Things to Come
“H. G. Wells' Things to Come”
About Things to Come
On Christmas 1940 John Cabal cannot enjoy Everytown. War runs into the 1960s, and a wandering sickness empties what the bombs left. By 1970 the Boss, Rudolf, rules the ruins and shoots the sick. Cabal returns in a new monoplane for Wings Over the World, based in Basra; the Boss jails him, and the Wings gas the town. In 2036 John's grandson Oswald Cabal fires a moon ship, with his daughter Catherine and the scientist Maurice Passworthy aboard, while the sculptor Theotocopulos tries to wreck the space gun.
Cast & crew
More about Things to Come
Alexander Korda produced and William Cameron Menzies directed. H. G. Wells adapted his book The Shape of Things to Come, with Lajos Bíró also credited. Exteriors began in July 1935 at Denham while that studio was still being built.
Themes
Background
Wells had attacked Fritz Lang's Metropolis for showing science as a master. This picture has engineers, not a factory boss, rebuild the city.
Making
Korda told Wells he could control the script. Wells's first treatment was titled Whither Mankind? The screenplay also draws on his story A Story of the Days to Come and on The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind.
Reviews
Graham Greene, in The Spectator, called the first third magnificent and the dialogue smug and sentimental. Frank Nugent, in the New York Times, wrote that some passages "read like direct quotations from last week's newspapers" and closed with, "There's nothing we can do now but sit back and wait for the holocaust."
Audiences
Readers of Film Weekly voted it the ninth best British film of 1936.
Look
Georges Périnal photographed it, including the July 1935 exteriors at Denham while the lot was still a building site.
Music
Arthur Bliss composed the score. Muir Mathieson was musical director.
Preservation
Prints differ in length. The Criterion Collection's 2013 North American disc uses a 97-minute version and includes unused Moholy-Nagy shots.
Notes
- Ernest Thesiger played Theotocopulos first. Wells disliked the performance, and Cedric Hardwicke reshot the part.
- Ralph Richardson modeled the Boss on Mussolini. Italian cinemas were not allowed to show the film.
- Terry-Thomas is an uncredited extra, a man of the future.
- László Moholy-Nagy shot abstract footage of Everytown being rebuilt. About 90 seconds of it is in the film. He is uncredited.
- Charles Crichton edited. Vincent Korda designed the settings. Ned Mann directed the special effects.
- Margaretta Scott is still credited in some prints with a second role, Rowena Cabal, that is not in the surviving footage.
- Reports of the cost run from £260,000 to £300,000.
Scenes
- Cabal, now a pilot, tries to save an enemy airman he has just shot down.
- A monoplane lands in the Boss's ruined Everytown on May Day 1970.
- Flying wings drop the Gas of Peace. The Boss dies of it.
- Oswald Cabal and Passworthy's father watch the moon ship as a small light.
Influenced by
- Metropolis (1927), which Wells attacked as a picture of science enslaving people
Also available
- Internet Archive (things_to_come_ipod)
- Wikimedia Commons (Things To Come.ogv)
- Criterion Collection (2013 DVD and Blu-ray)
Quotes
All the universe or nothingness... Which shall it be?