I Know Where I’m Going!

1945, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, UK, 91 min.

Selected and introduced by critic Nancy Franklin.

In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s stunningly photographed comedy, romance flourishes in an unlikely place—the bleak and moody Scottish Hebrides. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong young woman who travels to these remote isles to marry a rich lord. Stranded by stormy weather, she meets a handsome naval officer (Roger Livesey) who threatens to thwart her carefully laid-out life plans.

Why did you select I Know Where I’m Going! for the Cabaret Cinema: Soundtrack series?

“I first saw I Know Where I’m Going!—or IKWIG, as its fans call it—in 1988, and it pierced me my heart. Part of the movie’s power over me was due to the story, and part of it was due to the combination of landscape and soundscape—the elemental black-and-white images of Scotland and the primal power of the folk songs used in the soundtrack.” —Nancy Franklin

About Cabaret Cinema: Soundtrack

You can probably name the best movie you’ve seen, but what about the best movie you’ve heard? It might be your favorite because of its sound effects, sound engineering, score, or another element of the audio experience. Watch—and hear—a series of films that caught the ear of notable New Yorkers.

About the introducer

Nancy Franklin worked at The New Yorker for 33 years, starting in the typing pool, doing time as a fact-checker and a nonfiction editor, and ending up as the magazine’s television critic. Since then she has spent a chunk of time in Scotland—a place she fell in love with after seeing I Know Where I’m Going!—and a few years ago she bought a 588-square-foot cabin in upstate New York that she’s named The House of Chores. There she delights in the lacustrine sights and sounds of her surroundings during the rare intervals when leaf blowers aren’t ruining everything. When she’s not at her cabin, she lives in Manhattan, where it’s quiet.