film and architecture section: things to come by HG Wells, architecture and film appreciation

category: Architecture and Film (The waterloo University syllabus) (click HERE for syllabus)
film index: 56
relationship with architecture: prediction of future and architecture.

film: Things to come
director: William Cameron Menzies
writers: H.G. Wells
production: Uk, Us United artists
release: 20 February 1936
playtime: 117 min
visual:
Language: English
Subtitles:
Genre: sci fi
Cast:
size: 896 mb

reference: Taringa.net

Description and download:

One of the most important science fiction films of all time, it opens prior to World War II and takes the viewer on a hundred year time trip to 2036 A.D. when a man and woman are rocketed to the moon. This inspired saga predicts television, jet planes and evil dictators. Featuring fabulous sets, a rich musical score and sweeping visual grandeur. Visionary science fiction novelist H.G. Wells teams up with ace producer Alexander Korda to produce this landmark motion picture epic.

Wells is assumed to have had a degree of control over the project that was unprecedented for a screenwriter, and personally supervised nearly every aspect of the film. Posters and the main title bill the film as "H. G. Wells' THINGS TO COME", with "an Alexander Korda production" appearing in smaller type. Wells's film treatment and selected production notes were published in book form in 1935, and was reprinted in 1940 and 1975. An academic edition annotated by Leon Stover was published in 2007.

In fact, Wells ultimately had no control over the finished product, with the result that many scenes, although shot, were either truncated or not included in the finished film. The rough-cut reputedly ran to 130 minutes; the version submitted to the British Board of Film Censors was 117m 13s; it was released as 108m 40s (later cut to 98m 06s) in the UK, and 96m 24s in the United States. The standard version available today is just 92m 42s, although some prints are in circulation in the United States - where the film is in the public domain - that retain the additional scenes that constitute the original American release.

Wells originally wanted the music to be recorded in advance, and have the film constructed around the music, but this was considered too radical and so the score, by Arthur Bliss, was fitted to the film afterwards in a more conventional way. A concert suite drawn from the film has remained popular; as of 2003, there are about half-a-dozen recordings of it in print.

After filming had already begun, the Hungarian abstract artist László Moholy-Nagy was commissioned to produce some of the effects sequences for re-building of Everytown. Moholy-Nagy's approach was partly to treat it as an abstract light show but only some 90 seconds of material was used (e.g. a protective-suited figure behind corrugated glass), although in the autumn of 1975 a researcher found a further four discarded sequences.

imdb links: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028358/
wikipedia links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come

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Monday, November 16, 2009

things to come by HG Wells, architecture and film appreciation

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