Things To Come [VHS] [1936]

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.

The movie opens on a Christmas night in 1940; the residents of Everytown argue the possibility of war among themselves, only to have the holy night shattered by a bombing attack on the town. The world quickly descends into major warfare, and we are treated to a number of images of the spreading conflict. The war is made to look as frightening as possible, featuring frightened masses, decimated buildings, and the curse of gas warfare. Then the movie shifts to the year 1970. Three decades of constant warfare have brought civilization to its knees, and the Wandering Sickness has wiped out half of the human population. Local warlords rule their own little fiefdoms, and the Chief we are introduced to is still dangling the prospects of peace in order to sell continued warfare. The weapons of mass destruction are in short supply now; his only mechanic has been unable to repair the few remaining airplanes, and there is no petrol for them even if they could get airborne. Into this backwards world of modern barbarians comes John Cabal - arriving in a modern airplane, of all things. Cabal represents Wings Over the World, a new society made up of airmen and scientists committed to remolding the world (and social order) and eliminating war. The Chief, naturally, rejects Cabal's overtures, refusing to give up his hard-won authority and martial aspirations. Cabal's friends soon come to rescue him, flying in on a fleet of impressive airplanes armed with "the gas of peace."

The final third of the movie takes place in the year 2030. John Cabal and his scientists succeeded in their mission to reshape human society under their influence. The futuristic city is impressive - immaculate, gleaming white, and technologically rich. Cabal's ancestor now holds the position of authority, and he is totally committed to a new course of space exploration. The "Big Gun" is built and ready to send two intrepid young explorers around the moon. You might expect the citizens to be shining, happy people - but they're not. One man in particular, an artist named Theotocopoulos, leads a reactionary people's revolt against the follies of "progress." He says the time has come to rest on society's laurels, not waste the people's money and energy on frivolous projects such as the Big Gun. Suddenly, it's a race against time to fire the Big Gun before it is destroyed. The drama draws a sharp line between the two choices for the future. Cabal actually comes across here as slightly mad in his final "Which will it be?" moral speech, daring to dream of conquering the entire universe in the name of science, resulting in a sense of ambivalence toward science I found a little confusing.

The filmmakers had no fear of melodrama, as several scenes essentially drip with sappiness. The dialogue is somewhat stilted, as the important characters, particularly the Cabals, give speeches rather than merely speak. As for the look and special effects of the film, we're talking about some amazing stuff for the year 1936 - the film company spent a bundle on this film, and it shows. The scenes of warfare are particularly impressive -so impressive and disturbing that the movie-going public did not really warm up to the film - after all, the horrors of war were still rather fresh on their minds. As things turned out, Things to Come would play better to future generations than to its contemporaneous one. What does the film's lack of success in 1936 mean to you, the viewer? More than you might think. The film was not preserved the way it might have been, and the prints that fell into the public domain were of disappointing quality. I can't speak to the merit of this DVD, but I can say the print of the film I saw was exceedingly dark, making much of the first third of the movie very difficult to see.

This film is a true time capsule, though, and it works much better than most "prophetic" movies of its kind. Much of the acting and dialogue appears quite dated, but the themes of this movie are eternal - in fact, they are probably more important and applicable now than they have ever been. Its endorsement of a one-world government will not go over well in many places (especially my house, as the very idea is anathema to me), and I find its rejection of warfare quite naďve (especially in the world of today), but this is a very important, instructive look at man and society (as well as an underappreciated masterpiece of science fiction).