The face of the future

The film begins in the fictional city of Eurytown. 1940 year. Christmas Eve. People are preparing for the holiday, there are a lot of people walking on the streets, songs are being sounded. But at the same time, everywhere next to the inscriptions in honor of Christmas - on posters posted on the walls, on trams, in large newspaper headlines - the word "war", "threat of war", "peace on the verge of war", "European ultimatum." Gradually, these posters occupy the entire field of view.

In a comfortable peaceful apartment in John Cabel ( Raymond Massey ), three men, including Pippa Passworthy ( Edward Chapman ), discuss the latest developments. Children near the Christmas tree roll toy tanks. One of the men, having fun, puts an infantry helmet on his head, then gives it to a little boy.

Adults talk about progress. Progress is a great blessing, but it makes weapons increasingly terrible, and a new war can destroy both progress and civilization, as we know it. War must be ended, Cabel says, otherwise the war will end us. But what can we do? - object to him.

The sound of Christmas bells is suddenly broken by distant tears. The night sky is crossed out by the rays of searchlights. Teachings? On Christmas? Phone ring. Mobilization! Radio announce that the fleet and cities were attacked by unidentified aircraft. Losses are negligible, keep calm.

Men go to mobilization points. A boy in an infantry helmet and with a drum escorts his father. Huge silhouettes of soldiers pass above him.

The war is rolling in a wave that has not had time to extinguish the festive illumination of the city. Gas trucks are distributed from the trucks. Anti-aircraft guns mounted in the middle of the squares are trying to drive away enemy planes, explosions of shells and bombs bring buildings straight at people.

The city is destroyed. The war has triumphed. But it continues - the infantry goes on the attack, the tanks demolish the barriers, the fleet goes to sea, thousands of bombers pass over the white coastal cliffs of Dover. Poison gas bombs fall on cities.

Next to the downed plane, another one lands. The pilot (this is John Cabel) helps a wounded enemy pilot, whose car he just shot down, get out from the wreckage. The wind drives clouds of poison gas towards them. Pilots get gas masks, but at this time a girl runs up to them - and a wounded enemy pilot gives her his mask. Before his death, he still manages to laugh at the fact that he will die from the gas, which he himself dumped.

In the smoke and soot of battles against the sky appears the date "1945". Then it is replaced by the date "1955".

The war continues. Tanks and planes are gone. There are caravans of wagons on the roads of Europe, soldiers dressed in wreckage, armed with hunting rifles and sabers. On barbed wire fences, bodies decay.

1960 year. Ruins overgrown with grass and bushes. Leaflet title: "Victory is near! .. strolling fever ... poisoned bombs ... infected water ..."

1966 year. Eurytown is destroyed, but the ruins are inhabited. People live in basements and on the ground floors. At the end of the war, a bacteriological attack caused an epidemic of "stray fever", a mysterious disease that uncontrollably spreads among survivors. The only way people can control fever is to kill every sick person immediately. Stocks of drugs have long been depleted. Almost all the doctors died. Civilization has been thrown back centuries.

1967 year. Like the medieval Black Plague, "vagrant fever" mowed down more than half of the population of Europe.

1970 year. The deaths from the fever ceased. The epidemic ended, and people began to gradually create a new social structure. Energy, fuel and communications are no longer there. Separate islands of civilization become independent principalities, constantly at war with each other.

Eurytown is one of such principalities, headed by a determined and power-hungry Leader ( Ralph Richardson ) in an infantry helmet with cock feathers. Cows and pigs walk in the streets of the city and horses drawn by cars. A young mechanic in a leather flight suit is trying to restore and raise old planes into the air. The leader supports his efforts, dreaming of a revival of military aircraft.

At this time, the sound of the engine. An amazing black plane with a short fuselage appears in the sky above the city and is landing. A gray-haired man in a spacesuit comes out of the cabin - this is John Cabel, thirty years old. The leader orders to arrest him, but Kabel does not pay attention to the annoying guard and behaves in the city as a master. He finds a mechanic and his old acquaintance, Dr. Harding ( Maurice Braddel ), and tells them that during the war he and his like-minded people, trying to resist a universal catastrophe, united in the organization “Wings over the World” and created an enclave of civilization in the Persian Gulf, gathered there scientists and engineers. They could not resist war and fever, but over thirty years the enclave grew, gained strength, created new amazing machines. Now that the war is over, it is time to unite the world again and lead it forward under the direction of the Wings.

Cabela is still arrested and brought to the Leader. The leader is not going to become a vassal of technocrats ; he is ready for any invasion of them. Having put Kabel in the basement, he conducts a small victorious war to assert himself and seizes the fortress (former factory) from his neighbors. The leader requires the mechanic to speed up the repair of aircraft, and Dr. Harding is trying to force him to make poisonous gases. The scientist refuses: he wants to remain a civilized man and will not help humanity slide into barbarism.

Soon, giant Black Wings over the World planes appear above Eurytown. They drop gas bombs and then land troops. The bombs are not poisonous, but asleep gas - the townspeople fell asleep to wake up already in the new world. Only the Leader died - he was a man from the past, in the past and remained.

The revival of civilization begins. Huge cars crush rocks, build houses, revives production. This part of the film is a real hymn to progress and to the creator man. A new city is created underground, it is perfectly planned, everything will be subordinated to reason and expediency in it.

The year is 2036 (almost 100 years after the fall of the city of Eurytown in 1940). Generations have changed, Eurytown is a brilliant city of the future. Diseases are conquered, human life lasts longer than ever. But here, progress is not perceived as something unambiguously positive, it has opponents dissatisfied with orderliness and planned happiness. A flight is being prepared around the moon, for which a giant cannon has been built. But the plans for space expansion have a strong opposition in the person of anti-progressives, led by the sculptor Theotocopoulos ( Cedric Hardwick ). They are trying to prevent the launch, but young enthusiasts do not back down and the start is carried out before the crowd of anti-progressives gets to the space gun control equipment.

At the end of the film, John Cabela’s grandson, Oswald Cabel ( Raymond Massey ), is talking to Raymond Passuorthy ( Edward, Chapman ) against the backdrop of the starry sky. Raymond's son and Kabel's daughter set off into space, and Raymond is filled with fear.

“What our children have done is amazing, but will they be back?”

“They will return,” Kabel answers, “they will return and again go into space - until the landing on the moon is completed.” And this will be just the beginning.

“But what if they don’t come back?”

“Then others will follow in their footsteps.”

“God, will there ever be happy times?” Or is peace unattainable?

- Each of us is waiting for peace, and his name is death. But for Humanity there is neither death nor peace. It must go forward, accomplishing one conquest after another. First we go beyond the boundaries of our small planet, and then we learn all the laws of spirit and matter that bind us to it. Then the planets. Then the stars ...

“But man is so fragile, so weak ...”

- If we are nothing more than weak animals, then we should be content with a little bit of happiness that we are measured out, suffer and disappear, like other animals. But we have been given a choice, Passworthy: the Universe - or nothing. What do we prefer? What will Mankind prefer? ..

• This film can be considered the author’s project of Herbert Wells - he wrote a script based on his journalistic book “The Look of the Future”, participated in the selection of actors, explained to them the tasks on the set, supervised the work of costume designers, and approved the composer of the film Arthur Bliss .
• Before starting work on the film, a memorandum was circulated to all those involved in modeling and performing costumes and sets for the final part of the film, outlining the basic requirements for sets and costumes. In this memorandum, the future “Appearance of the Future” was sharply contrasted with “ Metropolis ”: “A nonsense, like the one we find in such a film as“ Metropolis “Fritz Lang with his“ robots ”- mechanical workers, super-skyscrapers, etc., etc. - you need to once and for all get out of your head before you start working on this film. As a general rule, you must learn for yourself that what Lang did in Metropolis is exactly the opposite of what we are striving for. ” [1]
• The film premiered in London on February 20, 1936 .
• On November 17, 1936, the film was shown at the US Embassy in Moscow , where Mikhail Bulgakov and his wife watched it. Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova wrote in her diary:

“Reception at military attache Faimonville in the house of the American ambassador. Two films. The first, according to Wells, “Future”, is about a future war. The beginning is very strong, the end is far-fetched, unconvincing ... "

• In 1979, based on The Look of the Future, the film “The Shape of Things to Come” was shot in Canada , which has little to do with the original film.

• Wells is believed to have had unprecedented control over the making of the film for the screenwriter. He personally controlled almost all aspects of the production. “HG Wells' THINGS TO COME” (“The face of the future” by G. Wells) was written on the advertising posters of the film, below, in smaller letters, was written “an Alexander Korda production” (produced by Alexander Korda). However, in fact, Wells did not gain control of the installation. As a result, a large number of captured scenes were not included in the film. The original version of the film lasted 130 minutes; the version provided by the British Board of Film Censors lasted 117 minutes ^[1] ; the UK version of the rental lasted 108 minutes, ^[2] (later it was reduced to 98 minutes), the rental version in the United States lasted 96 minutes. The now available version has a duration of only 92 minutes, although in the United States, where this film is in the public domain, options are circulating that include scenes that were part of the original rental version for the United States.
• Wells originally wanted the music to be recorded before the film was shot, and the film, therefore, had to be built “around” the music. But this approach was considered too radical, and the soundtrack of the work of composer Arthur Bliss was “superimposed” on the film after filming, in accordance with the traditional way of sounding. A concert suite based on the music for this film has remained popular, as of 2003, about half a dozen different recordings of this work continued to be published.
• After the start of filming, the Hungarian abstract artist Laszlo Mohoy Nagy was invited to work on the film, who was supposed to create effects that accompany the scenes of the restoration of Eurytown. Mohoy-Nagy created the desired effects in the form of an abstract light show, but only 90 seconds of the material he realized went into the film (like a translucent projection through which working construction machines and erected buildings are visible). However, in the fall of 1975, researchers discovered four previously unknown scenes of this show that were not included in the final installation. ^[3]

The film is noteworthy due to its prediction of World War II . The author of the book, Herbert Wells, guessed where the war began, but was mistaken with the start date of the war for only four months in his book The Shape of Things to Come, published in September 1933. Wells wrote that World War II would begin with a bloody clash between Germans and Poles in Danzig in January 1940.

The strategic bombings depicted in the film in scenes where Eurytown is destroyed by air attacks and society is slipping to a barbaric level, speak of the danger of bombing. In many ways, these scenes predicted the true events of World War II. Wells himself was known for his predictions of the combat use of aviation, for example, in 1908 he wrote the novel War in the Air, and in 1913, The Liberated World, where he described atomic warfare.

• Frederik Pohl, Frederik Pohl IV. Science Fiction Studies in Film. - Reissue edition. - Ace Books , 1984. - S. 346. - ISBN 0-441-75434-1 .

• G.J. Wells. Scenario of the film “The Face of the Coming” (per. S. Zaimovsky)