1:02:00
(Dialogue) I've got you both safe
now, and you're not going back.
1:02:14
(Christie) The baby's life is saved
1:02:16
but the island's life is not.
1:02:19
And at this point
the film rejoins the real-life story
1:02:23
which first inspired Michael Powell:
1:02:26
The evacuation of St Kilda.
1:02:28
This is the end
of the island community.
1:02:30
From this point onwards,
they're going to become mainlanders.
1:02:35
It's a very poignant moment,
1:02:37
the moment which originally inspired
Powell to think of making this film.
1:02:43
And he shoots it with
a kind of statuesque nobility
1:02:46
which is as powerful as anything
1:02:48
in the great European cinemas
of the previous decade.
1:02:53
We think of Russian cinema,
French cinema in the late '20s,
1:02:57
which had dealt with
some of these themes.
1:02:59
Here, at last, British cinema
has its own epic of the land.
1:03:05
(Schoonmaker-Powell)
In the superimposition sequence,
1:03:08
they had to freeze
the shot of John Laurie
1:03:12
in order to get enough footage
1:03:15
so that they could put
the extended montage
1:03:18
of the images of the island over it.
1:03:21
It's kind of the thing probably
only a film maker would notice,
1:03:25
but again, Michael Powell sells it,
1:03:28
he dares you to even notice it,
actually.
1:03:39
(Christie) What we see
during the evacuation scene
1:03:42
is in fact the lifeline
that made the filming possible:
1:03:46
An old steamer called the Vedra,
which was captained by Vernon Sewell,
1:03:52
one of the staunch team
that Powell assembled around him,
1:03:56
all as committed as he was to making
this adventure result in a film.