Things to Come [Blu-ray] [1936]

This is based on H.G Wells novel of the same name. It is split into three sections - the "present" - an English metroplois called "Everytown" at peace, but with war coming. Then the war itself, and finally the far future (still in our own future).

The "Present" is 1936 - Raymond Massey plays a man with a far-seeing spirit, aware of what effects a war will have and talking in oratory tones to his friends and family. When the war comes, it is totally believable - London in the Blitz, seen a few years before it happened. There are several excellent scenes - artillery being set up in town squares, bombs falling on cinemas (remember that this was watched from those originally), the death of children under rubble. There is a sequence where an enemy pilot gives up his gasmask to save a child from his own gas, after his plane has crashed.

The second section is thirty years after the start of the war - England has splintered into separate city-states, little more than tribes. They now fight each other, believing that's how it has always been. Ralph Richardson plays the "Chief" of one tribe, who came to power by his ruthless attitude towards sufferers of a late-war plague. The "Chief" meets Massey's character - a visionary from a state far to the north, trying to re-establish order and a world state. In the conflict - of wills only, not fists - Richardson dies - as does his state.

The third section is with the descendants of the original families, now looking at the first moon rocket. The public are driven to rise up against this kind of progress, stampede for the rocket base.

All-in-all, an excellent view of the way the world could have developed from 1936 onwards. It sags at moments - Wells used the Massey character as a mouthpiece, and his viewpoint is fairly myopic, and given in a preachy, unbelievable style. It's not the film at fault though, and still enjoyable.

I have this move in a few other editions on DVD and this is the best copy picture wise, hats off, but they obviously messed the sound up badly in the processing.

All through the movie there is an added flanging effect not heard on my other copies (even though they are probably from degenereated 16mm copies). The background noise sounds like a bumble bee in a long pipe. -An extremely annoying, garbling and hypnotic side effect.

The sound is plain awful, and it has nothing to do with the DVD-player (as someone suggested).
It is obvious that the restoring engineer can not handle digital editing effects. I am pretty sure that he/she/they added some editing plugin and then mixed the delayed and processed sound with the unprocessed (which is a big no-no) and got these terrible flanging/reverb effect.

I spent several hours trying to cancel out this bad side effect, but it can only be done partially. It is obvious that there is more than one of these delay effects layered over each other also they vary dynamically. The main one has a fixed delay of x samples, that does not vary at all through the movie, proving that it has been added in the digital editing, after transfer from the original film.I suspect it has to do with noise reduction, that they tried to touch up by mixing with some of the untreated sound. Obiously they were too dumb to understand and deaf to hear what happened. Bloody amateurs if you ask me.

I had a long conversation with Network and they finally gave up the arguing when I presented short sound clips from their version with a clip from an older DVD (probably from a 16mm copy!). It is quite obvious that the sideeffects are not there in the degraded(!) 16mm copy. So how could it be in the 32mm original!
They also said that they'd take the DVD back and that they just bought the rights to sell it on DVD and that it was the BRITTISH FILM INSTITUTE that did the actual restoring. If it is them they obviosly hired darn incompetent people. That is for sure.

I kept the DVD, though, because the picture is pretty good. I took the sound of what I think is from that 16mm copy (another DVD), processed it to get rid of the audio compression added in that copy and edited it in with the Network DVD picture.
I guess I now own the best audio/video combo of this movie (not counting the not accessible 32mm original)...

It is darn irritating to know that the movie has better sound on the 32mm film source, but that someone screwed it up completely and the unprocessed sound will probably never be accessible for someone like me to enjoy. I doubt there will be a another restauration made and that is a great pity.
It would have been a lot better if they had not processed the audio at all. Incompetent bastards.

-Sorry for the hard words, but in this case I don't think they are too hard...

At the time this movie was made (1935) many British studios were churning out quota quickies, cheaply made movies that were guaranteed distribution because the British government, concerned by the dominance of Hollywood movies, had decreed that British cinemas should show a given quota of British-made movies. The result was the law of unintended consequences - low budget efforts that were pretty feeble but didn't lose you money. Two studios bucked the trend with lavish productions - Gaumont British and Alexander Korda's London Films. And was there any movie of the 1930s that was more ambitious and spectacular than Korda's Things to Come? I first saw this movie as a kid when it was first shown on TV circa 1957 and although most of the movie's ideas went over my head the awesome spectacle left a lasting impression, as did Arthur Bliss' great music. Having seen this DVD release I can confirm that the spectacular sequences have lost none of their visual power - the Christmas-time prelude mixing yuletide revelries with forebodings of war, the destruction of Everytown, the building of the underground city (a visual and musical tour-de-force) and the detonation of the space gun. Alas the passing years magnify the faults. H.G. Wells vision of the future was a curious mixture of spot-on and wildly off-beam, but that's you're average visionary for you. If only Wells had been less concerned with "big ideas" and more concerned with establishing flesh-and-blood characters and a gripping story line. Raymond Massey had read Wells' original book and was well aware that the clunking script conveyed none of its qualities and yet he still delivers a performance that is stagey and hammy as does Ralph Richardson who I've always found less than convincing as the dictator of Everytown (in fairness to these fine actors Wells' ponderous and preachy dialogue does not lend itself to natural performances.) And 50 years on I still find myself asking questions like who exactly are the enemy, why is the organisation that eventually restores civilization based in Basra (of all places!) and why is Everytown rebuilt as a subterranean city? Perhaps these things were made clearer in Wells' novel (which I confess I haven't read) and in the 30 or so minutes of running time lopped off the movie shortly before its premiere (signs of frantic last minute tinkering are evident in the opening credits where Margaretta Scott, who plays the dictator's moll, is credited with playing two roles, as did Massey and Edward Chapman, but her final scenes in the Everytown of the future, as Massey's estranged wife, are missing. And when actor Ernest Thesiger turned up to the premiere he was shocked to find that all of his scenes had been reshot with Cedric Hardwicke.) And then there's that curious phenomonen of English accents which 70 years after the film was made now sound so dated to us whereas American accents sound pretty much unchanged. But whatever the faults, I know that if I'd sat and watched this movie in a cinema in 1936 it would have scared the daylights out of me.

I recorded this movie off the TV about 12 years ago and there's no doubt this remastered version with some lost footage inserted is infinitely preferable to previously available versions. I encountered no significant problems with either the picture quality or the sound, I found just one ot two scenes sub-par. There are some valuable extras. Movie buffs will appreciate the alternative version of the movie with the action interspersed with caption cards supplying the dialogue of the lost scenes.It has to be said that much of this dialogue is ponderous, didactic and quite unnatural and clearly demonstrates why Wells wasn't a man of the cinema and why the scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. They would have aided the viewer's comprehension but at the risk of trying his patience. There's also an informative essay on the making of the movie by Nick Cooper although in my view he takes a rather lenient view of Wells' incessant meddling in the production (and refers to Cedric Hardwicke as Edward.)The only dud is Russell Harty's interview with the aged and eccentric Richardson which is not devoid of interest but of no relevance to the movie.

If you want to acquire Things to Come this release in my opinion is easily the best to date and I give it top marks. (Mr Cooper has taken issue with me on the matter of how far Wells interfered in the production - click onto the comments if you're interested.)

A final note about the music. Arthur Bliss' score is, in my opinion, one of the finest movie scores of all time, indeed it has virtually acquired the status of classical music, but the surviving cut of the movie doesn't always do it justice, the famous march, for example, being heard only in fragments. Bliss composed much of the music and the tracks were commercially released before production began and these can now be obtained on the inexpensive Naxos label (linked with other golden movie oldies like the Warsaw Concerto.)Inevitably the sound is a tad muffled and boxy but the choral climax still creates that unique frisson I experienced as a kid watching the movie for the first time. A more extensive selection in a fine modern recording is available on the Chandos label. If the movie stirs you, buy them both.

Postscript. Revisiting my review after a couple of years I note that Amazon are mixing up reviews for the Network/Granada 2 disc black and white version (the subject of my review) with the Ray Harryhausen colourised version. Readers should excercise care when placing an order to ensure they get the version they really want.