Plot

Michael Powell makes a moving return trip to the remote island of Foula, forty years after he shot his first major feature there.

At the close of his directing career, Powell directed a short color film lasting 23 minutes and 45 seconds and first shown in 1978. He titled it Return to the Edge of the World. Contrary to the falsehood distributed practically everywhere now regarding the color film from 1978, thanks to an utterly misleading description of the plot summary previously here (which was not a plot summary at all but a lot of misinformation about the color film) here is clarification. To clarify. Firstly, there is The Edge of the World (1937) which runs for 1 hour and 14 minutes and 55 seconds. Then, secondly, there is Return to the Edge of the World (1978) which runs for as i say, 23 minutes and 45 seconds. There simply IS no third version running for 1 hour 38 minutes and 40 seconds as the previous poster seemed to insist upon. There is no post 1978 re release "version" of Edge of the World in it's original black and white but now with 1978 color bookends of approximately 11 minutes or 12 minutes each AT each end of the original 1937 movie. The poster who described this non existent "third version" possibly just tried to overstretch themselves descriptively but in the process has caused a LOT of confusion as their plot summary has been lifted from the IMDb to describe Return to the Edge of the World (1978) practically everywhere on the internet. Hope this helps.—Gary Telford

In 1936, Michael Powell took a small cast and crew to Foula in the Shetland Isles to make The Edge of the World, a recreation of the evacuation of another Scottish island, St Kilda. In 1978, Powell went back to Foula accompanied by one of the film's stars, John Laurie, by then a household name through his role in television sitcom Dad's Army. They found very little had changed and were reunited with many of the islanders who had taken roles in the film. This featurette, which opens on the lot of Pinewood Studios, gives a fascinating insight into the film's origins and production. As Laurie says, their pilgrimage to the bleak, beautiful, rocky isle wasn't just another shoot but "an experience that changed all our lives."