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Things To Come (Special Edition) [1936]


RRP: £19.99
Our Price: £7.92 (subject to change)

An essential stage in British science fiction
Review date: 2008-01-30 Rating: 8 out of 10

H.G. Wells in 1936 was past his prime and the books of his that will survive were long gone by. He was coming to the end of his life and he was confronted to his dream gone sour. At the very beginning of the 20th century he defended the idea that the world was doomed because the evolution of species, natural biology, on one side, and Marxism, market economy on the other side, were necessarily leading to the victory of the weaker over the stronger due to the simple criterion of number. The weaker were the mass of humanity and the stronger were the minority elite. He defended then a strict eugenic policy with the elimination of all those who were in a way or another weakening the human race. First of all the non-Caucasian, with the only exception of the Jews who would disappear thanks to mixed marriages. Then, within the Caucasian community all those who were not healthy, the alcoholics, the mentally disabled, all those who were genetically disabled, etc. That was not Hitler. That was H.G. Wells and that was not after the first world war. That was more than ten years before. And twenty years before the first world war he had published The Time Machine that defended the idea that the human "race", left to its own means and due to the vaster cosmological evolution of life on earth, would see the differentiation of the human "race" into two "species": the working class would become a subterranean laborious species and the bourgeoisie would become an idle surface species. The point was in the novel that the surface sophisticated and weak idle species was the prey of the other species who were the predators. Wells was convinced humanity was in danger and politicians were supposed to stop this evolution by imposing a strict eugenic policy. The first countries to follow this injunction were the Scandinavian countries who were also the last to drop it only very recently for some of them. The film here proposes a vision of 2036 with a world government that is absolutely dictatorial in the fact that there is no election, no parliament, no really democratic institution, only peace imposed by military conquest, and the government is dominated by one man or at the most one man and his few councilors. And in that future world all, absolutely all human beings are Caucasians. Wells was able to imagine humanity being completely white by 2036. Amazing. Wells envisaged some kind of a rebellion but that would be short lived and lead to nothing at all. The last sentences are the vision of this white civilization conquering the whole universe when contemplating the sky and its stars and planets. Frightening. And that was produced in 1936. All the more frightening since nowhere the slightest mention of Hitlerism, fascism, Japanese imperialism or Stalinism can be found. But it is essential to have that film in a good restored edition because it is crucial to have a full vision of H.G. Wells. We are obviously very far away from the Brave New World of absolute "democratic" social selection, or the Animal Farm of the dictatorship of the porcine proletariat, or the 1984 of the abstract mediatic dictatorship of Big Brother. This vision is at least just as much frightening as the three others. And I only want to compare Wells with the British science fiction writers of his days. It would be unfair to go beyond. This reveals that in England in these first three decades of the 20th century there was a tremendous fear among intellectuals: the fear that the future would only be somber, bleak and in the form of an impasse of some kind.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines


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Reviews


Disgraceful
Review date: 2007-06-17 Rating: 4 out of 10

This is an important movie in the history of cinema and a decent DVD is needed in view of the many poor-quality versions available. Unfortunately, this is not it.

The first impression is encouraging - nicely presented 2-disc set with an excellent booklet of informative notes. The contents list of the second disc raises expectations - interviews with Ralph Richardson and Brian Aldiss.

To be fair, the visual appearance is not bad. The scratches and fuzz of other currently circulating versions have gone and the optical "print" is crisp and bright, though there is still too much flicker than would be expected from a good remastering, let alone one "painstakingly restored in High Definition".

But the sound is absolutely abysmal, so bad as to prevent any real enjoyment of the film. It is badly muffled, boomy, echo-y and accompanied by overwhelmingly loud background roars and hums. At times it is so bad that the dialogue cannot be heard. The important film music by Sir Arthur Bliss is especially badly served - it is so muffled and boomy as to be impossible to hear properly, let alone enjoy. It is obviously not the fault of the original film sound track because the same faults exist (admittedly to a lesser extent) in the accompanying special features disc. The beginning of the second half of the interview with Ralph Richardson is particularly bad and the interview with Brian Aldiss has a continuous background roar which occasionally makes him impossible to hear.

To put out a DVD "remastering" with sound faults like this, when today even old mechanically-recorded 78s can be made to sound presentable is unforgivable. I would imagine Dolby would be horrified to see their logo on the case.

It is disgraceful that the opportunity to create a definitive record of this important movie for posterity has been wasted. And also disgraceful that I have laid out £16.98 on this atrocity. Network/Granada (whose names appear on the case and are therefore presumably responsible) should be thoroughly ashamed.

Since writing the above, I have complained to Sony UK who imediately and without question sent another copy, saying that my original must have had a "one-off fault".

The replacement has far less bass boost on the sound track. Dialogue and music can be heard, though at times indistinctly. It is a big improvement, but still nowhere near the sound quality one would expect of a film "remastered in High Definition" and carrying the Dolby logo. There is still no excuse, given the number of sound recording experts around capable of extracting excellent quality from old recorded media.

This is the one to buy!
Review date: 2007-06-12 Rating: 10 out of 10

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? Send me an email postcard if you have any nominations. 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 moon 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. 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? 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 superbly remastered version with some lost footage inserted is infinitely preferable to previously available versions (even at its original release in 1936 about 30 minutes was chopped off and most of it is still missing.) I encountered no problems with either the picture quality or the sound. The booklet and extras are bit of a mixed bag. Author Nick Crossman repeatedly refers to actor Cedric Hardwick as Edward Hardwick and takes a rather lenient view of Wells' incessant meddling in almost every aspect of the production but is otherwise illuminating. And Russell Harty's interview with the elderly and eccentric Richardson is interesting but of no relevance to the movie. But if you want to acquire Things to Come this version is in my opinion easily the best of the several available.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Ann Todd; Edward Chapman; Ralph Richardson; Raymond Massey; Cedric Hardwicke

Creators:
Ann Todd; Edward Chapman; Ralph Richardson; Raymond Massey; Cedric Hardwicke (Primary Contributor)

Recording label: Network
Manufacturer: Network
EAN: 5027626250447
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: Box set, Black & White, PAL, Special Edition,
Release date: 2007-05-07
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 89 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1936
Language: English (Unknown)

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