H.G. Wells - Things to Come
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Movie Reviews of H.G. Wells - Things to Come
Movie Review: Predictions of the future
Summary: 5 Stars
It is hard to believe that the film was created so long ago. Although audiences back then laughed at the large screen televisions and the wrist comunicators, it was an accurate prediction of today. It also depicts that nothing really changes, the same people fight to stop other people from doing what they believe is right. They had the same "DO GOODERS" back then.Movie Review: a portent of things to come?
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw this movie in 1961 on TV and I found it compelling. To watch it again 44 years later on DVD/video and it still holds me. A 1938 british movie that was in special effects avant garde and it loses nothing in being B&W. the society breakdown this movie portrays is actually happening now especially in the 'Horn of Africa'Movie Review: Old, but must see.
Summary: 5 Stars
Things to come by H. G. Wells is a very prophetic movie for the time it was written. I enjoyed it when I first saw it in the early 1940's and it's still a good one.Movie Review: Be warned!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you cannot appreciate a good story, have no imagination, and/or are some kind of idiot, you will not like this excellent movie. Be warned!Movie Review: Endless war, mass bombings, gas attacks...and then the peace of the scientists. Well, maybe. Still watchable after 70 years.
Summary: 4 Stars
Things to Come is a fascinating look into the future from the perspective of 1936 and the imagination of H. G. Wells. What we see is mindless, almost unending war, civilization nearly bombed back into a low-tech version of the dark ages, an apocalyptic plague and the rule of petty war lords. But then mankind begins to see a utopian development, the rise of scientists and an elite technocracy. Giant steps are made toward peace and happiness...and yet the stars remain for humans to seek, and not everyone will be pleased at this endless quest.
What saves this classic piece from fustiness and pessimism, from unattractive elitism and preachy optimism is the look and pace of the film, together with quite a bit of prophecy that can still seem accurate after 70 years. We're in December, 1940, in Everytown (read London) and everyone is celebrating Christmas. One man, John Cabal (Raymond Massey) speaks warnings about the horrors of a threatened war. His friends indulge him, but war comes...endless years of mass bombings, gas attacks and wholesale destruction. By 1970 civilization is in ruins. What once was Everytown is now a rubble of bombed-out buildings ruled by The Boss (Ralph Richardson), a petty tyrant who schemes to attack the other enclaves nearby to find enough petrol to fly a few tattered bi-planes...so he can attack even further afield. "You are warriors," he cries to his rag tag pilots. "You have been trained not to think but to do...maybe to die. I salute you!" He calls his rule The Competent State.
Then a strange, small plane appears overhead and lands. The pilot, now a white-haired John Cabal, demands to be taken to The Boss. The message is simple. A group of scientists has managed to impose peace on an expanding part of the earth. They call themselves Wings Over the World. They are, says Cabal, "the brotherhood of efficiency, the freemasonry of science. We're the last trustees of civilization." They will not be denied. The Boss, eventually, is dealt with. By 2036 unimaginable progress has been made. Humans live at peace in huge, wondrous underground cities of glass towers and moving skyways. Science has brought happiness and security to all. The next challenge, led by John Cabal's grandson, Oswald Cabal, is to seek out the stars in a never-ending quest for knowledge. Some have had enough of the endless challenges. Their leader, a demagogic artist played by Cedric Hardwicke, states flatly that science "is the enemy of everything natural in life." He and his followers fight to keep a spaceship from launching. But progress prevails and the ship flies off on an unknowable journey, which, we assume, will be followed by other ships and other pioneers.
"Oh, God, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?" a friend cries to Oswald Cabal. "Rest enough for the individual man -- too much, and too soon -- and we call it death," Cabal replies, "but for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning." "But... we're such little creatures," his friend says. "Poor humanity's so fragile, so weak. Little... little animals." Cabal looks at him. "Little animals," he says. "If we're no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. Is it this? Or that? All the universe? Or nothingness? Which shall it be? Which shall it be?"
On the one hand, the message is inspiring. But we...at least, me...can't help bearing in mind that Cabal's whole assumption is that mankind will be led by a benevolent elite of scientists who know best and who will decide which actions to take. Even for the Thirties, this was utopian balderdash. Elites of any social or occupational class are just as subject to the laws of corruption and megalomania as any of us, probably more so because elites sooner or later begin to believe what they tell each other. What H. G. Wells is proposing, in reality, is a dictatorship of technocrats. It also is unsettling to remember that in the last decades of his life Wells became what many would call a bigot. Racial superiority seemed natural to him, and eugenics was acceptable. Still, in his prime he was a great and successful storyteller. Think of The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Time Machine, to name a few of his books, and you're already deep into his imagination.
A few preachy moments aside, this movie still moves quickly in a series of effective dramatic situations, some small, some extended: The wounded pilot giving his gas mask to the child as poison gas leaks from his crashed plane, the body sprawled on barbed wire turning into scraps of rags as time passes and the wars continue, the life of the people under The Boss and his strutting egotism, the huge art deco peaceful bombers of Wings Over the World (dispensing the gas of peace and peace-enforcing paratroopers), the great, spiraling underground city...well, it all moves fast and looks great.
Things to Come fell into the public domain years ago. There are no first-class DVD transfers of the film. The Image Entertainment issue, part of the Wade Williams Collection, is supposed to be the best. It has the quality of a fairly clean VHS tape. There are no extras. There are 14 chapter stops. Perhaps it was just my disc, but I couldn't get some of them to work properly.