Things to Come Movie Review

Groundbreaking (and very loose) adaptation of H.G. Wells’ prophecies, best viewed today as taking place on an alternate world, an Earth that might have been. Narrative begins in 1940 and runs to 2036 to chronicle the travails of Everytown, where the filmmakers depict fictionally for the first time what would soon be tragically real: innocent civilians bombed, gassed, and infected in a global war that lasts until 1970 (note that when the year “1945” flashes onscreen a puff of smoke shaped like a mushroom cloud appears, an accidental bit of accuracy). Politicians having made a mess of things, a group of scientific airmen take over running the world, and when the dust rolls away, behold Everytown of 2036 in its shining whiteness and glory. Every man is a superman, every woman a superwoman, wearing zoot-suit togas with huge shoulders (original script notes said our descendants will have so many items in their pockets that the shoulders must fortify and hold their clothing up). Scientists decide to build a huge space gun to fire two astronauts to the moon, but a division between the sciences and humanities (like that which plagued real-life universities in the ‘60s and ‘70s) rears its ugly head, and a group of artists try to tear the space gun down with their bare hands. Final scene, with Raymond Massey pointing to the stars and declaring “It is this or nothingness. Which shall it be? Which shall it be?” triumphantly sums up the science-fiction dream of man's destiny in space. In the public domain, Things to Come is carried on video by numerous labels, and quality varies widely. Look for the U.S.-release prints that include a five-minute montage of titanic machines rebuilding civilization, a sequence designed by director William Cameron Menzies to surpass anything ever seen in Buck Rogers comics. Superb musical score by Arthur Bliss.

1936 92m/B GB Margaretta Scott, Edward Chapman, Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Derrick DeMarney; D: William Cameron Menzies; W: Lajos Biro, H.G. Wells; C: Georges Perinal; M: Arthur Bliss. VHS, Beta NOS, PSM, SNC