What's to come

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Movie
German title What's to come
Original title Things to Come
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1936
length 110 minutes
Rod
Director William Cameron Menzies
script HG Wells ,
Lajos Biró
production Alexander Korda
music Arthur Bliss
camera Georges Périnal
cut Charles Crichton
occupation

What's to come is one of Alexander Korda produced science fiction film by director William Cameron Menzies from 1936, based on the novel The Shape of Things to Come by HG Wells . The film was shown for the first time in Germany on February 22, 1977 on television.

Story of the movie

The action takes place over a period of almost 100 years in the city of Everytown (which can be identified as London by a church similar to St Paul's Cathedral ). It sets in Christmas 1940. The residents, including the Cabal, Passwordhy and budding medic Harding, are looking forward to a peaceful Christmas, but there are dark omen of an impending war. In fact, the war breaks out on December 23, 1940, the men are drafted and Everytown is heavily bombed. John Cabal starts out as a fighter pilot. The fight is mainly fought with aircraft and poison gas.

As the war continued, the fighting machines first became more modern, then less, and the soldiers were rotting away. After nearly three decades of war, civilization on both sides of the conflict has been almost completely destroyed.

In the 1960s, an epidemic finally wiped out half of the population. Dr. Harding is powerless against this disease, the victims of which hammer apathetically, only to suddenly get up and wander around as if in a trance. The healthy protect themselves by shooting the sick. In 1970 the city of Everytown is destroyed and is ruled by a warlord, the "Chief Boss". The population lives in a pre-technological / medieval state. One day, after no more airplanes have been flying for years, a black-clad stranger comes into town in a futuristic airplane and announces the end of misery. It is the former resident John Cabal, graying but vital, who is working with like-minded people on a new world order. The chief arrests him, but the mechanic Gordon and Harding succeeds in outsmarting him and notifying Cabal's militant-pacifist peacekeeping force, which stifles all aggression with "peace gas", a narcotic drug.

In the year 2036, thanks to the establishment of an international pilot dictatorship (originally “Wings over the World”, with its center in Basra ), the city is a flourishing, essentially underground utopia. One prepares to shoot people with an electromagnetic cannon ( railgun ) around the moon, which gives the crowd stirred up by an artist cause for an uprising. However, the shooting can no longer be prevented and ratio and technique win over the mob.

Reviews

What's to come is probably one of the most significant and formative science fiction films ever. The film has a clear tendency to believe in progress. While the masses are portrayed as easily influenced and primitive, the scientific protagonists (aircraft designer, doctor, mechanic) are designed as rational visionaries and superior spirits. Most notably, the 1936 film anticipates things like World War II, the importance and nature of aerial warfare, television, visual mass media, and e-learning ("history pictures").

Individual critic voices:

  • “A science fiction film that works with fascinating visual elements, futuristic decorations and effects. Based on the template and with the close cooperation of HG Wells, this classic, which has now been partly overtaken by reality, predicts the future of mankind. Because of the soundtrack already composed for the script, it is also musically interesting. In the first part, the film denounces militarism and war; in the second, it itself naively and optimistically propagates a technocratic rule with fascist features as the ideal state. Despite all the contradictions, it challenges questions about the state, society and faith in science. ” -“ Lexicon of international film ”(CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997
  • "The glorification of this technocratic system of state and rule shows dangerously fascist elements. Neither does the film waste thoughts on the consequences of its ideally imagined leisure society, in which human life is prolonged and artists are a kind of court jester who is otherwise only that Incite people against ordered and ambivalent progress for its own sake. "

Filmdienst , quoted from Hahn / Jansen, Lexikon des Science-Fiction-Films , p. 497f.

DVD release

In 2011 a "Double DVD Extended Deluxe Edition" was released in Germany under the title HG Wells - Hundred Years To Come . This edition contains the well-known, shortened film version of approx. 93 min. (Approx. 89 min. On DVD) in the original black and white as well as in a colored version, both in English and in German synchronization. The second DVD contains a longer version (approx. 114 min on DVD), in which the German black and white version has been supplemented with dialogues and storylines from the script with the help of text panels. This version is supposed to almost reconstruct the plot of the lost, longer original version. The edition also includes a short film biography of HG Wells.

Soundtrack

  • Arthur Bliss : Things to Come. Reconstructed Concert Music From the Film . On: The Film Music of Sir Arthur Bliss . Chandos, Colchester 2001, sound carrier no. CHAN 9896 - digital re-recording of the film music as a concert version by the BBC Philharmonic under the direction of Rumon Gamba
  • Arthur Bliss: Things to Come. Suite . On: Things to Come. Original Film Music Themes 1935-1947 . Naxos / HNH, (Munich) 2002, sound carrier no. 8.120597 - digitally restored original recording of excerpts from the film music, recorded in 1935/36 by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Bliss and Muir Mathieson
  • Arthur Bliss: Things to Come. Suite . On: Bernard Herrmann Conducts Great British Film Music . London / Decca, London 1996, sound carrier no. 448 954-2 - New recording of excerpts from the film music by the National Philharmonic under the direction of Bernard Herrmann

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HG Wells - Hundred Years To Come , 2006 Legend Films, Inc. / 2010 Great Movies GmbH, Cologne / Mainz