going off track
by Douglas
Messerli
Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger (screenwriters and directors) I Know Where I'm Going!
/ 1945
Born with the belief that she always knows
where she is going, Joan, the daughter of a banker, seems almost destined in
her path to marry into wealth and live happily forever. One of her lightest
appearances in the film takes place in a swank restaurant, to where she has
invited her father, whom she keeps addressing as “darling.” She has asked him
to bring the rest of the money in her saving account, an act with which “darling”
(George Carney) disapproves of as well as the chic restaurant to which she has
taken him.
As many critics have pointed out, what began
as a rather charming, spoiled, and determined girl—the stock of many a romantic
comedy—has become a clearly venal and plotting gold-digger figure, a quite
unlikeable character which colors Joan Webster throughout the rest of the film,
who is redeemed only by Hiller’s likeableness and her meeting on upon her
arrival on the island of Mull
Writing in The Criterion
Contraption, Michael Dessem summarizes our new perceptions of
Joan and Hiller: “Hiller needs all the charm she can muster,
because her character is pretty dreadful, at least at the start. And here's
where we move away from the classic romantic comedy template: the ‘unstoppable
force’ characters are usually on the side of the angels: they're the ones that
are absolutely sure that love will conquer all. It's the other character who's
allowed to have all the wrong goals. Usually those goals are understandable and
innocuous, no matter how misguided….”
At the large port house she meets not
only the young Navy officer Torquil MacNeil, but other local eccentrics as
well. In Rough-cut Williams summarizes the scene: “Joan’s suspended
existence continues when a meteorological hindrance of another kind is
encountered: a gale warning is issued, ‘blowing from every point of the compass
at once’ and chopping up the sea to an untraversable degree. The lengthening of
the delay allows Joan to see more of Mull and its people; eclectic inhabitants
include a falconer who has been training a golden eagle for seven months, and a
childhood friend of Torquil’s who breeds Irish wolfhounds and hunts wild
animals for food to survive austerity conditions. Progressively, the residents’
‘old-fashioned’ collectivist values begin to undermine her closely held
individualism and ambitions. The private gives way to the public: Joan’s
request to travel by car to the town of Tobermory, from which she will contact
Robert, is overridden by Torquil’s insistence that there is no need; they can
take the bus.”
On the way, Torquil and Joan pass by a
small castle, a curse cast upon it for the centuries daring the relatives of
the Laird of Kiloran not to enter, a figure who Torquil finally admits he is.
As the current Laird, Torquil is too poor to live on his island, which is why
he has temporarily rented it to the wealthy Bellinger.
Joan makes a call to Bellinger and is
told by her finance to stay with the Robinson’s, while Torquil rents them two
rooms in the local hotel. But the gale winds continue also the next day, continuing
to frustrate Joan, determined to get to Kiloran and her marriage.
She visits the upperclass Robinson’s who are
boorish and completely disinterested in the local culture, putting down the
locals as brutes. She is forced to join Mrs. Robinson and a luncheon party that
represents the very opposite of the vibrant people she has already met. Joan
asks, “People around here are quite poor, I take it?,” while a local answers “Not
poor. They just don’t have any money.” The major activity of the Robinson’s and
their kind is bridge.
Fortunately, Torquil pulls her away from
what she herself perceives, despite her own upper-class airs, a shallow and
empty world. Once more, the critic Alex Williams nicely summarizes the shift in
Joan’s personality.
“Despite her best efforts, Joan finds
herself attracted to the handsome naval officer, whose intense gaze seems,
disarmingly, to see right through her. Equally, Torquil’s enchantment with her
seemingly unflappable determination fans the embers of a growing physical and
romantic desire, which reaches fever pitch at a cèilidh—an informal yet
traditional gathering for singing, dancing, food, and drink.”
The several days of the gale leave Joan
in a wave of desire and confusion, which completely torture anyone like her who
imagines they can more in a direct route through life. Not only is Joan utterly
confused about her growing attraction to Torquil, but as some critics have
argued is confused now by other sexual feelings.
After Joan bribes a young boy Kenny with
20 pounds to take her across during the storm, Torquil attempts to halt the
voyage, without success. But his friend, Catriona (Pamela Brown) finally wises
him up that she is not simply anxious to meet with Bellinger, but is trying to
escape the Navy Officer. Quickly running after, Torquil takes over the perilous
voyage from Kenny.
Critic Jo Gabriel, writing in The Last Drive In points
us in a possible other direction.
“One
of the analyses of the picture is that Joan has suppressed desires for women;
though she believes she’s on the right path in her life, she, in fact, has not
been seeking “heterosexual domesticity.” Joan’s plans are altered when she
meets Torquil and Catriona, who is wild in spirit. Torquil refers to her as a
‘queer girl.’ There is a scene where Joan almost dies while getting through the
storm, and Catriona takes her to her bedroom. “There’s a fire in my room, and
that’s where you’ll sleep.” “We are left with the impression that the two women
might have slept together. When morning comes, Joan transforms into an energy
of being butch and less tense, as if she has been freed from oppression. It
could be read as the uninhibited Catriona has liberated Joan. Joan falls in
love with Torquil as the film must center on heterosexuality in the end, but
before she goes off with Torquil, she leaves Catriona with this sentiment: ‘Goodbye
Catriona. Thank you for everything.’”
I’m not certain I would take Joan’s multiple
sexual confusions that far, but in this deep work, it is certainly possible.
Of course, this is a heterosexual love
story, and at the end, each lover asks one another for a memory, in Torquil’s
case, the three guest pipers which showed up to the cèilidh. She asks him for a
kiss, and then walks off in the direction of the boat which will take her to
Kiloran and Bellinger. But she soon returns with the three pipers, the two
lovers coming together in a relationship that was previously off the charts.
Los
Angeles, June 6, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(June 2025).
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