Amazon.com Essentials:
Based on H.G. Wells's speculative meditation on the price of
progress, this 1936 English science-fiction epic shows the painterly
touch of director William Cameron Menzies, an American whose career in
art direction and production design, as well as uncredited directorial
work, attached him to such visual triumphs as Gone with the
Wind, Alexander Korda's sumptuous 1940 Thief of Baghdad,
and Menzies's better-known SF achievement as director, the original Invaders from
Mars. Things to Come traces a generational saga that
begins, presciently, with a global war that outlives its own political
purpose, unraveling society to a Balkanized world of isolated
communities. In the wake of a subsequent, devastating plague, a new
technocracy arises, evolving toward Menzies's striking vision of vast,
subterranean cities, rendered in matte paintings building on
then-contemporaneous art-deco "streamlined" aesthetics. Driven more by
theme than plot, Things to Come lacks the sheer momentum of
other Wells classics brought to film (The Invisible Man,
War of the
Worlds, and The Time Machine,
among them); but Menzies's bold look and a strong cast including
Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke and a young Ann
Todd explain the film's enduring appeal. --Sam Sutherland
