September 9, 2014 (Series 29:3) William Cameron Menzies, H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME (1936, 97 min)

Directed by William Cameron Menzies Written by H.G. Wells (screenplay/novel "The Shape of Things to Come") Produced by Alexander Korda Music by Arthur Bliss Cinematography by Georges Périnal Settings Designed by Vincent Korda Special Effects Camera Operated by Jack Cardiff Film Editing by Charles Crichton 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 Muir Mathieson Raymond Massey ... John Cabal / Oswald Cabal Edward Chapman ... Pippa Passworthy / Raymond Passworthy Ralph Richardson ... The Boss Margaretta Scott..Roxana/Rowene Cedric Hardwicke ... Theotocopulos George Sanders ... Pilot Terry Thomas ... Man of the Future Margaretta Scott ... Roxana / Rowena Maurice Braddell ... Dr. Harding Sophie Stewart ... Mrs. Cabal William Cameron Menzies (Director) (b. July 29, 1896 in New Haven, Connecticut—d. March 5, 1957 (age 60) in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California) won two 1929 Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for The Dove (1927) and Tempest (1928), and a 1940 Honorary Academy Award for his use of color in Gone with the Wind (1939). He has 40 art director credits, some of which are 1956 Rockin' the Blues (Documentary), 1954 The Black Pirates, 1952 The Queen of Sheba, 1930 Raffles, 1930 The Bad One, 1929 The Taming of the Shrew, 1928 The Awakening, 1928 The Garden of Eden, 1928 Sadie Thompson, 1927 The Dove, 1927 Two Arabian Knights, 1927 The Beloved Rogue, 1926 The Duchess of Buffalo, 1924 The Thief of Bagdad, 1920 The Deep Purple, and 1919 The Witness for the Defense. And he has 20 director credits, some of which are 1953 Invaders from Mars, 1951 Drums in the Deep South, 1946 Duel in the Sun, 1940 The Thief of Bagdad, 1936 Things to Come, 1933 I Loved You Wednesday, 1932 Almost Married, 1931 The Spider, and 1931 Always Goodbye.

H.G. Wells (Writer, screenplay/novel) (b. Herbert George Wells, September 21, 1866 in Bromley, Kent, England—d. August 13, 1946 (age 79) in London, England) became an overnight literary sensation with the publication of The Time Machine in 1895. The novel was an instant success and he went on to produce a series of science fiction novels which pioneered our ideas of the future. While entertaining, his works also explored social and scientific topics, from class conflict to biological evolution. Wells continued to write what some have called scientific romances, but others consider early examples of science fiction. In quick succession, he published the The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). In addition to his fiction, Wells wrote many essays, articles and nonfiction books. He served as a book reviewer for the Saturday Review for several years, during 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 Anticipations. This collection of predictions has proven remarkably accurate. Wells forecasted the rise of major cities and suburbs, economic globalization, and aspects of future military conflicts. Remarkably, considering his support for women and women's rights, Wells did not predict the rise of women in the workplace. Almost 100 films and TV programs have been based on his fiction, the most recent of which is 2015 The Time Machine, now in post-porduction; and the earliest of which is 1902 A Trip to the Moon. Some of the others are 2013 War of the Worlds, 2011 Time Machine: Rise of the Morlocks (TV Movie), 2005 The War of the Worlds (novel), 2002 The Time Machine (novel), 1996 The Island of Dr. Moreau (novel), 1984 “The Invisible Man” (TV Mini-Series, 6 episodes), 1949 “The Time Machine” (TV Movie), 11944 The Invisible Man's Revenge (characters), 1940 The Invisible Man Returns (characters), 1936 Things to Come (novel/screenplay), and1932 Island of Lost Souls (from the novel).

Alexander Korda (Producer) (b. Sándor László Kellner, September 16, 1893 in Pusztatúrpásztó, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)—d. January 23, 1956 (age 62) in London, England) directed 67 films, some of which are 1948 Bonnie Prince Charlie, 1945 Vacation from Marriage, 1940 The Thief of Bagdad, 1936 Rembrandt, 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan, 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1931 Rive gauche, 1930 Women Everywhere, 1930 Lilies of the Field, 1929 Love and the Devil, 1928 Night Watch, 1928 Yellow Lily, 1927 The Private Life of Helen of Troy, 1927 A Modern Du Barry, 1926 Madame Doesn't Want Children, and 1922 Samson und Delila. He was producer for 63, among them 1955 Richard III, 1955 A Kid for Two Farthings, 1949 The Third Man, 1948 Anna Karenina, 1942 Jungle Book, 1941 That Hamilton Woman, 1940 The Thief of Bagdad, 1939 The Four Feathers, 1938 Prison Without Bars, 1938 Drums, 1937 I, Claudius, 1937 Elephant Boy, 1937 Dark Journey, 1937 Fire Over England, 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1936 Rembrandt, 1936 Forever Yours, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 The Ghost Goes West, 1935 Sanders of the River, 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan, 1934 The Rise of Catherine the Great, 1933 The Girl from Maxim's, 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII., and 1932 Over Night. Georges Périnal (Cinematographer) (b. 1897 in Paris, France—d. April 23, 1965 (age 68) in London, England) won the 1941 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color for The Thief of Bagdad (1940) was the cinematographer for 71 films and TV shows, including 1960 The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, 1960

Oscar Wilde, 1960 Once More, with Feeling!, 1958 tom thumb, 1958 Bonjour Tristesse, 1957 A King in New York, 1957 Saint Joan, 1955 Lady Chatterley's Lover, 1951 I'll Never Forget You, 1949 The Forbidden Street, 1948 The Fallen Idol, 1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1942 Spitfire, 1941 Suicide Squadron, 1939 The Four Feathers, 1938 Prison Without Bars, 1938 Drums, 1937 I, Claudius, 1937 Dark Journey, 1936 Rembrandt, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 Escape Me Never, 1935 Sanders of the River, 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan, 1934 The Rise of Catherine the Great, 1933 The Girl from Maxim's, 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII., 1933 July 14, 1932 The Blood of a Poet, 1931 À Nous la Liberté, 1931 Le Million, 1930 Under the Roofs of Paris, and 1926 La justicière. Vincent Korda (Setting Designer) (b. Vincent Kellner, June 22, 1897 in Túrkeve, Hungary—d. January 4, 1979 (age 81) in London, England) won the 1941Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Color for The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He had 60 set designer, art director, and production designer credits, some of which are 1964 The Yellow Rolls-Royce (art director: European sequence), 1949 The Third Man (sets designed by), 1939 The Four Feathers (settings design in color), 1939 The Spy in Black (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 The Ghost Goes West (set designer), 1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII. (settings designer), 1932 Men of Tomorrow (settings), 1962 The Longest Day (art director ), 1941 Major Barbara (art director), 1940 The Thief of Bagdad (art director), 1939 The Lion Has Wings (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 Scent of Mystery (art director), 1955 Storm Over the Nile (art director), 1955 Summertime (art director ), 1951 Outcast of the Islands (art director), 1948 Bonnie Prince Charlie (art director), 1942 Jungle Book (production design in color), 1942 To Be or Not to Be (production design), 1941 That Hamilton Woman (art director), 1941 Major Barbara (art director), 1941 Old Bill and Son (art director), 1940 The Thief of Bagdad (production design in color), 1939 The Four Feathers (art director), 1939 The Spy in Black (art director), 1938 Drums (art director), 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel (settings), and 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan (settings). Jack Cardiff (Special Effects Camera Operator) (b. John George James Gran, September 18, 1914 in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England—d. April 22, 2009 (age 94) in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England) won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color for Black Narcissus (1947) and a 2001 Honorary Academy Award as a master of light and color. He was the cinematographer for 86 films and television shows, among them 2007 “The Other Side of the Screen” (TV Mini-Series), 1991 Vivaldi's Four Seasons, 1986 Tai-Pan, 1985 Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1984 Conan the Destroyer, 1984 “The Far Pavilions” (TV Mini-Series), 1980 The Dogs of War, 1980 The Awakening, 1978 Death on the Nile, 1977 The Prince and the Pauper, 1958 The Vikings, 1957 The Prince and the Showgirl, 1956 The Brave One, 1956 War and Peace, 1954 The Barefoot Contessa, 1953 The Story of William Tell (Short), 1953 The Master of Ballantrae, 1951 The African Queen, 1951 Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, 1948 Scott of the Antarctic, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1947 Black Narcissus, 1946 Stairway to Heaven, and 1935 The Last Days 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 Dark of the Sun, 1965 Young Cassidy, 1964 The Long Ships, 1962 The Lion, 1960 Sons and Lovers, and 1958 Intent to Kill. Raymond Massey ... John Cabal / Oswald Cabal (b. Raymond Hart Massey, August 30, 1896 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada—d. July 29, 1983 (age 86) in Los Angeles, California) appeared in 85 films and television shows, including 1973 “My Darling Daughters' Anniversary” (TV Movie), 1973 “The President's Plane Is Missing” (TV Movie), 1969 Mackenna's Gold, 1967 “Saint Joan” (TV Movie), 1961-1966 “Dr. Kildare” (TV Series, 191 episodes), 1962 How the West Was Won, 1961 The Great Impostor, 1957 “I Spy” (TV Series, 25 episodes) 1957 Omar Khayyam, 1955 Seven Angry Men, 1955 East of Eden, 1955 Battle Cry, 1955 Prince of Players, 1953 The Desert Song, 1951 David and Bathsheba, 1950 Dallas, 1950 Chain Lightning, 1949 The Fountainhead, 1947 Mourning Becomes Electra, 1946 Stairway to Heaven, 1945 God Is My Co-Pilot, 1945 Hotel Berlin, 1944 The Woman in the Window, 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944 A Canterbury Tale, 1943 Action in the North Atlantic, 1942 Reap the Wild Wind, 1940 Santa Fe Trail, 1940 Abe Lincoln in Illinois, 1938 Drums, 1937 Under the Red Robe, 1937 Fire Over England, 1936 Things to Come, 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1931 The Speckled Band, and 1929 High Treason. Edward Chapman ... Pippa Passworthy / Raymond Passworthy (b. October 13, 1901 in Harrogate, Yorkshire [now North Yorkshire], England—d. August 9, 1977 (age 75) in Brighton, East Sussex, England) appeared in 108 films and TV shows, including 1971-1972 “The Onedin Line” (TV Series, 9 episodes), 1970 The Man Who Haunted Himself, 1967-1968 “Champion House” (TV Series, 30 episodes), 1963 “Maigret” (TV Series), 1957 Doctor at Large, 1956-1957 “The Crime of the Century” (TV Series, 6 episodes), 1957 The End of the Road, 1956 X: The Unknown, 1955-1956 “ITV Play of the Week” (TV Series), 1956 Lisbon, 1956 “ITV Television Playhouse” (TV Series), 1956 Bhowani Junction, 1955 A Yank in Ermine, 1955 The Love Match, 1954 Shop Spoiled, 1953 A Day to Remember, 1953 The Intruder, 1953 “Rheingold Theatre” (TV Series), 1953 “Wednesday Theatre” (TV Series), 1953 Folly to Be Wise, 1952 The Ringer, 1952 Crash of Silence, 1952 The Wild Heart, 1952 “Back to Methuselah” (TV Series), 1952 “Music at Night” (TV Movie), 1952 The Promoter, 1952 “The Cocktail Party” (TV Movie), 1950 Gone to Earth, 1950 Night and the City, 1949 Man on the Run, 1947 It Always Rains on Sunday, 1947 The October Man, 1941 Jeannie, 1941 Mail Train, 1940 Convoy, 1940 Law and Disorder, 1938 The Citadel, 1938 One Night in Paris, 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1936 Rembrandt, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 The Divine Spark, 1932 The Flying Squad, and 1929 The Shame of Mary Boyle.

Ralph Richardson ... The Boss (b. Ralph David Richardson, December 19, 1902 in Tivoli Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England—d. October 10, 1983 (age 80) in Marylebone, London, England) appeared in 82 films and television shows, among them 1984 Give My Regards to Broad Street, 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 1983 Invitation to the Wedding 1982 “Witness for the Prosecution” (TV Movie), 1981 Time Bandits, 1981 Dragonslayer, 1978 Watership Down, 1978 “No Man's Land” (TV

Movie), 1977 “The Man in the Iron Mask” (TV Movie), 1975 Rollerball, 1973 “Frankenstein: The True Story” (TV Movie), 1973 A Doll's House, 1973 O Lucky Man!, 1972 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1969 “David Copperfield” (TV Movie), 1969 Battle of Britain, 1969 The Looking Glass War, 1969 Midas Run, 1969 Oh! What a Lovely War, 1966 Khartoum, 1965 Doctor Zhivago, 1965 Falstaff - Chimes at Midnight, 1963 “Hedda Gabler” (TV Movie), 1962 The 300 Spartans, 1962 Long Day's Journey Into Night, 1960 Exodus, 1960 Oscar Wilde, 1959 Our Man in Havana, 1952 Breaking the Sound Barrier, 1949 The Heiress, 1948 Anna Karenina, 1942 The Avengers, 1939 The Lion Has Wings, 1939 The Fugitive, 1939 The Four

Feathers, 1939 Clouds Over Europe, 1938 The Citadel, 1938 The Divorce of Lady X, 1936 The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 Alias Bulldog Drummond, 1934 The King of Paris, 1934 The Return of Bulldog Drummond, and 1933 The Ghoul. Cedric Hardwicke ... Theotocopulos (b. Cedric Webster Hardwicke, February 19, 1893 in Lye, Worcestershire, England—d. August 6, 1964 (age 71) in New York City, New York) appeared in 110 films and TV shows, among them 1964 The Pumpkin Eater, 1964 “The Outer Limits” (TV Series), 1963 “Twilight Zone” (TV Series), 1961-1962 “The Gertrude Berg Show” (TV Series, 26 episodes), 1957 The Story of Mankind, 1956 The Ten Commandments, 1956 The Power and the Prize, 1956 The Vagabond King, 1956 Helen of Troy, 1956 Diane, 1955 Richard III, 1953 Botany Bay, 1953 Salome, 1951 The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel, 1949 Now Barabbas, 1949 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1948 The Winslow Boy, 1948 Rope, 1948 I Remember Mama, 1947 Lured, 1947 The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, 1946 Sentimental Journey, 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1944 The Keys of the Kingdom, 1944 Wing and a Prayer, 1944 Wilson, 1944 The Lodger, 1943 The Moon Is Down, 1943 Forever and a Day, 1942 Commandos Strike at Dawn, 1942 The Ghost of Frankenstein, 1941 Suspicion, 1940 Tom Brown's School Days, 1939 The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939 Stanley and Livingstone, 1937 King Solomon's Mines, 1936 Nine Days a Queen, 1936 Things to Come, 1935 Peg of Old Drury, 1935 Becky Sharp, 1935 Les Misérables, 1934 The Lady Is Willing, 1934 Nell Gwyn, 1934 Orders Is Orders, 1933 The Ghoul, 1931 The Dreyfus Case, and 1926 Nelson.

Menzies—H.G. WELLS’ THINGS TO COME—4

George Sanders ... Pilot (b. George Henry Sanders, July 3, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]—d. April 25, 1972 (age 65) in Castelldefels, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain) won the 1951 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for All About Eve (1950). He appeared in 134 films and television shows, among them 1973 The Death Wheelers, 1972 Endless Night, 1970 Rendezvous with Dishonour, 1970 The Kremlin Letter, 1969 The Candy Man, 1967 The Jungle Book, 1966 The Quiller Memorandum, 1965 “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” (TV Series), 1965 The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, 1962 Operation Snatch, 1961 Rendezvous, 1959 That Kind of Woman, 1956 While the City Sleeps, 1956 Never Say Goodbye, 1953 Call Me Madam, 1952 Assignment: Paris, 1952 Ivanhoe, 1951 I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1950 All About Eve, 1949 Samson and Delilah, 1949 The Fan, 1947 Forever Amber, 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1946 The Strange Woman, 1945 The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1944 The Lodger, 1943 This Land Is Mine, 1942 The Moon and Sixpence, 1942 The Falcon's Brother, 1942 The Falcon Takes Over, 1942 A Date with the Falcon, 1941 The Gay Falcon, 1941 The Saint in Palm Springs, 1940 The Son of Monte Cristo, 1940 Foreign Correspondent, 1940 The Saint Takes Over, 1940 Rebecca, 1940 The House of the Seven Gables, 1940 The Saint's Double Trouble, 1939 The Saint in London, 1939 The Saint Strikes Back, 1939 The Outsider, 1939 Mr. Moto's Last Warning, 1937 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'm 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 visual wizardry of Menzies, whose prestige derived from his uncanny eye for movie visuals.

Menzies played a crucial role in creating the stunning scenes of Gone with the Wind. The muted earth tones, shocking swatches of bright color, and the sweeping range of the sets are among Menzies's landmark contributions to this favorite American film. His sure and brilliant hand lies behind the wizardry of many other classic films. Menzies was an innovative designer who pioneered many special effects techniques. His varied contributions and the depth of his influence on the art of film were not widely recognized in his lifetime. In his career as a director, Menzies was often criticized for under-directing. But his films always looked stunning.

Making Film into Art A graduate of Yale University, Menzies served with the

American forces in Europe during World War I. After the war ended,

he attended classes at the Art Student League in New York City. He began his long career working for Famous Players and then for United Artists as a set designer on silent films. His earliest film credit was as art designer for a 1918 movie, The Naulahka . He worked on several films with director Raoul Walsh and actress Miriam Cooper, including Serenade in 1921 and Kindred of the Dust in 1922.

Menzies first teamed up with some big names when he worked on the design of a 1923 hit, Rosita, which was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starred Mary Pickford. In a few years, Menzies gained notoriety within the film industry for his hard work and willingness to go beyond conventional designs into new territory. He brought his magical touch to the filming of the ancient Arabian tale, The Thief of Baghdad, in 1924. Directed by Walsh and starring Douglas Fairbanks, the movie was hailed by critics and adored by audiences. Menzies's wondrous sets helped weave an intoxicating spell. The New York Times called it an "entrancing picture, wholesome and compelling, deliberate and beautiful, a feat of motion picture art which has never been equalled." Critic James Quirk called it "a work of rare genius. Here is the answer to critics who give the motion picture no place in the family of the arts."

Menzies was instrumental in elevating the Hollywood film to an art form. His creative energy and craftmanship raised the status of the designing arts in filmmaking. Menzies was the first to get

billing as a production designer, indicating overall credit for the entire look of a movie. He paid careful attention to every aspect of how a film looked. He would walk through movie sets with a sketch pad under his arm, always seeking to improve on details.

In 1925, Menzies contributed to four films, including a couple of romantic comedies and the Rudolph Valentino star vehicle, Cobra. Menzies' lavish interiors for that film illustrate the opulence of the 1920s. Also in 1925, Menzies contributed to the Valentino adventure, The Eagle.

Elegant interiors, sprawling exteriors: Menzies could do it all. His services were in increasing demand. In 1926, Menzies worked on Valentino's Son of the Shiek, the hokey terror film The Bat, and two other movies. The prolific Menzies contributed production designs to five films in 1927, six in 1928, nine in 1929, and ten in 1930. Increasingly, Menzies was working with top Hollywood stars 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 Barrymore in The Beloved Rogue and The Tempest, an adventure story set during the Russian Revolution.

Menzies's contributions were recognized during the first presentation of the Academy Awards, covering the years 1927 and 1928. Menzies received an Oscar for art direction for his work on The Dove and The Tempest. Menzies' last silent film, made in 1928, was Sadie Thompson, starring Gloria Swanson.

Menzies revolutionized film set decoration, transforming it from an incidental aspect of moviemaking to a central component of cinematic design. The grandeur of the classic Hollywood adventure epics, historical dramas and opulent romances was heavily influenced by his work. So was the popular film noir style, which Menzies pioneered by welding German expressionism with a hard-nosed American realism in films such as Alibi.

New Challenges In 1930, Menzies produced

his first film, The Wizard's Apprentice. Later, in the 1940s and 1950s, he would be the producer or associate producer on six other films. A more significant step came in 1931, when Menzies co-directed his first two films with Kenneth McKenna: Always Goodbye, a romantic comedy, and The Spider, a murder mystery adapted from a stage play. In 1932, Menzies had his first solo directing credit with Almost Married, a remake of a melodrama about bigamy. That same year he co-directed a Bela Lugosi science fiction thriller, Chandu the Magician.

With Cameron King, Menzies co-directed a romantic comedy, I Loved You Wednesday, in 1933. That same year, Menzies helped write the screenplay and design the sets for the Paramount version of Alice in Wonderland, a flop despite an all-star cast and Menzies's dazzling sets.

Menzies's most interesting film as a director was his 1936 conception of the H.G. Wells epic, Things to Come. Later science fiction films such as Blade Runner owed much to Things to Come. Invited to England by producer Alexander Korda to direct the film, Menzies mounted the action on elaborate, futuristic mindscapes. Visually, Things to Come was a seminal work of cinematic science fiction. It unfolds as a series of rather static scenes, set in three different periods in the future. Slow and somewhat didactic, it is remarkable for its special effects and hyper-modern style.

Not enjoying the success as a director that he had enjoyed as a production designer, Menzies returned to his earlier calling in 1938, designing the set for the cave sequence in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The Burning of Atlanta Perhaps the most memorable sequence in all of Hollywood

filmmaking is the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. Menzies is responsible for that incredible scene. It was done on a set in Los Angeles, with flames shooting 100 feet in the air. It was Menzies's idea to use the fire for a dual purpose - to clear out old sets from MGM's 40-acre back lot and to film the epic's climactic scene. Special effects teams piped oil and water into the sets to stoke or douse the flames, seven cameras were used, and the sets were made

to collapse by tractors pulling wire cables. Menzies masterminded the entire arrangement.

Menzies's handprints were all over Gone with the Wind. His tireless work was evident in the fine details of the sets, but he did much more than just production design. Three directors have been recognized as working on the film - Victor Fleming, George Cukor and Sam Wood - but Menzies also deserved credit. Producer David O. Selznick said Menzies "spent perhaps a year of his life in laying out camera angles, lighting effects and other important directorial contributors."

In fact, Menzies began work on the epic in 1937, using a five-hour-plus shooting script. He made a storyboard of every scene and camera angle - a rare achievement in those days. His concepts provided the impetus for the film's producers to go ahead and shoot the film on a studio back lot.

For his work on Gone with the Wind, Menzies received a special honorary Academy Award that cited his innovative use of color "for the enhancement of dramatic mood." The memorable uses of color include Scarlett O'Hara's red dress as she walks over gray dead bodies. In many other films, Menzies also used his technical skills to emphasize emotions. He often would

use barriers, such as fences or walls, to depict grief or tension between characters. He pioneered the technique of "forced perspective," building sets and using camera angles to exaggerate depths and thus emphasize danger or emotional distance.

A Director's Best Friend Gone with the Wind marked the first of Menzies's notable

collaborations with Wood. In 1940, Menzies contributed special effects (including the memorable windmill scene) for the Alfred Hitchcock picture, Foreign Correspondent; designed the acclaimed and popular Wood-directed film Our Town, and produced the masterful remake of The Thief of Baghdad . Alexander Korda was the director for that brilliantly conceived film about the Arabian Nights, and again Menzies did not receive credit for his full contributions; he should have been listed, according to some film historians, as co-director.

Menzies designed the productions of The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941, a popular romantic comedy; The Pride of the Yankees, a legendary sports biography, and Kings Row, an acclaimed melodrama about small-town America, in 1942; and the adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1943. Wood directed all four of these exceptional films, but Menzies played an immeasurable role in their success. Actress Teresa Wright, in an interview in 1959, recalls Wood relying heavily on Menzies's visual sense in Pride of the Yankees: "Bill Menzies used to draw a sketch for every scene - it was beautiful, it was well conceived. Bill had a marvelous motion picture eye. In his mind's eye he saw what would be the right finished product on the screen."

While doing stellar work on such important films of the 1940s, Menzies produced and directed several less notable movies, such as 1944's Address Unknown . In 1949, Menzies tried something new, directing a television series, “Fireside Theater.” 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 western, and The Maze was a bizarre horror-comedy about a wealthy heir who turns into a frog. Invaders from Mars is standard 1950s science-fiction fare redeemed by Menzies's unusual visuals. The plot involves a boy who sees aliens abduct his father and has a hard time convincing anyone that it really happened. The viewer gets a surreal, nightmarish glimpse into a child's world of uncaring adults. When the boy reports the incident at the police station, the sergeant's desk is impossibly high. Doors are too large and halls too long, and the only decorations on the walls are clocks that are always fixed at the same time.

The final film to which Menzies contributed was 1956's Around the World in Eighty Days, in which he was credited as associate producer. He died just a few months after that comedy-adventure became a big box-office hit.

Geoffrey O’Brien: Whither Mankind? (Criterion Notes) No one who sees it ever forgets it. Things to Come (1936) was an unprecedented event in British filmmaking, an extraordinarily ambitious and expensive production in which the full resources of cinema—an enormous cast, large-scale sets, and sophisticated visual design—were invested in realizing an epic of humanity’s future, as conceived by one of the world’s most famous living authors. Yet few have expressed unqualified enthusiasm for the work, not even those responsible for it. Producer Alexander Korda apparently lost some of his faith in the project during production, cutting back on H. G. Wells’s initial conceptions and considerably shortening the film before its release, just as the originally released version would be further abridged over the years. Raymond Massey complained about the “heavy-handed speeches” he was called on to deliver. As for Wells, he published a version of his screenplay even before the film came out, as if to disassociate himself from any discrepancy between his original vision and the results on the screen.

Reviewers of the time were duly impressed by the film’s overpowering scale and dazzling visual flourishes. There had “never been anything like Things to Come,” wrote C. A. Lejeune of the Observer. “No film, not even Metropolis, has even slightly resembled it.” But there was also a good deal of negative comment—aimed not so much at any inadequacies of Korda’s production values or William Cameron Menzies’s direction as at the preachiness of Wells’s script and the iciness of his future utopia—and box-office receipts came nowhere near earning back the film’s tremendous costs. Nonetheless, the film has outlived its detractors. A singular and haunting object, it persists in memory and in history by the sheer prophetic scope of its aspirations, a scope that no filmmaker until Kubrick would again

attempt. Such are the trains of speculation it sets in motion that even its gaps and contradictions have suggestive power.

The film’s memorable quality stems most obviously from a visual design that remains mesmerizing and, at times, overwhelming. Menzies had served as art director on many Hollywood films, being responsible most notably for the art-deco orientalist splendors of Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad (1924). He would go on to be a central creative contributor to Gone with the Wind (1939) and Duel in the Sun (1946), and to direct—with very mixed results, but always with a distinct compositional flair—such features as Address Unknown (1944) and Invaders from Mars (1953). His colleagues on Things to Come included set designer Vincent Korda (whose design genius would be further displayed in his brother Alexander’s 1940 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 clouds; the long, nearly abstract interlude of industrial reconstruction; and, finally, the gleaming subterranean pathways, soaring bridges, and gigantic television screens of the achieved World State. The effect of all these scenes is amplified immeasurably by the imposing sonorities of Arthur Bliss’s score.

But there is no denying that, despite any quibbles about omitted scenes or unapproved design changes, in its essence, Things to Come remains H. G. Wells’s movie, an almost unique instance in which a literary figure devoted to visionary and polemical ideas was provided with all the technical support of commercial cinema to get his message directly to the public. To the extent that the film fails to fully convey Wells’s vision, it is a judgment on that vision itself. Similarly, if Menzies can be faulted for the rather wooden pacing of some of the dialogue, it is only because he could not find a way to breathe life into language that is often flatly declamatory. By the same token, it is impossible to separate the film’s expressive visual and musical power from the intensity of what Wells intended to accomplish. He was a writer who, for all his espousal of scientific rationality, identified profoundly with the Hebrew prophets. He aspired to divination rather than amusing speculation. ***** Wells was nearly seventy when Things to Come opened in February 1936, an age at which he continued to be as astonishingly productive as he had been since the appearance of his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895; by the time of his death in 1946, he had published well over a hundred books. It is difficult now even to imagine the national and global prominence he enjoyed, not only as a popular novelist but as a historian, a political commentator, and the most 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 Men in the Moon, among others—had established him as the prophet of the possibilities and dangers of science, and given him the aura of someone who really knew what he was about when he peered into the future.

Moving far beyond the role of entertaining fantasist, Wells took it upon himself to map out where things were going and where they ought to be going. In the best-selling The Outline of History (1920) and A Short History of the World (1922), he painted a picture of slow and embattled human progress away from the ignorant childishness of primitive ages and toward a desirable maturity founded on reason, tolerance, and the scientific spirit. The catastrophe of World War I made him an even more impassioned spokesman for the World State that he saw as the inevitable goal toward which humans had always unconsciously been striving.

The Shape of Things to Come (1933) was to be the most elaborately formulated of Wells’s exercises in prophecy. Couched as a novel—it purports to be the transcription of an actual historical work of the early twenty-second century, transmitted through a series of mysterious dreams—it is, in style, a direct continuation of Wells’s historical works, pushing ahead methodically from the known into the immediate future, as it chronicles a disastrous decades-long war (predicted to begin in 1940, in a dispute between Germany and Poland) that leads to a gradual reversion to near barbarism. Such a catastrophe, aggravated by a devastating global epidemic (“the Wandering Sickness”), is necessary to bring about, at long last, the world-wide rule of sensibly minded technocrats, who proceed to build a new civilization that owes little to the traditions of the past.

The book’s style is precisely that of a history textbook: there are no characters to speak of, and hardly a trace persists of the poetic quality of Wells’s early novels. What is most striking about it is the unease inseparable from its date of publication: “The year 1933,” the historian of the future writes, “closed in a phase of dismayed apprehension.” The Shape of Things to Come becomes eerie when it foresees, however inadequately, the horrors that were in fact impending—horrors that Wells is eager to understand as merely a prelude to the grand World State that is surely coming. In this utopian era of the twenty-second century, all forms of religion will have been suppressed; “usury” and “monetary speculation” abolished, along with every other trace of capitalism; rational sexual happiness achieved after “ruthlessly eliminating sexual incitation from the lives of the immature”; hatred itself mitigated through treatment as “a controllable mental disease.” Self-interest will have given way to collective discipline: “We have learnt how to catch and domesticate the ego at an early stage and train it for purposes greater than itself.” The governance of the world will be in the hands of “a self-appointed, self-disciplined elite,” an elite consisting of scientists, social psychologists, and sensible men much like Wells himself.

It seems unlikely that Alexander Korda thought there was much of a movie in the book as it stood, and Wells acknowledged in the introduction to his published screenplay that “a new story has been invented” to exemplify the book’s intellectual arguments, or at

least the most elementary of them. It would be easy to mock the rudimentary dramatization to which Wells resorted. Every character is a spokesperson for one idea or another, from John Cabal’s “If we do not end war, war will end us” to his grandson Oswald’s final florid statement that “when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.” (In Massey, who plays both roles, Korda had certainly found an actor for whom—whether he liked the script or not—this kind of oratory seemed to come naturally.) Nothing occurs that is not designed to convey a precise point in the overall argument—the film is set, after all, in Everytown—and there is scarcely an attempt to sketch any emotional relationships of any depth. Even the scenes in the published screenplay in which Wells attempts, in however strained a fashion, to address future relations between men and women and between parents and children are not to be found in the finished film. Small

wonder if, by the last reel, audiences felt they had drifted into some peculiar sort of illustrated lecture.

***** It is indeed just that, an illustrated lecture. As such, it was very much of a piece with an emerging era of state-sponsored film-making, the age of Triumph of the Will (1935) and Alexander Nevsky (1938) and, in a more benign mode, the New Deal documentaries of Pare Lorentz, soon to be followed by the age of all-out wartime propaganda. Things to Come channels that atmosphere—its scenes of aerial bombing and ruined cities have the disturbing effect of achieved

clairvoyance, a 1940s newsreel made in the ’30s—but it stands apart from any state except the World State cherished in the imagination of H. G. Wells.

And so, despite the elimination of many of the most radical elements of Wells’s program (the assaults on religion, capitalism, and individualism), the film still carries a charge of real indignation at the order of things. The original and understandably rejected title, Whither Mankind?, underscores the extent to which Wells envisaged a work of prophetic exhortation, a call for fundamental change in the face of impending collapse. The film’s opening sequences, in which cheery scenes of an English Christmastide are juxtaposed with menacing headlines about war, could hardly be more heavily accentuated; even more so the shock image of a dead child amid bombed-out ruins. It helps to remember that these scenes were being shown to an audience in active denial, many of them, of the possibility of such things coming to pass in the near future.

The film comes closest to dramatic life in the middle, with the scene of the enemy aviator dying from his own poison gas, followed by the extended episode in which Everytown under-goes the horrors of the Wandering Sickness (underscored by the expressionistic death journey of Patricia Hilliard walking somnambulistically out of her ruined home to be shot down in the street) and falls under the sway of Ralph Richardson’s fur-draped warlord. Richardson draws all the Shakespearean energy he can out of the role, and Margaretta Scott, as his dis-con-tented mistress, matches him as best she can, given that much of her role was ultimately cut. It is the disparity between Richardson’s and Scott’s 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 the point where Wells’s concept falters as drama.

Perhaps the future should have remained in the realm of pure abstraction. The prolonged montage of the building of the new world is a paradise of whirling bobbins and conveyor belts, mag-nified screws and bolts, bubbling vats and showers of sparks—an industrial short elevated to a lyric poem. This level of abstraction is sustained in the trappings of the scenes that follow—with the wide-open spaces of the high-ceilinged conference rooms, the immense heights from which the governing elite look down at the masses below, the perpetual gliding and sliding of screens and surfaces—even if Wells was disappointed that Korda’s cost-cutting meant that many of the particulars he envisioned were never filmed. But if these scenes fall short, it is not because of any technical insufficiency—Menzies and the Kordas succeeded in creating glimpses of vast, cavernous interiors worthy of the legendary stage designs of Edward Gordon Craig—but because Wells gave the inhabitants of his new world, in their curious peak-shouldered tunics, very little of interest to do. We find ourselves in the air-conditioned halls and plazas of what seems like the world’s largest shopping mall, filled with antlike crowds streaming facelessly along. (The hygienic airlessness of the World State was sarcastically compared by New Republic critic Otis Ferguson to that of “a pure-food restaurant.”) The only sour note in this streamlined, anodyne place is the rebel sculptor played by Cedric Hardwicke, a reactionary bohemian—probably Wells’s revenge on the modernist aesthetes who gave him insufficient respect—who wants to halt technological progress in order to savor life the old-fashioned way. His call to action, delivered over a giant television screen that dwarfs those watching it, is quite impressive, but it is just at this point, as Hardwicke’s character mobilizes the angry masses, that the audience’s sympathies tend to go astray. Unfortunately, the future utopia and the scientists who rule over it alike are so unappealing that we may be inclined to root for the Luddites.

sAs Jorge Luis Borges remarked in a review of Things to Come, “The heaven of Wells and Alexander Korda, like that of so many other eschatologists and set designers, is not much different than their hell, though even less charming.” Borges went on to pinpoint the major flaw in Wells’s schema, the notion that science and technology would be the rallying force against tyranny: “In 1936, the power of almost all tyrants arises from their control of technology.” A few years later, after the war broke out, George Orwell would similarly note: “Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the airplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age.”

There is no way any audience, in the 1930s or now, would be likely to accept Raymond Massey’s Oswald Cabal as an empathetic spokesperson for the human race. He is essentially the chairman of the board of a quasi-fascist ruling elite—and not so very far from the idea that Wells, at best ambivalent about democracy, in fact had in mind. Yet the very resistance one feels toward the swelling rhetoric of the conclusion—the vision of an endless human adventure along lines laid out by science, in contrast to the complacent pursuit of mere pleasure or mere beauty—is a measure of the film’s force. Things to Come may finally be a more reliable prediction than we would like to think. It is not hard to imagine a future world utterly regulated and constrained by technology; we are, in fact, nearly there in many respects, even if without the utopian side effects that Wells liked to anticipate. From first to last, the film expresses strongly held convictions in a tone that is almost indifferent to the audience’s reaction. It hardly seeks to persuade: it displays and declares. Perhaps that is what comes of letting a writer have his way to this extent in the making of a film, and perhaps that is also why it happens so rarely; but we can, in any event, be grateful for the 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 Howard Hawks, RED RIVER, 1948 Sep 23 Robert Bresson, PICKPOCKET, 1959

Sep 30 Luis Buñuel, VIRIDIANA, 1961 Oct 7 Agnès Varda, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, 1962

Oct 14 Akira Kurosawa, REDBEARD, 1965 Oct 21 Nicolas Roeg, PERFORMANCE, 1970

Oct 28 Víctor Erice, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, 1973 Nov 4 Roman Polanski, TESS, 1979

Nov 11 Sydney Pollack, TOOTSIE, 1982 Nov 18 Joel and Ethan Coen, FARGO, 1996

Nov 25 Erik Skjoldbjaerg, INSOMNIA, 1997 Dec 2 Mike Nichols, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, 2007

CONTACTS:

...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu …email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu

...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com

....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo

And the Dipson Amherst Theatre with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News