The Edge of the World (1937)

[julian_craster]

A report from the location of one of my favourite films......The edge of the world (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)







Living at the edge of the world



Welcome to Foula, Britain's most remote

inhabited island, where the wind blows at gale force most of the time and

there are no shops or pubs

Jon Henley



The Guardian, Thursday February 21 2008





Twenty miles or so off the west coast of Shetland is an island. It

measures three and a half miles long by two and a half miles wide and

consists, to the west and north, of five mighty hills that rise at their

peak to more than 1,300ft and end, abruptly, in the highest cliffs in the

country: lob a pebble off the top and it will hit the waves below 11 seconds

later. To the south and east there is a bleak lowland strip of rock, bog,

peat banks and coarse, wind-flattened brown grass. When the Atlantic storms

blow, which at this time of year is almost all the time, it is almost

unbelievably windy here; the kind of wind that makes your eyes water as you

lean into it and lifts you half off your feet when you turn your back. The

sky, consequently, is filled with startled-looking seabirds, many of them

flying backwards.



There are reasonable, although not conclusive grounds for supposing that

this could be the place the ancients called Ultima Thule, the edge of the

known world. It lies on the same latitude as St Petersburg in Russia, and

Anchorage in Alaska, and is roughly as far from Aberdeen as it is from

Bergen in Norway. London, mercifully, is closer than Reykjavik. But not by

much.



This place is called Foula, and it is Britain's most remote inhabited

island.



To get here, you can either catch a small twice-weekly ferry, which in

winter is more often than not stuck in what might generously - if not very

truthfully - be termed Foula's harbour, or take a tiny eight-seat twin-prop

Islander aeroplane that flies whenever the prevailing force eight is kind

enough to blast straight up or down, as opposed to across, the homemade

landing strip. This does not happen every day.



Astonishingly, people live here. It's hard to say exactly how many because

they come and go a bit, but at the moment it is 21, 22 or 24, depending on

whether you count Magnie Holbourn and his girlfriend, who have been away but

appear to have come back, and the baby born four months ago to Amy Ratter

and her partner, Wullie. What is more, they profess surprise at the notion

that their existence might in any way be considered unusual.



"As far as we're concerned, you're the weird ones," says Marion Taylor, by

way of a kindly welcome. "Everyone has to have a roof over their heads and

ours is here, that's all. We're just getting on with our lives. We don't

really see what there is to get worked up about."



What there is to get worked up about, I reckon, is that if you took 100

people at random and deposited them somewhere like Foula, 98 would probably

go mad (I'm not making that up; a Shetland GP thinks so too). Foula is life

on the edge. The island has neither pub nor shop, apart from a post office

the size of a front porch, which is what it probably once was. Its

inhabitants have, however, been able to communicate with the outside world

by telephone since the late 1960s, and enjoyed the amenities of running

water and a communal electricity supply since the mid-1980s (although at the

moment, what with the ferry being stormbound for the past three weeks, the

generator is running low on diesel and the power goes off every night at

12.)



On Foula, Christmas falls on January 6 and New Year on January 13, the

island having refused to abandon the Julian calendar, which the rest of the

kingdom did more than 250 years ago. Nearby Fair Isle, which boasts a

population nearly three times Foula's, may dispute the title of most remote

inhabited island (it is further from the Shetland mainland, apparently, but

closer to Orkney), but I can assure you that in early February, in a

southerly gale-to-severe-gale veering west and, so help me, strengthening

later, Foula feels just about as far from anywhere as it possible to get in

this country without hitting, say, the Greenland ice cap.



For a start, your groceries come in by plane. Greeting the fragile little

Islander as it bounces improbably down from the heavens - "So here's the

safety spiel," the Botswana-born pilot had said as we took off from Dingwall

airstrip, near Lerwick, into a steadily stiffening breeze. "This'll take 15

minutes, your life vest is under your seat, and if it all goes pear-shaped

you get out the way you came in" - is a huddled knot of people wrapped in

thermals and waterproofs, all waiting for their provisions. Apart from me,

Quentin the pilot and a bearded Romanian - who is married to the island

nurse and spent most of the crossing chortling to himself at the idea that I

seriously expected to be able to get off the island again in three days'

time - the plane was mostly full of potatoes and tinned tomatoes.



Not everyone buys in, though. In Foula's southernmost settlement of

Hametoun, 32-year-old Amy Ratter, who is related to the Holbourn family who

have owned Foula for the past century or so, grows half a dozen different

types of vegetable and rears 28 Shetland ewes, two rams, three lambs, 11

pigs, a dog and a Shetland pony called Piper. Like every child raised on the

island, she left to go to boarding school in Lerwick when she was 11; like

almost all, she didn't return.



"I got a job, bought a house down south, forgot all about it," she says,

heaving bags of hay into Piper's cart, which is made from two motorbike

wheels, an old bed frame and the upturned fibreglass roof of a Landrover.

"But then one autumn I came back to see my mother for the first time in

about six years, and I just thought, what on earth am I doing over there,

working for someone else? What am I doing living anywhere else but here?"



So Amy came back, moved into her grandfather's old cottage, and started by

rebuilding a few fallen stone walls and dykes and fencing in her

apportionment of hill grazing. Now she puts in 21 hours a week for the water

board, pumping the island's supply early each morning, she is a part-time

member of the fire brigade and spends the bulk of her long days working four

crofts. It is harder work than most of us will ever know, but Amy is quite

clear why she does it.



"Nothing else in this life is going to make you happy but hard work," she

says firmly. "Not sitting in an office, not going down the pub, not buying

mountains of rubbish from shops; all that'll ever do is break and make you

unhappy. Sitting down at the end of the day knowing you've done what needs

to be done for your animals, done the best you possibly can by all that's

yours; worked hard on your land for you and your family: that's what makes

you happy."



That said, Amy did, in fact, meet her partner in the pub, on the mainland.

Wullie was a slaughterman from Glasgow up in Shetland on a contract, and

once they had got acquainted he came across with her to Foula to show her

how to kill and slice up a pig. That was 17 months ago and he hasn't left

yet; their son Alex was born last autumn on Mainland, the big island.

"Anyone who worries about bringing up a baby here is overestimating the

risks," says Amy breezily, feeding the lad in the living room. "This is a

fantastic place for a child. In an emergency, the helicopter can almost

always come in. And if that's not fast enough, there was most probably

nothing anyone could have done anyway." Above her head swing numerous pieces

of mutton, drying over the range.



Wullie, keen to be off to feed one neighbour's dog (she is off the island

for a couple of weeks) and fix another's roof (part of it blew off in last

week's storm), doesn't have much time to chat. "You miss your friends and

your family at first, of course you do," he says. "But the compensations are

. . . " He waves a hand, inadequately. "Enormous. I just love it here. Can't

imagine myself anywhere else."



Later, halfway up the side of Hamnafeld, one of the two adjoining hills that

sweep majestically up behind Amy's home, the wind unexpectedly, magically,

drops. The sun is out. The sky is wide, and very blue. Foula looks - there

is no other word - beautiful. A long way below, a plume of peat smoke climbs

into the still air from Edith's croft, where Wullie and his neighbour,

65-year-old Eric Isbister, of whom it used to be said that he had left Foula

just two times in his life, "one of them to be born", are up mending that

roof.



Everyone I see this afternoon (which is three people) warns me, "You don't

get many days like this." And, "Calm before the storm."



Everyone does not, sadly, include Edith, who at 90 years of age has plenty

of stories but is not allowed to talk to anyone who has not been on the

island for at least four days, for fear they might be incubating something

and she catches it. Nor, I am warned, will Edith's nearest neighbour, an

emeritus professor of classics in a handsome bungalow across the road, be up

for a chat. "People have reasons for being on a rock in the middle of the

Atlantic," says Amy, "and they don't necessarily want to talk about them to

journalists."



Others, though, prove willing enough to address the question that brought me

to Foula, which is, basically: why does one choose to make one's life on the

edge of the known world? Once, of course, there were lots more people who

did: double the present total when Amy was a child, four or five times as

many when Edith was little. The fact that anyone is still here at all is

remarkable: since the turn of the last century, officialdom has been asking

pointed questions about the viability of a place whose population peaked in

1881 at 267, when there were 33 children enrolled at the school (there are

currently two).



Twenty years later, the community was being described as destitute, and in

1927 an authoritative Shetland columnist observed that the island ran the

risk of evacuation - a fate that famously befell St Kilda a few years

later - in the face of "a rapidly dwindling population decimated by

influenza and smallpox" whose "young men and women are all emigrating".



In the 50s, a report advised that essential services such as the school,

post office and nurse would be difficult to justify if Foula's population

fell below 30. While in an age of instant communications and reliable

transport there is perhaps no longer a need for a critical mass of

able-bodied inhabitants to fulfil the basic functions, keeping Foula's

community going - and in work - undoubtedly requires an effort of political

will; for the time being, despite frequent complaints at the expense, that

will appears to be there.



According to the extraordinarily tall Jim Gear, the last man to be be born

on Foula and who is now nearing retirement after a varied career that has

seen him hold down - often simultaneously - the jobs of lobster fisherman,

crofter, mailboat skipper, fireman, building contractor, road surfacer, pony

breeder and county councillor, the island's low current head count is

nothing new; Foula's population has always ebbed and flowed like the

Atlantic tides that swirl around it. "It depends on the health of our

economy, and on people's confidence in it," he says. "It's a simple

equation."



When, as recently as 1990, Foula's new concrete jetty was opened with much

pomp and Shetland county council promised a big, fast ferry that would carry

more cargo and halve the crossing time to the mainland to little over an

hour, the island's population surged to nearly 50. The bubble burst, sadly,

when the longed-for new mailboat comprehensively flunked its sea trials.



For long centuries, despite the obvious lack of anything any sane person

would dare call a harbour or even a sheltered anchorage (even today, the

present ferry, the New Advance, has to be winched out of the threatening

water when not in use), Foula made a living from fishing - first for white

fish, then lobster. There was a time when Shetland fleeces were in great

demand, and lamb. Farm subsidies played their part. Now the fish have mostly

gone, netted up by modern industrial-scale trawlers, and nobody makes a

penny out of sheep.



So people on Foula mostly do two or three jobs - on the ferry, cleaning or

cooking at the school, providing fire cover at the airstrip when the plane

comes in, for the water or electricity boards or the met office, repairing

the roads, running the post office, doing wildlife surveys, guiding the

island's few hundred summer visitors (mainly birdwatchers). A clutch of such

vacancies are open at the moment, including the posts of headmaster,

assistant and lunch supervisor at the fine new primary school - enough, with

a little extra paid activity, perhaps via the internet (yes! Foula has

broadband), to give a tough, hardworking young couple or two a fair living.



For this island, all agree, could do with a few more inhabitants. Not too

many; a couple of young families would be perfect. What kind of people would

they need to be? "Self-reliant, adaptable, fond of their own company,

tolerant of other people's views," says Sheila Gear. Another member of the

Holbourn clan, she moved to the island in 1964 to marry Jim, whose

grandfather landed some time in the 19th century and is still fondly

remembered for petitioning Queen Victoria and Disraeli to obtain Foula's

first regular postal service. Self-reliant because when things break on

Foula, you have to fix them yourself. Adaptable because nothing ever goes

quite according to plan. And fond of your own company because the social

scene on Foula is not, on the whole, what you might call wild. "This is a

community in the sense that when it really comes to it, like when the

council threatens to base the ferry off the island, everyone pulls

together," says Sheila, mild-mannered and bespectacled behind the post

office counter (she is the postmistress. As well as the registrar, and an

island guide).



"Otherwise people here keep pretty much to ourselves; we don't live in each

other's pockets. It's always struck me about Foula folk that when they're on

the island, it's a quick wave and they're away. But if they see each other

anywhere else, at some event on the mainland, they'll natter for hours.

There is a bond, even though it may not look like it to an outsider."



(Amy is less diplomatic. "Some people don't get on," she says. "It's normal:

imagine if someone said to you, right, see those five houses either side of

yours? From now on, they're your universe. There would be a few people you

liked, a few you rubbed along with and a few you detested. That's what it's

like here. Everyone has friends, but no one is friends with everyone.")



Tempted? The material rewards are minimal, but there is, it is clear, a

deeper satisfaction to be had from building a life in a place like this. For

some people, anyway. There is just one small further hitch, though: any

would-be newcomers to Foula would almost certainly have to build their own

home. Most of the existing ones are either not for sale, or in a serious

state of disrepair. "Whatever they did, they would have to do it by

themselves," says Jim. "Unfortunately, the community cannot help anyone out

with a house or land; we don't own it."



Twenty-five years ago, Marion and Bryan Taylor did just that, pitching up

from Edinburgh, moving into a small cottage and building themselves first

two holiday chalets and then their present home, which also serves as the

island's B&B. They remain more or less the only Foula inhabitants, apart

from the professor, without an ancestral connection with the place. It

shows, too: they take the whole business a bit less seriously.



"I just get on with it, frankly," says Bryan, a motorcycle engine-tuner by

trade, who now mans the ferry and mends the roads. "A load of nonsense gets

talked about living here. I love the place - when I first set eyes on it, in

1972, I thought: this is it, the final frontier. The freedom to live the

life you want to live. But I don't get drawn into the politics. They'd

quarrel over a fencepost here."



The epitome of indomitable good cheer, the Taylors might disprove Jim Gear's

sentiment that to survive somewhere like Foula you may well need Foula, or

somewhere quite like it, in your blood. But they haven't always had things

easy for all that: a few years ago, Bryan shocked the island rigid by

advertising his chalets for long-term rent, and then letting one to an

unemployed family from Moss Side in Manchester. They stayed for 18 months,

but the episode left its mark. "The shit," says Marion, winking, "didn't

half hit the fan."



It is blowing again outside, an absolute hooley. Up at the wild north end of

the island, Penny Gear, 38, crofter, pony breeder, relief cleaner, school

lunch supervisor, airstrip fire warden, bird monitor and daughter of Jim and

Sheila, explains why she came back 17 years ago: "I never saw anything on

the mainland that I wanted more than Foula." Why does she stay? There have

been times, she concedes, when she has wished it could be easier, "but I've

never wished I was anywhere else. I love the freedom, the beauty, the

nature, the life. Sometimes I walk over to the headland just to see the

rollers coming in. It's breathtaking, always."



Two of Penny's three boys, Paul, six, and Robert, 10, are Foula school's

only pupils. She dreads the day Robert leaves to board in Lerwick, although

Jack, two, should be taking his brother's place before too long. "But how

many parents wouldn't like to drop their children's home and school into the

middle of a park, where they can bike to school, the front door's never

locked and there's no question of crime or pollution or drugs?" asks Penny.

"If that's being remote, it's fine by me."



These days, she says, people expect things to be laid on for them. "Very few

people are going to think: I'll go to Foula, build myself a house, do five

jobs, get by somehow," she says. "In my parents' day, even when I was young,

there was a willingness to do that. I'm not sure there is now."



Fortunately, there is Lynn Robertson bundled up in woolly hat and oilskins,

training her dog, Tallulah, to work sheep. Lynn is 18 and a bit shy, but she

now lives here, on her own, in the island's only council house, caring for

three flocks of sheep totalling more than 100 animals. She was, she says,

determined to make Foula her home since the first day she saw it as a child,

visiting an aunt who no longer lives here. "It does get a bit lonely,

sometimes," she concedes, heaving the barn door shut against the gale. "But

it's the way of life. I ... well, I just adore it." Foula could do with a

few more people like Lynn.



The plane people have called. Today's flight has been cancelled, and Friday

isn't looking like any weather for flying. So it's tomorrow or some time

next week, basically. At 10am the next day the wind is screaming stronger

than ever, and the skies are sodden and grey. But it's a southerly: straight

down the landing strip. Jim and Penny head off to the airstrip on fire duty.

The Islander appears out of the clouds, dimly. It looks awfully small.

Quentin lands, bumps, jolts, taxies to a halt; out get a mate of Marion's, a

man from the water board and a whole lot more groceries.



We take off, pushing bravely eastwards, up to 500ft. Soon, all you can

really see of Foula is spray. The edge of the known world is about right.

But the edge of the known world is pretty damn magnificent.

[Steve Crook]

A report from the location of one of my favourite films......The edge of the world (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)

It is a great article, but "Julian", check again who made The Edge of the World

(and when)



Steve

[stevie boy]

Have you been to this location steve ???

[Steve Crook]

Have you been to this location steve ???

Not this one, or not yet. It's a bit of a long walk from London

It's over 800 miles away.

[foulafan]

Hi Julian, Steve C, One & All,



Read this tread with great interest as Michael Powell`s `THE EDGE OF THE WORLD` happens to be my favorite film, which since my visit to Foula only 2 years ago I had never seen nor heard of before. In fact all those wonderful British films such as `A MATTER OF LIFE & DEATH`, `GONE TO EARTH`, `ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING` Etc which I enjoyed so much, I never really knew who directed them, but through research on Michael Powell and finding Steve Crook`s P&P site, I opened up a whole new world of such great `flicks` as `I KNOW WHERE I`M GOING` `A CANTERBURY TALE` `PEEPING TOM` and of course my fore mentioned favorite `EOTW`.



Having watched the film over & over,read Mr Powell`s `200,000 Feet on Foula` the making of the film and visited the wonderful island of Foula, on my return I set about trying to name all the locals who had acted as extras in the film and got some remarkable results.



The film was such a difficult venture and I wonder in those days just how MP managed to get it finished, what with inhospitable weather, equipment failures, accidents to actors etc, All I can say is "What a remarkable man MP was, and he had one heck of a film crew with him, and as for the islanders themselves, I don`t think he could have done it without them"



My website in case is anyone wants to take a look is at:

http://www.webspawner.com/users/foulafan/index.html



Regards.

Dave.

[jackie S]

I did it the other way round from you. I discovered the Isle of Harris before I discovered St Kilda, which I learned about from the book Island at the Edge of The World whilst visiting Harris. Harris is stunning by the way. If its stark, powerful ancient landscapes, wildlife and isolation that appeals to you, give it a go. I found out about Michael Powell through I Know Where I'm Going, which is perhaps my favourite film, and am now collecting all of his work bit by bit. I have the Powell and Pressburger collection of 9 titles, plus IATEOTW and Gone To Earth. The man was a genius.



I also love everything that I have ever seen by Humphrey Jennings and the British social observation documentary makers and photographers of the 30s and 40s. It's not just nostalgia, but a glimpse of the past that I come from as a post-war baby. The past is the true mystery.

[foulafan]

Not this one, or not yet. It's a bit of a long walk from London

It's over 800 miles away.





Steve

Steve,



Did you know that Stanstead flies direct to Shetland during Summer in just a couple of hours, and thence only a 10 min taxi to airport at Tingwall and 15 min flight to Foula. Well worth it I assure you............... Well, if you get good weather anyhow.



Dave.

[TimR]

A beautiful and haunting film: it has the quality of a tragic myth captured on film.

[Steve Crook]

A beautiful and haunting film: it has the quality of a tragic myth captured on film.

And now that you've seen it Tim, you'll have to put Michael Powell's book about it on your shopping list. The hardback was published in London & New York but they often sell for hundreds of pounds, especially when they have their dust jackets and are in good condition. But there is also a paperback reprint which can be found at reasonable prices.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0016J094Q/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0571153062/



Steve

[TimR]

Thanks for the suggestion. I am curious as to how the film was made.



The shot of the islanders boarding the boat with their animals keeps coming back to me.



It is one of the few times I have seen a film that I did not want to talk about immediately when it was over.

[Blanche Fury]

Like anyone else of any sensibility (which includes, of course, all users of this forum) I'm a fan of Powell and Pressburger, but I hadn't seen Powell's 'The Edge of the World' until Film4 screened it recently. A beautiful, elemental film. A couple of very minor quibbles - if they're leaving the island for good at the end, how come Peter Manson has a tombstone? (I suppose his daughter could have had it made on the mainland and hired a small team to transport and erect it, but this doesn't seem very practical.) Also, how is it that his daughter, living a hard life of subsistence on a remote island, is at all times perfectly made up?

Do I remember correctly that the film was a modest commercial success and made Powell a decent profit, but that he lost it all in some kind of legal dispute?

[Steve Crook]

Like anyone else of any sensibility (which includes, of course, all users of this forum) I'm a fan of Powell and Pressburger, but I hadn't seen Powell's 'The Edge of the World' until Film4 screened it recently. A beautiful, elemental film. A couple of very minor quibbles - if they're leaving the island for good at the end, how come Peter Manson has a tombstone? (I suppose his daughter could have had it made on the mainland and hired a small team to transport and erect it, but this doesn't seem very practical.) Also, how is it that his daughter, living a hard life of subsistence on a remote island, is at all times perfectly made up?

Do I remember correctly that the film was a modest commercial success and made Powell a decent profit, but that he lost it all in some kind of legal dispute?

Powell would have been on a fee or percentage deal for that one. It was American producer Joe Rock who backed it and who would have collected the profits. I don't recall any legal dispute involving this particular film. Although Joe, like all producers, was a bit of a shady operator so could well have been in a dispute soon after it.

The main thing was that it led to Powell's being noticed by other people after making Quota films since 1931. Powell was taken on by Korda and after a couple of projects that didn't come to anything he was brought in to finish off The Spy in Black which was a bit of a mess. Korda also brought in a fellow Hungarian writer to tidy up the script, a quiet little fellow by the name of Emeric Pressburger. The rest is cinematic history


As for the details in the film, Peter Manson's tombstone looks quite new to me. Maybe it was only erected fairly recently, before "Mr Graham" (Powell) sailed there.

Ruth is always perfectly made up, even when she's hanging on to the interior of the fishing boat for grim life. Holding the tubercular baby in one hand and trying to keep her balance with the other hand.

But did you notice...? In the sequence in which Ruth runs down and uphill then to the shore, she is first barefoot, then wearing shoes, then barefoot again

Steve

[Alan Hayes]

A remarkable feature film, one of those where you sit with your jaw dropped to the floor for large chunks of it.

[Steve Crook]

A remarkable feature film, one of those where you sit with your jaw dropped to the floor for large chunks of it.

Even more so when you realise that the entire cast & crew had to get there in an old boat because there wasn't any air service to Foula in 1936/37 - and then they were stranded there when a gale blew up and the boats couldn't get through

Steve

[Blanche Fury]

Many thanks, for the information, Steve. I must have misremembered about the court case and lost profit. I wonder if there's another incident in Powell's life I'm confusing it with?

No, I hadn't noticed the continuity error with the shoes!

As for the tombstone, (and this is the kind of little detail that in a bad film would be one more thing to make the viewer throw his hands in the air in exasperation, but in a near-great film is just an interesting talking point) if it was erected recently, how did that happen? The island has been deserted for years; who has erected it, and how did it get there? It must have taken considerable manpower to get a hefty chunk of stone to the top of the cliff.

[Steve Crook]

Many thanks, for the information, Steve. I must have misremembered about the court case and lost profit. I wonder if there's another incident in Powell's life I'm confusing it with?

No, I hadn't noticed the continuity error with the shoes!

As for the tombstone, (and this is the kind of little detail that in a bad film would be one more thing to make the viewer throw his hands in the air in exasperation, but in a near-great film is just an interesting talking point) if it was erected recently, how did that happen? The island has been deserted for years; who has erected it, and how did it get there? It must have taken considerable manpower to get a hefty chunk of stone to the top of the cliff.

Nobody lives there any more, but some people could still visit the island.

Powell did get involved in a few court cases. The best one was when they made Gone to Earth for Korda and Selznick. Selznick decided that he didn't like it and sued, claiming that the film wasn't what was agreed. But it was easy to prove that he had kept a close eye on them all the way through the filming and knew exactly what they were doing.

However, it turned out that Selznick had the right to make changes for the American version. So he cut some parts and had extra scenes shot. The parts he cut were usually major plot points which he hadn't understood and the extra scenes he had shot were mainly to explain everything in excrutiating detail, sometimes by actually putting labels on things

But the best addition he made was when Hazel (Jennifer Jones) was running with her pet fox in her arms. It seems that they couldn't find any tame foxes in Hollywood so the close ups show Hazel carrying what is obviously a stuffed toy fox

The resultant mish-mash is called The Wild Heart

Steve