Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s imaginative romance is so good, it justifies a lifetime spent seeking out obscure movies. When bad weather stalls a headstrong young woman’s journey to be wed one island short of her goal, she is compelled to reassess everything she wants for her life. Wendy Hiller’s determination to make the smart choice is complicated by an ideally attractive man she meets en route. The film also brings a playful supernatural curse to bear on the proceedings. As an escape to a ‘civilized’ time and place, IKWIG! is absorbing, enchanting, and grandly positive about life. It’s also been beautifully remastered, from a 4K scan.

I Know Where I’m Going!
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 94
1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 9, 2025 / 39.95
Starring: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Pamela Brown, Finlay Currie, Catherine Lacey, Petula Clark.
Cinematography: Erwin Hillier
Art Director: Afred Junge
Film Editor: John Seabourne, Sr.
Visual Effects: W. Percy Day, Charles Staffell
Music Composer: Allan Gray
Screenplay Written, Produced, and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

The films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were a big boost back in the early days of DVD Savant. Reader response to the films of The Archers, Sergio Leone, and titles like  Invaders from Mars and  Until the End of the World gave DVD Savant its first burst of popularity. We made a lot of good connections over the first Criterion DVD of P&P’s superlative  I Know Where I’m Going!, a movie that had a secret cult among fans not normally given to movie fandom. We first caught the show around 1991 on a late night PBS airing, in a somewhat mangled print. Criterion’s early laserdisc and subsequent DVD weren’t a terrific improvement, but the quality didn’t stop us from proselytizing for the movie and buying copies for friends. Fans of The Archers are different than those for Spaghetti Westerns or Italian Giallos — the people that corresponded over IKWIG! were the kind that bake pies and write personal letters in longhand.

Criterion has had the inside track for most everything Powell & Pressburger- related, so we’ve enjoyed roughly 25 years of new and improved releases: DVDs, HD Blu-rays, and finally (for now) a few choice 4K disc releases. I Know Where I’m Going! never made the grade for an update even to HD, which had us worrying that decent printing masters for the show might have disappeared into a Scottish maelstrom. But judging by the eye-popping new 4K, they do exist and are in great shape.

Although filmed in B&W, I Know Where I’m Going! seems just as big an accomplishment as The Archers’  The Red Shoes. It is their most endearingly sentimental feature. Practically a Bed and Breakfast movie, it overflows with thoughtful meditations on the worth of personal goals. You too will be seduced by Scottish folk music, strange little songs, and cartoon-like visual accents that suggest literary ‘Magical Realism.’

Several Powell and Pressburger films achieve a universal appeal despite focusing on specific English issues. Edging away from the expected jingoistic themes in wartime, the filmmakers instead found positive ways to express the values that made England worth fighting for. P&P’s earlier  A Canterbury Tale confronted three young wartime volunteers with the majesty of their precious national heritage. In IKWIG! the war is apparently nearly won, and stays in the background. The viewer is instead asked to ponder what direction the country should take after the victory. Its ambitious, spirited, and sometimes wrong-headed heroine is convinced that she’s on the right path … at least at first.

Leading lady Wendy Hiller was a top English talent in her prime. She was a favorite of George Bernard Shaw, with accomplished performances in Pygmalion and  Major Barbara. Do many Americans still know of Dame Wendy Hiller?  The point of reference for younger viewers is likely her small part in David Lynch’s  The Elephant Man.

The show opens with a swing-music prologue that doubles as a main credit sequence. Ambitious and headstrong since childhood, young Englishwoman Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) journeys by train to the Northern Isles of Scotland. Her destination is her own wedding, to a stuffy millionaire industrialist twice her age. Joan claims that romance is but a trifling matter; she sees nothing troubling in the prestige and class that the marriage will make hers. But bad weather delays the last leg of Joan’s long trip by land and sea, and finally maroons her in a tiny coastal village with only one telephone. Worse, she’s exposed to temptation in the form of a Royal Navy officer on leave, Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey).  Also stranded by the storm, Torquil is immediately attracted to Joan. She resists mightily, but Torquil, the locals and the vibrant landscape itself tempt her with a vision of an alternate future. She begins to reassess a set of values she had previously discounted. Meanwhile, her wedding dress hangs in its cellophane bag. If she can’t get to that gale-tossed island, all of her proud plans may crumble.

25 years ago most Powell & Pressburger films were fairly obscure, at least in the U.S.. The cult has since expanded enough to include the minority of movie lovers still interested in older movies. I Know Where I’m Going! is so precious that reviewers’ principles encourage us to keep our coverage brief, to hint at its treasures rather than spoil the experience of seeing it fresh. If you’re married or have a girlfriend or boyfriend, this show cannot be recommended more highly.

Michael Powell’s fast-paced journey northward conjures amusingly creative visual magic, like a top hat that chugs smoke like a railroad engine. In a dream sequence, Joan Webster literally marries a factory dynamo, while her train traverses a Scottish landscape covered with tartan patterns. The fantasy makes Joan’s frustration seem all the more intolerable when her progress is suddenly halted. She then finds herself seduced by an amazing, isolated place, as much as by the attentions of the handsome and charming Torquil McNeil. Soaked in fog and sea spray, the locale abounds with petty superstitions, grand myths and proud traditions. Joan cannot help but be deeply affected. Life out there has a flavor unlike anything she’s known back in London.

Miss Webster’s impatience is countered by the unspoken communication between Torquil and the luminous Catriona Potts, played by Pamela Brown.  →  Stomping into her house with a brace of hunting dogs, Catriona comes on like a primal force of nature. Her dark eyes comment silently on everything she witnesses.

When Joan bribes a needy local boy into taking a risky boat trip against the counsel of harbormaster Ruairidh Mor (Finlay Currie), the film’s themes come together in a literal oceanic whirlpool, straight out of Norse legend. Joan’s selfishness affects a young local couple, Kenny and Bridie (Murdo Morrison and Margot Fitzsimmons). Our disapproval of Joan’s willingness to risk lives goes against the norms of escapist movie romances: We’re accustomed to entertainment that gives people in love the right to make their own rules.  Joan’s crisis elevates I Know Where I’m Going! high above what passes for light romance at the movies, in 1945 or in 2025.

Joan’s dilemma also relates to England as a whole. IKWIG! offers a nudge to a nation emerging from the Second World War, to consider a socially kinder, more equitable future. England seems so civilized in movies that Americans forget about its fundamental class distinctions. The rich industrialist that Joan can’t wait to marry has presumably profited mightily from WW2 while sitting out all the unpleasantness on a leased island retreat. Because of the war, even the local Scottish landowners can’t make ends meet. Torquil waits tables; he and Catriona hunt rabbits to put meat on the table. Young couples like Kenny and Bridie have few options. Their marriage plans are postponed indefinitely. To gain a place in the local economy, they may have to wait until someone dies.

Joan Webster is a good person, but her rush to throw herself into a future of elite luxury seems fundamentally wrong. Never ones to make blunt social statements, Powell and Pressburger instead offer a vision of a national strength of character. By comparison, the grousing that ‘kitchen-sink’ films would offer a decade later seem less than useful. The movie asks if England should marry the aloof upper class or embrace her people, and provides a compelling answer.

On the personal level, a good woman with understandable intentions re-orders her wants and priorities in just a couple of days. IKWIG! is Powell and Pressburger at their creative peak. It feels healthy, optimistic like a breath of fresh air.

We’ve thought the Criterion Collection’s I Know Where I’m Going! to be one of the company’s most-awaited titles for a remaster in 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray. As much as we loved the 2001 DVD, we’re not sorry to see it go. Criterion sourced the new remaster from the original nitrate negatives safeguarded at the BFI. A new 4K digital restoration was undertaken by the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation, and supervised by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker Powell.

The resulting image and audio are just what we’ve hoped for. The new master captures the texture and detail of all those windy Scottish exteriors. We marvel at the ocean’s cooperation with the Archers’ storyline. Those waves are rough, and the actors standing in the driving rain look as though they really need their raincoats.

It is a pleasant experience to see IKWIG! in its new condition — photographically restored, sharp and stable, without film damage. The same goes for the restored monaural audio track. The beautiful title tune sung by Boyd Steven is distorted no more.

The sharp images showcase the filmmakers’ skill with camera trickery. The whirlpool sequence is a big success, despite our knowing that it’s all performed before rear projections and impressive miniatures and mattes. The howing wind and fast cutting communicate the jeopardy of a small boat ‘caught in the gyre.’ The crisp image also gives us a better look at Powell and cameraman Erwin Hillier’s flawless substitution of an actor on location. Wendy Hiller went to Scotland but Roger Livesey apparently could not; the match for his stand-in is excellent. Powell manages the substitution so well that we’d never suspect it, were we not tipped off.

The video extras retained from the original DVD are on the Blu-ray only. Mark Cousins’ 1994 making-of documentary establishes a leisurely pace as it charts New York writer Nancy Franklin’s journey to the film’s locations. She discovers that the main filming sites are unchanged, including the phone booth bizarrely mis-located adjacent to a noisy waterfall. Locals that helped with the filming are interviewed, as is the legendary Petula Clark, who played a precocious girl in one scene.

From Ms. Franklin also comes an annotated snapshot collection of her journey. Michael Powell’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker Powell lends her voice to additional home movies and commentaries. The only item not included from the old DVD are some scene excerpts from Michael Powell’s early docu-feature,  The Edge of the World, which also takes place on a remote Scottish island.

The one new item is a fine introductory essay by Imogen Sara Smith, on a folding paper insert.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I Know Where I’m Going!
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Ian Christie
Introduction by Martin Scorsese
Restoration demonstration with commentary by Schoonmaker Powell
Behind-the-scenes stills with commentary by Schoonmaker Powell
Home movies of a Scottish expedition by Michael Powell, narrated by Schoonmaker Powell
1994 documentary I Know Where I’m Going! — Revisited by Mark Cousins
Location photo-essay by Nancy Franklin
Folded insert with a new essay by Imogen Sara Smith.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: December 6, 2025
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