I Know Where I’m Going!

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) is widely regarded as one of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s most remarkable achievements and a cinematic tour de force. A simple moral tale set in the wild Scottish Highlands, it follows the journey of a headstrong young woman forced by her encounter with this magical, mythic world and its exotic customs to revise her materialistic priorities.

Pam Cook traces the film’s production history, exploring its place in Powell and Pressburger’s canon and showing how it wove into its narrative the memories and aspirations of an international group of film-makers working in 1940s Britain. Focusing on the extensive use of special effects, she reveals a technologically ambitious masterpiece. I Know Where I’m Going! is, for Cook, a multilayered work rich in allusions whose emotional power reaches beyond boundaries of time and place to touch profound human desires.

In her foreword to this new edition, Cook argues that I Know Where I’m Going!‘s ability to be both of its time and timeless is what ensures that it continues to captivate successive generations of viewers.