‘Makes my heart beat faster’: why I Know Where I’m Going! is my feelgood movie

In the first of a new series in which writers explain their favourite mood-lifting watch, an ode to a charming 40s romance

In search of solace, I always turn to a film that will take me away from myself. I Know Where I’m Going! is, as you could absolutely guess if you didn’t know, a film about a journey. In this film from 1945, Joan (Wendy Hiller) a modern young woman with grand ideas, sets off by the sleeper train from Manchester to Scotland. Her stated destination is a Hebridean island where she plans to marry her wealthy industrialist fiance. But fate has other ideas in this magical film from the mercurial duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The train journey is off-track from the start, tilted by Joan’s absurd bridal dreams, complete with Scottish hills draped in tartan, and the Archers’ whimsical camera trickery, which transforms a top hat into a smokestack. You just know that it’s curtains for Joan’s meticulous typewritten itinerary. In fact, danger awaits her in two forms: lethal waters, and true love. First, Joan’s progress is thwarted by bad weather: fog then high winds. During her enforced delay in Tobermory she meets the locals. There’s Catriona (Pamela Brown), a wonderfully wild woman who lives a full life without any of the material things that Joan holds far too dear. And mostly there’s Torquil (Roger Livesey), a magnetic local man on leave from the Royal Navy. This is what really puts Joan, and her plans, in peril. But why wouldn’t she want to be blown off course by such a man? A man who knows this magnificent scenery so well, and who so charmingly translates the Gaelic lyrics at a ceilidh: “You’re the maid for me.”

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‘Makes my heart beat faster’: why I Know Where I’m Going! is my feelgood movie

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