Man in the Moon (review)

Man in the Moon is a largely forgotten comedy sf film that, while it might not particularly engage contemporary audiences, nevertheless illuminates characteristic 1950s British attitudes towards science and scientists ('boffins'), specifically the mingled excitement and fears about the space race and the threat of secretive research laboratories conducting dubious experiments on human subjects. Man in the Moon's director Basil Dearden and its producer Michael Relph were a long-established partnership (going back to 1946), one of the mainstays of Ealing Studios before its closure in 1955 (see Burton and O'Sullivan). The pair had recently (September 1959) helped to establish Allied Film Makers (AFM) with Bryan Forbes (who co-wrote the original screenplay with Relph), Richard Attenborough and Jack Hawkins (Walker 102-6). AFM enjoyed creative autonomy in its choice of subject matter and a revolving production fund provided by the Rank Organisation which distributed its films and exhibited them on its Odeon cinema circuit (Forbes 291-2). Man in the Moon was AFM's second production with a substantial budget of £202,000 (Walker 105) and was partly a vehicle for Kenneth More, whose name appears above the title and whose presence dominates the film.

More plays William Blood, a professional guinea pig currently employed at the Common Cold Research Unit, but whose employers despair at his iron constitution. He beams amiably at his fellow employees as they cough and splutter in gale force winds replicated in the British Summer Simulator or sit under individual showers against a backdrop of 'rain stops play' at Old Trafford in the Exposure to Outdoor Sports (Traditional) Test. Blood's superhuman fitness brings him to the attention of Dr Davidson (Michael Hordern), a scientist at NARSTI (the National Atomic Research Station and Technological Institute) looking for a human subject for its Pathfinder mission to the Moon, rather than risking the group of astronauts who have been highly trained for five years or incurring further public outcry by using animals! At this point, Man in the Moon becomes more overtly satirical, with production designer Don Ashton's sets evincing a brutal modernity of angular plate glass exteriors and antiseptic interiors. Davidson and fellow boffins Dr Wilmot (John Glyn-Jones) and mission leader Professor Stephens (John Phillips) are characterised as ruthless and calculating beneath their veneer of affability and avuncular Britishness. One reviewer commented on their 'grotesque blend of fanaticism, callousness, and fitful somnolence' (Shorter). They are determined to win the space race, a preoccupation that dominated scientific research from October 1957, when the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 was launched, to 1975. Although it was a Cold War contest between American and Soviet superpowers, the space race gripped the British public (Hopkins 396-8). With comic improbability, the NARSTI boffins believe Britain can get to the moon first, thereby demonstrating British superiority to the world.

They never reveal the purpose of their testing to the imperturbable Blood, blissfully unaware of their machinations as he completes the various trials — being frozen or boiled in individual pods or whirled around at twenty Gs in a gravity simulator. He becomes a figure of hate for the existing astronauts, a sinister group of roboticised over-achievers, as he consistently outperforms them on each successive test. Their enraged leader, Leo (Charles Gray), resorts to sabotage, spurred on by envy and the £100,000 prize offered by Billy Butlin for being the first man on the moon — a satirical comment on the penetration of rampant consumerism into public life. Aware that Leo's jealousy might jeopardise the mission, Wilmot arranges for him to be suspended in a tank of water until his 'mind is cleansed', making him receptive to the suggestion that he is Blood's best friend. Here, Man in the Moon's satire of the fanatical space race melds with another typical 1950s Cold War preoccupation — brainwashing. Usually attributed to communist regimes (Shaw 79), as in an earlier British sf film, The Gamma People (Gilling UK 1956), this rather chilling scene (several reviewers found it 'macabre...