The Shape of Things to Come: H. G. Wells and Radical Culture in the 1930's

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME: H. G. WELLS AND RADICAL CULTURE IN THE 1930'S BY TIMOTHY TRAVERS, Tim Travers teaches histoiy at the University ofCaigan- in Alberta, Canada. *Thefilm title was shortened to Things to Come, eds . H. G. Wells is not usually associated with the film medium. But as early as 1895 he had helped R. W. Paul, the Bntish film pioneer, take out a patent for a visual 'Time Machine' that would materialize Past, Present and Future for a wondering (and paying) audience. (1) Subsequently several of Wells' books were turned into films, but his first attempt to specifically write a film scenario, The King Who was a King (1929), was a failure, perhaps because of its awkward moralizing around an intellectual anti-war theme. However, in 1934, Alexander Korda produced a film version of Wells' The Man Who Could Work Miracles, and soon afterwards asked Wells to turn his recent book, The Shape ofThings to Come (1933), into a film script. Wells did so, and for two years a very distinguished crew (2) labored to achieve a suitable vehicle for Wells' vision of the future. The Shape of Things to Come* was released in 1936 and achieved some critical acclaim, although little financial success. (3) Nevertheless, the film is significant because it was one ofthe very few commercial films—as opposed to documentaries—made in Bntain during the 1930's with serious political and social content. (4) In fact, The Shape of Things to Come both reflects and emphasizes certain fundamental issues of the mid-1930's, in particular the growing tendency to offer radical solutions to social, political and economic problems. Hence Wells' film offers useful research material for the historian, as well as being itselfa convenient teaching device for those lecturing on Britain in the 1930's. The Shape ofThings to Come opens in the city of "Everytown" -obviously London—in the future year 1940. A sense of impending doom is generated through shots of war posters, and a family discussion that takes place inside a well-to-do household—"If we don't end war, war will end us. ..." The scene prepares us for the following war of destruction, but also reflects the pessimistic feeling in Britain from about 1933, ofthe probability ofa future war. Moreover, the film's emphasis on the need to avert war, fits in with the strong peace movement of the early 1930's. Wells' anti-war sentiment was familiar to a country that had witnessed the 1933 Oxford debate, the Reverend Dick Sheppard's Peace Pledge Union, and the Peace Ballot of 1934-1935. However, both the peace movement and Wells' film did not so much reflect a "peace at any price" demand, but a call for a collective stand against war and aggression. (5) Following a long war preparations sequence, the film permits Wells to exploit his long-standing interest in the impact of technology on warfare, particularly the efficient development ofthe bomb carrying aeroplane, and the consequent inevitability of mass war, involving the entire civilian population as well as the armed forces. (6) Very effective special effects show the chaotic results of an air raid on a city population, while on the battlefield sinister tanks loom through the smoke, and a massive air-fleet 22 approaches the white cliffs of Dover. The emphasis on air war and the strategic importance ofthe bomber, reveals not only Wells' appreciation ofthe military potential of the airplane (cf. his War in the Air. 1 908). but also contemporary fears for the bombing of civil populations, especially with the new gas weapon. As Baldwin was to say in the House of Commons on November 10, 1932, "there is no power on earth that can protect him [the man on the street] from being bombed. . . . [T]he bomber will always get through. . . ." (7) The film then vividly depicts the results of such a mass air war: namely, the reduction ofthe world to barbarism and disease-in effect, a return to the Middle Ages. The illusion of feudalism is reinforced as the film concentrates on a local warlord (Ralph Richardson) who has carved out a kingdom for himself amidst the chaos and...