3/5 these cold Scots and English in a romance
  by R. Bagula (Lakeside, Ca United States)
A young English woman sets her cap at marrying a very rich man
and is at the point of success, when she meets a fellow on 8 days leave
going back to his home on the island that the rich man is renting from him.
What she discovers is that she is a woman and this
Scots Navy Lieutenant is the kind of man that she really needs.
In the process she almost gets them killed in a very wild boat ride.
In certain movies you can tell there is chemistry between the actors,
but here the two behave so coldly and properly
that we are almost surprised that there is an attraction.
All this takes place on an isolated Scottish countryside
that is as beautiful as it is desolate, in ancient manor houses
and an hotel. I liked the movie with the above reservations.

5/5 MY FAVORITE MOVIE
  by Nancy A. Walton (New Castle county, Del. USA)
I watch this movie every time they show it on TCM which is not often enough, it is charming, funny, and an unexpected romance comes about...always love Wendy Hiller, she was such a lovely actress, she is perfect in this wonderful movie, also a great cast of actors all around...a beautiful film, a classic....Nancy Walton



5/5 a movie worth many viewings
  by sabby
My mom never bought a DVD in her life, but she asked me to buy this one for her, even though it cost over $25.00. I confess I thought her nuts, when I first watched it. I thought some parts were rather booring. I had trouble hearing some of the dialogue, or fully understanding some of the scenes. Many questions came to my mind, but I was determined to discover what appealed to my mom. Why was so much time spent filming the train? So I will watch it again, and perhaps a few more times. I agree with my mom that the acting and cinematography are high quality. The themes are deep, and include an examination of soial class, behavior, as well as love, among other themes. There is ample symbolism to please any English teacher. The film is well thought-through, so that every story and every song has a place. Again another reason to watch this film over and over. And if you'd like to hear Gaelic or see some beautiful landscape shots, this film is for you. Some beautiful songs, humor, tension...

5/5 Descent into the maelstrom
  by Jay Dickson (Portland, OR)
This much beloved wartime film from the Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, has all the elements of film romantic comedies that have long since become cliché, but which seem amazingly fresh here. The film constructs Scotland as basically England's romantic and mysterious Other: whereas the middle-class heroine Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) doggedly wishes to imp-rove her station by marrying a chemical corporation (she really wants to marry its owner, but in the film's hilarious dream sequence she marries the corporation itself), she finds herself temporarily marooned before her wedding in the Scottish Hebrides, which the Industrial Revolution has passed by entirely. Soon she starts falling in love with the place (at least as the movie constructs it): its impracticalities (the one concession to modernity, a telephone booth, has been constructed right next to a waterfall), its legends, its ghosts and its customs. Although there's a convenient love interest for her in the person of a dispossessed gentle laird (Roger Livesey), she really falls more in love with the location he inhabits and its people. The Scotland the film constructs is as amusingly fanciful as something out of Sir Walter Scott, but that's Powell's and Pressberger's point: legends of cursed ruined castles are much more attractive to us than the hard facts of chemical corporations.

The film becomes genuinely exciting when the heroine and hero are trapped in the great whirlpool Corryvrecken off the Scottish coast, especially since the maelstrom is clearly meant to mirror the condition of her heart. Wendy Hiller was an unusual choice to play Joan, given that she neither looks 25 nor does she seem beautiful enough to bewitch a chemical magnate, but given that most of Joan's character is fleshed out indirectly by her circumstances it probably was necessary to cast someone as subtle and commanding an actress as she is or the character might have seem underwritten; and she is well matched by the easygoing but always engaging Roger Livesey. We can only pray no one in Hollywood ever tries to update this into a vehicle for Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey.

5/5 Brilliant.
  by ILikeTheGoodStuff (New York)
It simply is. Brilliant. Dame Wendy has it all. She's extraordinary, and so's the movie.