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September 9, 2014 (Series 29:3) , H.G. WELLS’ (1936, 97 min)

Directed by William Cameron Menzies Written by H.G. Wells (screenplay/novel "The Shape of Things to Come") Produced by Music by by Georges Périnal Settings Designed by Special Effects Camera Operated by Film Editing by and Francis D. Lyon Costume Design by John Armstong, René Hubert, Cathleen Mann (The Marchioness of Queensberry), and Sam Williams Special Effects Director Ned Mann Musical Director

Raymond Massey ... John Cabal / Oswald Cabal ... Pippa Passworthy / Raymond Passworthy ... The Boss ..Roxana/Rowene Cedric Hardwicke ... Theotocopulos ... Pilot H.G. Wells (Writer, screenplay/novel) (b. Herbert George Wells, Terry Thomas ... Man of the Future September 21, 1866 in Bromley, Kent, —d. August 13, 1946 Margaretta Scott ... Roxana / Rowena (age 79) in , England) became an overnight literary sensation Maurice Braddell ... Dr. Harding with the publication of in 1895. The novel was an Sophie Stewart ... Mrs. Cabal instant success and he went on to produce a series of science fiction novels which pioneered our ideas of the future. While entertaining, William Cameron Menzies (Director) (b. July 29, 1896 in New his works also explored social and Haven, Connecticut—d. March 5, 1957 (age 60) in Beverly Hills, Los scientific topics, from class Angeles, California) won two 1929 for Best Art conflict to biological evolution. Direction for The Dove (1927) and Tempest (1928), and a 1940 Wells continued to write what Honorary Academy Award for his use of color in Gone with the Wind some have called scientific (1939). He has 40 credits, some of which are 1956 romances, but others consider Rockin' the Blues (Documentary), 1954 The Black Pirates, 1952 The early examples of science fiction. Queen of Sheba, 1930 Raffles, 1930 , 1929 The Taming In quick succession, he published of the Shrew, 1928 The Awakening, 1928 The Garden of Eden, 1928 the The Island of Doctor Moreau Sadie Thompson, 1927 The Dove, 1927 , 1927 (1896), (1897) , 1926 , 1924 The Thief of and (1898). Bagdad, 1920 The Deep Purple, and 1919 The Witness for the In addition to his fiction, Wells Defense. And he has 20 director credits, some of which are 1953 wrote many essays, articles and Invaders from Mars, 1951 , 1946 Duel in the nonfiction books. He served as a Sun, 1940 The Thief of Bagdad, 1936 Things to Come, 1933 I Loved book reviewer for the Saturday You Wednesday, 1932 Almost Married, 1931 The Spider, and 1931 Review for several years, during Always Goodbye. which time he promoted the careers of James Joyce and Joseph Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—2

Conrad. In 1901, Wells published a non-fiction book called , 1960 Once More, with Feeling!, 1958 tom thumb, 1958 . This collection of predictions has proven remarkably Bonjour Tristesse, 1957 A King in New York, 1957 Saint Joan, 1955 accurate. Wells forecasted the rise of major cities and suburbs, Lady Chatterley's Lover, 1951 I'll Never Forget You, 1949 The economic globalization, and aspects of future military conflicts. Forbidden Street, 1948 The Fallen Idol, 1943 The Life and Death of Remarkably, considering his support for women and women's rights, Colonel Blimp, 1942 Spitfire, 1941 Suicide Squadron, 1939 The Four Wells did not predict the rise of women in the workplace. Almost 100 Feathers, 1938 , 1938 Drums, 1937 I, Claudius, films and TV programs have been based on his fiction, the most 1937 Dark Journey, 1936 Rembrandt, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 recent of which is 2015 The Time Machine, now in post-porduction; Escape Me Never, 1935 , 1934 The Private Life and the earliest of which is 1902 A Trip to the Moon. Some of the of Don Juan, 1934 The Rise of , 1933 The Girl others are 2013 War of the Worlds, 2011 Time Machine: Rise of the from Maxim's, 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII., 1933 July 14, Morlocks (TV Movie), 2005 The War of the Worlds (novel), 2002 1932 The Blood of a Poet, 1931 À Nous la Liberté, 1931 , The Time Machine (novel), 1996 The Island of Dr. Moreau (novel), 1930 Under the Roofs of Paris, and 1926 La justicière. 1984 “The Invisible Man” (TV Mini-Series, 6 episodes), 1949 “The Time Machine” (TV Movie), 11944 The Invisible Man's Revenge Vincent Korda (Setting Designer) (b. Vincent Kellner, June 22, (characters), 1940 The Invisible Man Returns (characters), 1936 1897 in Túrkeve, Hungary—d. January 4, 1979 (age 81) in London, Things to Come (novel/screenplay), and1932 Island of Lost Souls England) won the 1941Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Color (from the novel). for The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He had 60 set designer, art director, and credits, some of which are 1964 The Yellow Rolls-Royce (art director: European sequence), 1949 (sets designed by), 1939 The (settings design in color), 1939 (supervising art director), 1938 Prison Without Bars (supervising art director), 1938 Drums (settings design in color), 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles (settings designer), 1936 Rembrandt (settings designer), 1936 Things to Come (settings designer), 1935 (set designer), 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII. (settings designer), 1932 (settings), 1962 The Longest Day (art director ), 1941 Major Barbara (art director), 1940 The Thief of Bagdad (art director), 1939 (supervising art director), 1939 Clouds Over Europe (supervising art director), 1934 The Rise of Catherine the Great (art director), 1933 La dame de chez Maxim's (art director), 1960 (art director), 1955 (art director), 1955 Summertime (art director ), 1951 Outcast of the Alexander Korda (Producer) (b. Sándor László Kellner, September Islands (art director), 1948 Bonnie Prince Charlie (art director), 1942 16, 1893 in Pusztatúrpásztó, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)—d. Jungle Book (production design in color), 1942 To Be or Not to Be January 23, 1956 (age 62) in London, England) directed 67 films, (production design), 1941 (art director), 1941 some of which are 1948 Bonnie Prince Charlie, 1945 Vacation from Major Barbara (art director), 1941 Old Bill and Son (art director), , 1940 The Thief of Bagdad, 1936 Rembrandt, 1934 The 1940 The Thief of Bagdad (production design in color), 1939 The Private Life of Don Juan, 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1931 Four Feathers (art director), 1939 The Spy in Black (art director), Rive gauche, 1930 , 1930 Lilies of the Field, 1929 1938 Drums (art director), 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel (settings), and , 1928 Night Watch, 1928 , 1927 The 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan (settings). Private Life of Helen of Troy, 1927 A Modern Du Barry, 1926 Madame Doesn't Want Children, and 1922 Samson und Delila. He Jack Cardiff (Special Effects Camera Operator) (b. John George was producer for 63, among them 1955 Richard III, 1955 A Kid for James Gran, September 18, 1914 in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England—d. Two Farthings, 1949 The Third Man, 1948 Anna Karenina, 1942 April 22, 2009 (age 94) in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England) won the Jungle Book, 1941 That Hamilton Woman, 1940 The Thief of 1948 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color for Black Bagdad, 1939 The Four Feathers, 1938 Prison Without Bars, 1938 Narcissus (1947) and a 2001 Honorary Academy Award as a master Drums, 1937 I, Claudius, 1937 Elephant Boy, 1937 Dark Journey, of light and color. He was the for 86 films and 1937 , 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, television shows, among them 2007 “The Other Side of the Screen” 1936 Rembrandt, 1936 Forever Yours, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 (TV Mini-Series), 1991 Vivaldi's Four Seasons, 1986 Tai-Pan, 1985 The Ghost Goes West, 1935 Sanders of the River, 1934 The Scarlet Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1984 , 1984 “The Pimpernel, 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan, 1934 The Rise of Far Pavilions” (TV Mini-Series), 1980 The Dogs of War, 1980 The Catherine the Great, 1933 The Girl from Maxim's, 1933 The Private Awakening, 1978 Death on the Nile, 1977 The Prince and the Life of Henry VIII., and 1932 Over Night. Pauper, 1958 The Vikings, 1957 The Prince and the Showgirl, 1956 The Brave One, 1956 , 1954 , Georges Périnal (Cinematographer) (b. 1897 in Paris, —d. 1953 The Story of (Short), 1953 The Master of April 23, 1965 (age 68) in London, England) won the 1941 Academy Ballantrae, 1951 The African Queen, 1951 Pandora and the Flying Award for Best Cinematography, Color for The Thief of Bagdad Dutchman, 1948 Scott of the Antarctic, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1947 (1940) was the cinematographer for 71 films and TV shows, , 1946 Stairway to Heaven, and 1935 The Last Days including 1960 The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, 1960 of Pompeii. He also directed 15 films, some of which are 1974 Penny Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—3

Gold, 1968 The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1968 , 1965 Ralph Richardson ... The Boss (b. Ralph David Richardson, , 1964 The Long Ships, 1962 The Lion, 1960 Sons and December 19, 1902 in Tivoli Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Lovers, and 1958 . England—d. October 10, 1983 (age 80) in , London, England) appeared in 82 films and television shows, among them ... John Cabal / Oswald Cabal (b. Raymond Hart 1984 Give My Regards to Broad Street, 1984 Greystoke: The Legend Massey, August 30, 1896 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada—d. July 29, of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 1983 Invitation to the Wedding 1982 1983 (age 86) in , California) appeared in 85 films and “Witness for the Prosecution” (TV Movie), 1981 Time Bandits, 1981 television shows, including 1973 “My Darling Daughters' Dragonslayer, 1978 Watership Down, 1978 “No Man's Land” (TV Anniversary” (TV Movie), 1973 Movie), 1977 “The Man in the Iron “The President's Plane Is Missing” Mask” (TV Movie), 1975 Rollerball, (TV Movie), 1969 Mackenna's 1973 “Frankenstein: The True Story” Gold, 1967 “Saint Joan” (TV (TV Movie), 1973 A Doll's House, Movie), 1961-1966 “Dr. Kildare” 1973 O Lucky Man!, 1972 Alice's (TV Series, 191 episodes), 1962 Adventures in Wonderland, 1969 How the West Was Won, 1961 The “David Copperfield” (TV Movie), Great Impostor, 1957 “I Spy” (TV 1969 Battle of Britain, 1969 The Series, 25 episodes) 1957 Omar Looking Glass War, 1969 Midas Run, Khayyam, 1955 Seven Angry Men, 1969 Oh! What a Lovely War, 1966 1955 East of Eden, 1955 Battle Cry, Khartoum, 1965 Doctor Zhivago, 1955 Prince of Players, 1953 The 1965 Falstaff - Chimes at Midnight, Desert Song, 1951 David and 1963 “Hedda Gabler” (TV Movie), Bathsheba, 1950 Dallas, 1950 Chain 1962 The 300 Spartans, 1962 Long Lightning, 1949 The Fountainhead, Day's Journey Into Night, 1960 1947 Mourning Becomes Electra, Exodus, 1960 Oscar Wilde, 1959 Our 1946 Stairway to Heaven, 1945 God Man in Havana, 1952 Breaking the Is My Co-Pilot, 1945 Hotel , Sound Barrier, 1949 The Heiress, 1944 The Woman in the Window, 1948 Anna Karenina, 1942 The 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944 A Avengers, 1939 The Lion Has Wings, Canterbury Tale, 1943 Action in the 1939 The Fugitive, 1939 The Four North Atlantic, 1942 Reap the Wild Wind, 1940 Santa Fe Trail, 1940 Feathers, 1939 Clouds Over Europe, 1938 The Citadel, 1938 The Abe Lincoln in Illinois, 1938 Drums, 1937 Under the Red Robe, 1937 Divorce of Lady X, 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1936 Fire Over England, 1936 Things to Come, 1934 The Scarlet Things to Come, 1935 Alias Bulldog Drummond, 1934 The King of Pimpernel, 1931 The Speckled Band, and 1929 High Treason. Paris, 1934 The Return of Bulldog Drummond, and 1933 The Ghoul.

Edward Chapman ... Pippa Passworthy / Raymond Passworthy Cedric Hardwicke ... Theotocopulos (b. Cedric Webster Hardwicke, (b. October 13, 1901 in , Yorkshire [now North Yorkshire], February 19, 1893 in Lye, Worcestershire, England—d. August 6, England—d. August 9, 1977 (age 75) in Brighton, East Sussex, 1964 (age 71) in New York City, New York) appeared in 110 films England) appeared in 108 films and TV shows, including 1971-1972 and TV shows, among them 1964 The Pumpkin Eater, 1964 “The “The Onedin Line” (TV Series, 9 episodes), 1970 The Man Who Outer Limits” (TV Series), 1963 “Twilight Zone” (TV Series), 1961- Haunted Himself, 1967-1968 “Champion House” (TV Series, 30 1962 “The Gertrude Berg Show” (TV Series, 26 episodes), 1957 The episodes), 1963 “Maigret” (TV Series), 1957 Doctor at Large, 1956- Story of Mankind, 1956 The Ten Commandments, 1956 The Power 1957 “The Crime of the Century” (TV Series, 6 episodes), 1957 The and the Prize, 1956 , 1956 Helen of Troy, 1956 End of the Road, 1956 X: The Unknown, 1955-1956 “ITV Play of the Diane, 1955 Richard III, 1953 Botany Bay, 1953 Salome, 1951 The Week” (TV Series), 1956 Lisbon, 1956 “ITV Television Playhouse” Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, 1949 Now Barabbas, 1949 A (TV Series), 1956 Bhowani Junction, 1955 A Yank in Ermine, 1955 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1948 The Winslow Boy, The Love Match, 1954 Shop Spoiled, 1953 A Day to Remember, 1953 1948 Rope, 1948 I Remember Mama, 1947 Lured, 1947 The Life and The Intruder, 1953 “Rheingold Theatre” (TV Series), 1953 Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, 1946 Sentimental Journey, 1945 “Wednesday Theatre” (TV Series), 1953 , 1952 The The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1944 The Keys of the Kingdom, 1944 Ringer, 1952 Crash of Silence, 1952 The Wild Heart, 1952 “Back to Wing and a Prayer, 1944 Wilson, 1944 The Lodger, 1943 The Moon Methuselah” (TV Series), 1952 “Music at Night” (TV Movie), 1952 Is Down, 1943 Forever and a Day, 1942 Commandos Strike at Dawn, The Promoter, 1952 “The Cocktail Party” (TV Movie), 1950 Gone to 1942 The Ghost of Frankenstein, 1941 Suspicion, 1940 Tom Brown's Earth, 1950 Night and the City, 1949 Man on the Run, 1947 It Always School Days, 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939 Stanley and Rains on Sunday, 1947 The October Man, 1941 Jeannie, 1941 Mail Livingstone, 1937 King Solomon's Mines, 1936 Nine Days a Queen, Train, 1940 Convoy, 1940 Law and Disorder, 1938 The Citadel, 1938 1936 Things to Come, 1935 Peg of Old Drury, 1935 Becky Sharp, One Night in Paris, 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1936 1935 Les Misérables, 1934 The Lady Is Willing, 1934 Nell Gwyn, Rembrandt, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 The Divine Spark, 1932 The 1934 , 1933 The Ghoul, 1931 The Dreyfus Case, and Flying Squad, and 1929 The Shame of Mary Boyle. 1926 Nelson.

Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—4

George Sanders ... Pilot (b. George Henry Sanders, July 3, 1906 in he attended classes at the Art Student League in New York City. He St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]—d. April 25, 1972 (age began his long career working for Famous Players and then for 65) in Castelldefels, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain) won the 1951 as a set designer on silent films. His earliest film credit Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for All About was as art designer for a 1918 movie, The Naulahka . He worked on Eve (1950). He appeared in 134 films and television shows, among several films with director and actress , them 1973 The Death Wheelers, 1972 Endless Night, 1970 including Serenade in 1921 and in 1922. Rendezvous with Dishonour, 1970 The Kremlin Letter, 1969 The Menzies first teamed up with some big names when he Candy Man, 1967 The Jungle Book, 1966 The Quiller Memorandum, worked on the design of a 1923 hit, Rosita, which was directed by 1965 “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” (TV Series), 1965 The and starred . In a few years, Menzies Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, 1962 Operation Snatch, 1961 gained notoriety within the for his hard work and Rendezvous, 1959 That Kind of Woman, 1956 While the City Sleeps, willingness to go beyond conventional designs into new territory. He 1956 Never Say Goodbye, 1953 Call Me Madam, 1952 Assignment: brought his magical touch to the filming of the ancient Arabian tale, Paris, 1952 Ivanhoe, 1951 I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1950 All The Thief of Baghdad, in 1924. Directed by Walsh and starring About Eve, 1949 Samson and Delilah, 1949 The Fan, 1947 Forever , the movie was hailed by critics and adored by Amber, 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1946 The Strange Woman, audiences. Menzies's wondrous sets helped weave an intoxicating 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1944 The Lodger, 1943 This Land spell. called it an "entrancing picture, Is Mine, 1942 The Moon and Sixpence, 1942 The Falcon's Brother, wholesome and compelling, deliberate and beautiful, a feat of motion 1942 The Falcon Takes Over, 1942 A Date with the Falcon, 1941 The picture art which has never been equalled." Critic James Quirk called Gay Falcon, 1941 in Palm Springs, 1940 The Son of Monte it "a work of rare genius. Here is the answer to critics who give the Cristo, 1940 Foreign Correspondent, 1940 The Saint Takes Over, motion picture no place in the family of the arts." 1940 Rebecca, 1940 The House of the Seven Gables, 1940 The Saint's Menzies was instrumental in elevating the film Double Trouble, 1939 The Saint in London, 1939 The Saint Strikes to an art form. His creative energy and craftmanship raised the status Back, 1939 The Outsider, 1939 Mr. Moto's Last Warning, 1937 of the designing arts in filmmaking. Menzies was the first to get Lancer Spy, 1937 Slave Ship, 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1936 Lloyd's of London, 1936 Strange Cargo, 1936 Things to Come, and 1934 Love, Life and Laughter.

Terry Thomas ... Man of the Future (B. Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens, July 14, 1911 in Finchley, London, England—D. January 8, 1990 (age 78) in Godalming, Surrey, England) appeared in 117 films and television shows, including 1978 The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1977 The Last Remake of Beau Geste, 1976 The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones, 1969 Arthur! Arthur!, 1969 Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies, 1968 Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, 1967 The Perils of Pauline, 1966 Bang! Bang! You're Dead!, 1965 How to Murder Your Wife, 1963 It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963 The Mouse on the Moon, 1962 Operation Snatch, 1960 School for Scoundrels, 1959 I' All Right Jack, 1958 tom thumb, and 1957 Lucky Jim.

William Cameron Menzies (From Gale Encyclopedia of Biography): William Cameron Menzies set the Hollywood standard for designing sumptuous movie panoramas. In epics such as Gone with the Wind and fantasies such as The Thief of Baghdad, studios relied on the billing as a production designer, indicating overall credit for the entire visual wizardry of Menzies, whose prestige derived from his uncanny look of a movie. He paid careful attention to every aspect of how a eye for movie visuals. film looked. He would walk through movie sets with a sketch pad Menzies played a crucial role in creating the stunning scenes under his arm, always seeking to improve on details. of Gone with the Wind. The muted earth tones, shocking swatches of In 1925, Menzies contributed to four films, including a bright color, and the sweeping range of the sets are among Menzies's couple of romantic comedies and the Rudolph Valentino star vehicle, landmark contributions to this favorite American film. His sure and Cobra. Menzies' lavish interiors for that film illustrate the opulence brilliant hand lies behind the wizardry of many other classic films. of the . Also in 1925, Menzies contributed to the Valentino Menzies was an innovative designer who pioneered many special adventure, The Eagle. effects techniques. His varied contributions and the depth of his Elegant interiors, sprawling exteriors: Menzies could do it influence on the art of film were not widely recognized in his all. His services were in increasing demand. In 1926, Menzies worked lifetime. In his career as a director, Menzies was often criticized for on Valentino's Son of the Shiek, the hokey terror film The Bat, and under-directing. But his films always looked stunning. two other movies. The prolific Menzies contributed production Making Film into Art designs to five films in 1927, six in 1928, nine in 1929, and ten in A graduate of , Menzies served with the 1930. Increasingly, Menzies was working with top Hollywood stars American forces in Europe during . After the war ended, and directors - with Douglas Fairbanks in The Iron Mask and Taming Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—5 of the Shrew, with Ronald Colman in Raffles, and with John to collapse by tractors pulling wire cables. Menzies masterminded the Barrymore in The Beloved Rogue and The Tempest, an adventure entire arrangement. story set during the Russian Revolution. Menzies's handprints were all over Gone with the Wind. His Menzies's contributions were recognized during the first tireless work was evident in the fine details of the sets, but he did presentation of the Academy Awards, covering the years 1927 and much more than just production design. Three directors have been 1928. Menzies received an Oscar for art direction for his work on The recognized as working on the film - , Dove and The Tempest. Menzies' last , made in 1928, was and - but Menzies also deserved credit. Producer David Sadie Thompson, starring . O. Selznick said Menzies "spent perhaps a year of his life in laying Menzies revolutionized film set decoration, transforming it out camera angles, lighting effects and other important directorial from an incidental aspect of moviemaking to a central component of contributors." cinematic design. The grandeur of the classic Hollywood adventure In fact, Menzies began work on the epic in 1937, using a epics, historical dramas and opulent five-hour-plus shooting script. He made romances was heavily influenced by a of every scene and camera his work. So was the popular angle - a rare achievement in those days. style, which Menzies pioneered by His concepts provided the impetus for welding German expressionism with a the film's producers to go ahead and hard-nosed American realism in films shoot the film on a studio back lot. such as Alibi. For his work on Gone with the New Challenges Wind, Menzies received a special In 1930, Menzies produced honorary Academy Award that cited his his first film, The Wizard's Apprentice. innovative use of color "for the Later, in the and , he enhancement of dramatic mood." The would be the producer or associate memorable uses of color include Scarlett producer on six other films. O'Hara's red dress as she walks over A more significant step came in 1931, gray dead bodies. In many other films, when Menzies co-directed his first two Menzies also used his technical skills to films with Kenneth McKenna: Always emphasize emotions. He often would Goodbye, a romantic comedy, and The Spider, a murder mystery use barriers, such as fences or walls, to depict grief or tension adapted from a stage play. In 1932, Menzies had his first solo between characters. He pioneered the technique of "forced directing credit with Almost Married, a remake of a melodrama about perspective," building sets and using camera angles to exaggerate bigamy. That same year he co-directed a science fiction depths and thus emphasize danger or emotional distance. thriller, Chandu the Magician. A Director's Best Friend With Cameron King, Menzies co-directed a romantic Gone with the Wind marked the first of Menzies's notable comedy, , in 1933. That same year, Menzies collaborations with Wood. In 1940, Menzies contributed special helped write the screenplay and design the sets for the Paramount effects (including the memorable windmill scene) for the Alfred version of Alice in Wonderland, a flop despite an all-star cast and Hitchcock picture, Foreign Correspondent; designed the acclaimed Menzies's dazzling sets. and popular Wood-directed film Our Town, and produced the Menzies's most interesting film as a director was his 1936 masterful remake of The Thief of Baghdad . Alexander Korda was the conception of the H.G. Wells epic, Things to Come. Later science director for that brilliantly conceived film about the Arabian Nights, fiction films such as Blade Runner owed much to Things to Come. and again Menzies did not receive credit for his full contributions; he Invited to England by producer Alexander Korda to direct the film, should have been listed, according to some film historians, as co- Menzies mounted the action on elaborate, futuristic mindscapes. director. Visually, Things to Come was a seminal work of cinematic science Menzies designed the productions of The Devil and Miss fiction. It unfolds as a series of rather static scenes, set in three Jones in 1941, a popular romantic comedy; , different periods in the future. Slow and somewhat didactic, it is a legendary sports biography, and , an acclaimed remarkable for its special effects and hyper-modern style. melodrama about small-town America, in 1942; and the adaptation of Not enjoying the success as a director that he had enjoyed as 's in 1943. Wood a production designer, Menzies returned to his earlier calling in 1938, directed all four of these exceptional films, but Menzies played an designing the set for the cave sequence in The Adventures of Tom immeasurable role in their success. Actress Teresa Wright, in an Sawyer. interview in 1959, recalls Wood relying heavily on Menzies's visual The Burning of Atlanta sense in Pride of the Yankees: "Bill Menzies used to draw a sketch for Perhaps the most memorable sequence in all of Hollywood every scene - it was beautiful, it was well conceived. Bill had a filmmaking is the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. Menzies marvelous motion picture eye. In his mind's eye he saw what would is responsible for that incredible scene. It was done on a set in Los be the right finished product on the screen." Angeles, with flames shooting 100 feet in the air. It was Menzies's While doing stellar work on such important films of the idea to use the fire for a dual purpose - to clear out old sets from 1940s, Menzies produced and directed several less notable movies, MGM's 40-acre back lot and to film the epic's climactic scene. such as 1944's Address Unknown . In 1949, Menzies tried something Special effects teams piped oil and water into the sets to stoke or new, directing a television series, “Fireside Theater.” douse the flames, seven cameras were used, and the sets were made In the early 1950s, Menzies directed and designed the production of three films - Drums in the Deep South, The Maze, and Invaders from Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—6

Mars. The first was a pedestrian , and The Maze was a bizarre attempt. Such are the trains of speculation it sets in motion that even horror-comedy about a wealthy heir who turns into a frog. its gaps and contradictions have suggestive power. Invaders from Mars is standard 1950s science-fiction fare redeemed The film’s memorable quality stems most obviously from a by Menzies's unusual visuals. The plot involves a boy who sees aliens visual design that remains mesmerizing and, at times, overwhelming. abduct his father and has a hard time convincing anyone that it really Menzies had served as art director on many Hollywood films, being happened. The viewer gets a surreal, nightmarish glimpse into a responsible most notably for the art-deco orientalist splendors of child's world of uncaring adults. When the boy reports the incident at Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad (1924). He would go on to the police station, the sergeant's desk is impossibly high. Doors are be a central creative contributor to Gone with the Wind (1939) and too large and halls too long, and the only decorations on the walls are Duel in the Sun (1946), and to direct—with very mixed results, but clocks that are always fixed at the same time. always with a distinct compositional flair—such features as Address The final film to which Menzies contributed was 1956's Unknown (1944) and Invaders from Mars (1953). His colleagues on Around the World in Eighty Days, in which he was credited as Things to Come included set designer Vincent Korda (whose design associate producer. He died just a few months after that comedy- genius would be further displayed in his brother Alexander’s 1940 adventure became a big box-office hit. remake of The Thief of Bagdad), cinematographer Georges Périnal, and, although only a few impressive seconds of his work remain in the final cut, artist László Moholy-Nagy, who was brought in to work on the lengthy montage sequence marking the transition from the wreckage of the old world, destroyed by war and pestilence, to the gleaming, streamlined new world of science and technology triumphant. The visual power would carry it even if the dialogue track was turned off; the film almost implies this by its use of superimposed titles to convey some of the most important plot points. Drawing freely, as needed, on the stylistic devices of Soviet and German filmmaking, and using every sort of trickery, from models to photographic enlargements to deftly interpolated stock footage, Menzies and his colleagues created a series of indelible scenes: urban mobilization followed by panic and mass death; postwar tribalism springing up among the ruins of the city; the unforgettable landing of a helmeted Massey incarnating the Man from the Future; the fleet of futuristic airplanes breaking through the Geoffrey O’Brien: Whither Mankind? (Criterion Notes) clouds; the long, nearly abstract interlude of industrial reconstruction; No one who sees it ever forgets it. Things to Come (1936) was an and, finally, the gleaming subterranean pathways, soaring bridges, unprecedented event in British filmmaking, an extraordinarily and gigantic television screens of the achieved World State. The ambitious and expensive production in which the full resources of effect of all these scenes is amplified immeasurably by the imposing cinema—an enormous cast, large-scale sets, and sophisticated visual sonorities of Arthur Bliss’s score. design—were invested in realizing an epic of humanity’s future, as But there is no denying that, despite any quibbles about conceived by one of the world’s most famous living authors. Yet few omitted scenes or unapproved design changes, in its essence, Things have expressed unqualified enthusiasm for the work, not even those to Come remains H. G. Wells’s movie, an almost unique instance in responsible for it. Producer Alexander Korda apparently lost some of which a literary figure devoted to visionary and polemical ideas was his faith in the project during production, cutting back on H. G. provided with all the technical support of commercial cinema to get Wells’s initial conceptions and considerably shortening the film his message directly to the public. To the extent that the film fails to before its release, just as the originally released version would be fully convey Wells’s vision, it is a judgment on that vision itself. further abridged over the years. Raymond Massey complained about Similarly, if Menzies can be faulted for the rather wooden pacing of the “heavy-handed speeches” he was called on to deliver. As for some of the dialogue, it is only because he could not find a way to Wells, he published a version of his screenplay even before the film breathe life into language that is often flatly declamatory. By the came out, as if to disassociate himself from any discrepancy between same token, it is impossible to separate the film’s expressive visual his original vision and the results on the screen. and musical power from the intensity of what Wells intended to Reviewers of the time were duly impressed by the film’s accomplish. He was a writer who, for all his espousal of scientific overpowering scale and dazzling visual flourishes. There had “never rationality, identified profoundly with the Hebrew prophets. He been anything like Things to Come,” wrote C. A. Lejeune of the aspired to divination rather than amusing speculation. Observer. “No film, not even Metropolis, has even slightly resembled ***** it.” But there was also a good deal of negative comment—aimed not Wells was nearly seventy when Things to Come opened in February so much at any inadequacies of Korda’s production values or William 1936, an age at which he continued to be as astonishingly productive Cameron Menzies’s direction as at the preachiness of Wells’s script as he had been since the appearance of his first novel, The Time and the iciness of his future utopia—and box-office receipts came Machine, in 1895; by the time of his death in 1946, he had published nowhere near earning back the film’s tremendous costs. Nonetheless, well over a hundred books. It is difficult now even to imagine the the film has outlived its detractors. A singular and haunting object, it national and global prominence he enjoyed, not only as a popular persists in memory and in history by the sheer prophetic scope of its novelist but as a historian, a political commentator, and the most aspirations, a scope that no filmmaker until Kubrick would again eminent of futurologists. His earliest and most inspired novels—The Time Machine had been followed quickly by The Island of Doctor Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—7

Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, and The First least the most elementary of them. It would be easy to mock the Men in the Moon, among others—had established him as the prophet rudimentary dramatization to which Wells resorted. Every character of the possibilities and dangers of science, and given him the aura of is a spokesperson for one idea or another, from John Cabal’s “If we someone who really knew what he was about when he peered into the do not end war, war will end us” to his grandson Oswald’s final florid future. statement that “when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all Moving far beyond the role of entertaining fantasist, Wells the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.” (In Massey, who took it upon himself to map out where things were going and where plays both roles, Korda had certainly found an actor for whom— they ought to be going. In the best-selling whether he liked the script or not—this kind of oratory seemed to (1920) and A Short History of the World (1922), he painted a picture come naturally.) Nothing occurs that is not designed to convey a of slow and embattled human progress away from the ignorant precise point in the overall argument—the film is set, after all, in childishness of primitive ages and toward a desirable maturity Everytown—and there is scarcely an attempt to sketch any emotional founded on reason, tolerance, and the scientific spirit. The catastrophe relationships of any depth. Even the scenes in the published of World War I made him an even more impassioned spokesman for screenplay in which Wells attempts, in however strained a fashion, to the World State that he saw as the inevitable goal toward which address future relations between men and women and between humans had always unconsciously been striving. parents and children are not to be found in the finished film. Small The Shape of Things to Come wonder if, by the last reel, audiences (1933) was to be the most elaborately felt they had drifted into some peculiar formulated of Wells’s exercises in sort of illustrated lecture. prophecy. Couched as a novel—it ***** purports to be the transcription of an It is indeed just that, an illustrated actual historical work of the early lecture. As such, it was very much of a twenty-second century, transmitted piece with an emerging era of state- through a series of mysterious sponsored film-making, the age of dreams—it is, in style, a direct (1935) and continuation of Wells’s historical Alexander Nevsky (1938) and, in a works, pushing ahead methodically more benign mode, the New Deal from the known into the immediate documentaries of Pare Lorentz, soon future, as it chronicles a disastrous to be followed by the age of all-out decades-long war (predicted to begin wartime propaganda. Things to Come in 1940, in a dispute between channels that atmosphere—its scenes Germany and Poland) that leads to a of aerial bombing and ruined cities gradual reversion to near barbarism. have the disturbing effect of achieved Such a catastrophe, aggravated by a devastating global epidemic (“the clairvoyance, a 1940s newsreel made in the ’30s—but it stands apart Wandering Sickness”), is necessary to bring about, at long last, the from any state except the World State cherished in the imagination of world-wide rule of sensibly minded technocrats, who proceed to build H. G. Wells. a new civilization that owes little to the traditions of the past. And so, despite the elimination of many of the most radical The book’s style is precisely that of a history textbook: there elements of Wells’s program (the assaults on religion, capitalism, and are no characters to speak of, and hardly a trace persists of the poetic individualism), the film still carries a charge of real indignation at the quality of Wells’s early novels. What is most striking about it is the order of things. The original and understandably rejected title, unease inseparable from its date of publication: “The year 1933,” the Whither Mankind?, underscores the extent to which Wells envisaged historian of the future writes, “closed in a phase of dismayed a work of prophetic exhortation, a call for fundamental change in the apprehension.” The Shape of Things to Come becomes eerie when it face of impending collapse. The film’s opening sequences, in which foresees, however inadequately, the horrors that were in fact cheery scenes of an English Christmastide are juxtaposed with impending—horrors that Wells is eager to understand as merely a menacing headlines about war, could hardly be more heavily prelude to the grand World State that is surely coming. In this utopian accentuated; even more so the shock image of a dead child amid era of the twenty-second century, all forms of religion will have been bombed-out ruins. It helps to remember that these scenes were being suppressed; “usury” and “monetary speculation” abolished, along shown to an audience in active denial, many of them, of the with every other trace of capitalism; rational sexual happiness possibility of such things coming to pass in the near future. achieved after “ruthlessly eliminating sexual incitation from the lives The film comes closest to dramatic life in the middle, with of the immature”; hatred itself mitigated through treatment as “a the scene of the enemy aviator dying from his own poison gas, controllable mental disease.” Self-interest will have given way to followed by the extended episode in which Everytown under-goes the collective discipline: “We have learnt how to catch and domesticate horrors of the Wandering Sickness (underscored by the the ego at an early stage and train it for purposes greater than itself.” expressionistic death journey of Patricia Hilliard walking The governance of the world will be in the hands of “a self-appointed, somnambulistically out of her ruined home to be shot down in the self-disciplined elite,” an elite consisting of scientists, social street) and falls under the sway of Ralph Richardson’s fur-draped psychologists, and sensible men much like Wells himself. warlord. Richardson draws all the Shakespearean energy he can out It seems unlikely that Alexander Korda thought there was of the role, and Margaretta Scott, as his dis-con-tented mistress, much of a movie in the book as it stood, and Wells acknowledged in matches him as best she can, given that much of her role was the introduction to his published screenplay that “a new story has ultimately cut. It is the disparity between Richardson’s and Scott’s been invented” to exemplify the book’s intellectual arguments, or at despicable but entirely human devi-ousness and the glacial decorum Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—8 of the airmen who will establish the coming civilization that marks sAs Jorge Luis Borges remarked in a review of Things to the point where Wells’s concept falters as drama. Come, “The heaven of Wells and Alexander Korda, like that of so Perhaps the future should have remained in the realm of pure many other eschatologists and set designers, is not much different abstraction. The prolonged montage of the building of the new world than their hell, though even less charming.” Borges went on to is a paradise of whirling bobbins and conveyor belts, mag-nified pinpoint the major flaw in Wells’s schema, the notion that science screws and bolts, bubbling vats and showers of sparks—an industrial and technology would be the rallying force against tyranny: “In 1936, short elevated to a lyric poem. This level of abstraction is sustained in the power of almost all tyrants arises from their control of the trappings of the scenes that follow—with the wide-open spaces of technology.” A few years later, after the war broke out, George the high-ceilinged conference rooms, the immense heights from Orwell would similarly note: “Much of what Wells has imagined and which the governing elite look down at the masses below, the worked for is physically there in . The order, the perpetual gliding and sliding of screens and surfaces—even if Wells planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, was disappointed that Korda’s cost-cutting meant that many of the the airplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate particulars he envisioned were never filmed. But if these scenes fall to the Stone Age.” short, it is not because of any technical insufficiency—Menzies and There is no way any audience, in the or now, would the Kordas succeeded in creating glimpses of vast, cavernous be likely to accept Raymond Massey’s Oswald Cabal as an interiors worthy of the legendary stage designs of Edward Gordon empathetic spokesperson for the human race. He is essentially the Craig—but because Wells gave the inhabitants of his new world, in chairman of the board of a quasi-fascist ruling elite—and not so very their curious peak-shouldered tunics, very little of interest to do. We far from the idea that Wells, at best ambivalent about democracy, in find ourselves in the air-conditioned halls and plazas of what seems fact had in mind. Yet the very resistance one feels toward the like the world’s largest shopping mall, filled with antlike crowds swelling rhetoric of the conclusion—the vision of an endless human streaming facelessly along. (The hygienic airlessness of the World adventure along lines laid out by science, in contrast to the State was sarcastically compared by New Republic critic Otis complacent pursuit of mere pleasure or mere beauty—is a measure of Ferguson to that of “a pure-food restaurant.”) The only sour note in the film’s force. Things to Come may finally be a more reliable this streamlined, anodyne place is the rebel sculptor played by Cedric prediction than we would like to think. It is not hard to imagine a Hardwicke, a reactionary bohemian—probably Wells’s revenge on future world utterly regulated and constrained by technology; we are, the modernist aesthetes who gave him insufficient respect—who in fact, nearly there in many respects, even if without the utopian side wants to halt technological progress in order to savor life the old- effects that Wells liked to anticipate. From first to last, the film fashioned way. His call to action, delivered over a giant television expresses strongly held convictions in a tone that is almost indifferent screen that dwarfs those watching it, is quite impressive, but it is just to the audience’s reaction. It hardly seeks to persuade: it displays and at this point, as Hardwicke’s character mobilizes the angry masses, declares. Perhaps that is what comes of letting a writer have his way that the audience’s sympathies tend to go astray. Unfortunately, the to this extent in the making of a film, and perhaps that is also why it future utopia and the scientists who rule over it alike are so happens so rarely; but we can, in any event, be grateful for the unappealing that we may be inclined to root for the Luddites. lingering visionary force of Things to Come, a trial shot into the future that speaks to us now from a rapidly receding past.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2014 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS Sep 16 , RED RIVER, 1948 Sep 23 Robert Bresson, PICKPOCKET, 1959 Sep 30 Luis Buñuel, , 1961 Oct 7 Agnès Varda, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, 1962 Oct 14 , REDBEARD, 1965 Oct 21 Nicolas Roeg, PERFORMANCE, 1970 Oct 28 Víctor Erice, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, 1973 Nov 4 , TESS, 1979 Nov 11 , TOOTSIE, 1982 Nov 18 Joel and Ethan Coen, FARGO, 1996 Nov 25 Erik Skjoldbjaerg, INSOMNIA, 1997 Dec 2 , CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, 2007

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