIP IN NORTHERN SEAS The following account of a film expedition to an island in the North Sea, reprinted from The New York Times, was written by Michael Powell, the producer of “The Edge of the World.” In June 1936, I took a company of actors, camera men and technicians — 24 in all—to the tiny and remote island of Foula, off the coast of the Shetlands in the North Sea to make a motion picture. I had thought of the idea for the film, raised money to make it, written die scenario and dialogue, discovered the island, managed the ex? pedition and later directed the film, acted a part in it and shot many of the stills. . Our party remained on the island five months. Twice we were marooned —the last time seriously—cut off from fresh meat, vegetables, bread and, worst of all, cigarettes. Though the wind blew a hundred miles an hour, we went on shooting, while the world outside heard of our danger with grave concern and sent wireless messages, airplanes and supply ships to our rescue. Finally, during a lull in an October gale, we were literally pulled off the island by main force. After five months of work the island had put its spell upon us and many of'us were sorry to leave. DEFEATED MEN I first became interested in producing “The Edge of the World” in 1930, when I read an item in a Sunday newspaper about the depopulation of .St Kilda, one of the islands of the Hebrides off the northwestern part of Scotland. I was painfully ignorant. I did not know where St. Kilda was, I was hazy about the Hebrides, but I did realize that a tremendously dramatic thing was taking place there, a great story. As I pictured this savage little group of islands, their great cliffs defying the Atlantic storms; as I realized they had at’ last conquered the men who had so long been their masters, I said to myself I would one day make a picture of that defeat. I chose the island of Foula to make my film because it provided the most dramatic setting. It was three miles long by two miles broad, surrounded and swept by the open sea. It contained less than a hundred inhabitants, but the island was held not by human tenure but by the sea, the icy cold gales and the sun. Rising sheer from the ocean it roughly resembled Africa in shape, standing alone for the whole coast of Scotland like a valiant champion against the ceaseless attack of the gray Atlantic waves.

My story was the story of a strong, hardy, independent people'being driven back from the outposts to live in towns. Exhaustion of the peat beds, bad harvests and high mortality, combined with the encroachment on the main livelihood of the islanders, deep-sea fishing by steam trawlers from the mainland, were slowly wearing down the inhabitants. My theme was embodied in the characters of a diehard father who refused to leave the island, while his son wanted to work and marry outside the island—and also of a far-seeing father, who knew that defeat was inevitable, while his own son is happily in love with an island girl and content to remain on the island, no matter what the hardships. IMPRESSIVE BACKGROUNDS This drama was enacted against the tremendously impressive natural beauty of Foula. I imagine, for instance, a .cliff whose summit towers up into the sky and juts out like a gigantic diving board so that it overhangs the sea for nearly a quarter of a mile sheer drop. When I looked over the cliff for the first time and saw the birds plummeting down until they were invisible and the sun shining on the white surges of the waves around the inaccessible black rocks, I knew the meaning of fear. We suffered many physical hardships. The weather was extremely variable, gales blew up suddenly and were followed by cold driving rains, and the sunlight was often weak. Players frequently had to be rescued with ropes from perilous positions while making the sea and cliff scenes. But we finally emerged with 200,000 feet of film, which had to be cut laboriously to 7000, the

length of the finished film. Every inch of film, sound and all, was shot under the actual conditions being pictured on the island.

One of next year’s Hardy family pictures will be “Andy Hardy at Vassar.” Vassar is the great American girls’ college. Richard Arlen turned down Columbia’s race-track film, “Thoroughbred,” because he did not want to co-star with a horse.