:41:09
(Christie) The movement of the film
is between segments of drama
:41:14
and segments that show us
the life of the islanders
:41:17
and this is another of those...
everyday life on Foula.
:41:21
We're seeing the harvesting.
:41:23
There's the turning of the seasons
:41:25
because it has underlying
seasonal structure.
:41:28
And seasons are very important
on the island,
:41:31
not only the brief growing season,
:41:33
but then, of course, the onset
of the winter and the storms
:41:36
and the heavy seas, which make
communication impossible.
:41:39
So these two dimensions
are woven together.
:41:41
This is the peat cutting,
:41:44
which is another feature of spring.
:41:47
Although Powell
was often quite dismissive
:41:51
of documentary film making,
:41:54
this wasn't because he undervalued
the documentary aspect of film.
:41:58
Not at all.
:41:59
I think what he objected to
:42:01
was the way documentary
was being put on a pedestal,
:42:04
especially in Britain in the 1930s.
:42:07
It was as if the rest
of film making didn't matter,
:42:10
it was only commercial,
only storytelling.
:42:13
The documentaries of John Grierson
and the young film makers around him
:42:18
were being put forward as
Britain's only truly creative cinema.
:42:22
Obviously, that would've been
red rag to a bull
:42:25
as far as Powell was concerned.
:42:27
And in fact, I think we can see
Edge Of The World
:42:30
as belonging to a real movement
that was sweeping the world.
:42:34
It was a movement to document
:42:36
the lives of communities
that were disintegrating
:42:40
and that would no longer exist.
:42:42
You can see it happening in France,
:42:44
in Holland, where
Joris Yvens was working,
:42:47
and Yvens then went to America
and made films about rural America.
:42:51
And Pare Lorentz made
two extraordinary films
:42:55
just around this time, in America,
:42:57
The Plough That Broke The Plains
and The River,