Saturday is typically "Take Out the Trash" Day. And while this is not the worst movie I've ever seen, it certainly comes wretchedly close....
The Story of Mankind(Irwin Allen, 1956) Before becoming "The Master of Disaster" of 1970's cinema, and even before his tenure of TV sci-fi schlock-meister in the 1960's, Irwin Allen was making movies of indeterminate quality and low budgets, first with RKO, where he produced movies as package deals teaming actors, writers and directors. We talked about one of them, Double Dynamite, here. That one starred studio boss Howard Hughes' favorite, Jane Russell, a down-on-his-luck Frank Sinatra...and Groucho Marx. He produced another film—also starring Groucho—before making his directorial debut with a documentary version of Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us, a film that Carson loathed—she never again let Hollywood touch one of her books—but it managed to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. And because it relied largely of stock footage, it also managed to turn a tidy profit.
After moving from RKO to Warner Brothers, Allen made another documentary and then turned his attention to The Story of Mankind. Based on a Newbury Award-winning children's book,*published in 1921, Allen did a very (very!) loose adaptation**, again relying mostly on stock footage, and a large cast that were paid day-rates and shuffled through production as quickly as possible.
The film centers around "The High Tribunal of Outer Space"—basically a three-tiered court-bench, a couple of desks and a floor of fog, with a circle of extras and as cheap a set as has been used in Hollywood—where the High Judge (Cedric Hardwicke) is holding court. It seems that mankind has created a new weapon, a "Super-H-bomb" and the survival of the species is in the balance. So, a case is being made—not that it would apparently do any good—of whether mankind (or species-kind) should survive. Nothing is said of how the outcome will be dispensed or if any interference is going to be made to influence the outcome.
At least, with a fantasy like A Matter of Life and Death, the stakes were small enough that events could be altered to accommodate the judgment, but here there is no apparent action—there evidently was no stock-footage available to make the point.
So, we're left with an impotent court-proceeding in judgment of mankind. It was a hoary concept then, and it was a hoary concept when Gene Roddenberry purloined it for the pilot of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". The prosecuting attorney arguing against the mass-plaintiff is Mr. Scratch, aka "The Devil" (played by Vincent Price, who seems to be the only player having a good time making the movie and who, therefore, seems to attract audience sympathy). For the defense is a singular non-entity called "The Spirit of Mankind" played by Ronald Colman (his last role) with the resigned air of a beleaguered "straight-man" going through the motions.
The Devil brings up all sorts of examples of humanity at its worst. Then, Allen illustrates it with set-design at its worst and trots out one of his day-players—John Carradine as Khufu, Peter Lorre as Nero, Virginia Mayo as Cleopatra (the script actually says "Yes, Cleopatra was quite a girl..."), Marie Wilson as Marie Antoinette (the way she squeaks "Let them eat cake!" will set your teeth on edge), and...wait for it...Dennis Hopper as Napoleon.
Peter Lorre's Nero is extremely illustrative of the whole exercise.
"The Spirit of Man" counters with Moses (Francis X. Bushman), Hippocrates (Charles Coburn), Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc—with one really unfortunate transition between scenes***—Queen Elizabeth I (Agnes Moorehead) and William Shakespeare (Reginald Gardiner), Sir Isaac Newton (Harpo Marx...Harpo Marx?!!), Christopher Columbus (Anthony Dexter explains his theory of a round Earth to a monk played by Chico Marx!!), Alexander Graham Bell (not Don Ameche, but Jim Ameche), then wraps things up with a plug for The Bible and a kid representing the potential of mankind. Judge Judy would have cleared the room in seconds...with her boots.
As he did with his earlier documentaries, Allen bridges scenes that he shot with stock footage from other Warner films to make it appear that some money was spent on the thing and it wouldn't surprise if he cherry-picked figures from the History that he had available images for.
You could make an argument that it all was an attempt at "camp" if the serious parts weren't taken so seriously and the comedy bits didn't fall flatter than the American accents used by all these international figures. No, it's all "1950's-sincere," which is merely hilarious in retrospect for all the silly import imbued in the thing. "Camp" implies you know what you're doing.
But, I will confess to enjoying a couple of things. Price's performance is enjoyably arch, and played with his typical game commitment to bad material. If he betrayed on ounce of condescension, it wouldn't work or be as entertaining as it is and one has to admit, he's a Hell of a trooper.
And then there's a Groucho Marx moment in his embarrassing segment of Peter Minuit robbing the island of Manhattan from the Natives, who declare the proposition "robbery!" ("That's quite true, but is it a deal or isn't it?"). It's just one line, but it made me laugh out loud. When Groucho/Minuit meets with the all-too Anglo-depicted Indians, he is greeted with the stereotypical "How..." to which Groucho replies "Three minutes and leave them in the shell!"—a Marxian non sequitur of such head-spinning irrelevance that for a moment I thought the movie might actually be turning clever.
Needless worrying. The segment was racist, sexist, inaccurate, and (worst of all) unfunny, showing how off the Marx The Story of Mankind is.
They (Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke) also screened many films, including Destination Moon, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Forbidden Planet. Kubrick soon discovered that Clarke was far too forgiving of material he found embarrassingly shallow and badly made. When the author insisted he screen the 1936 British science fiction classic Things to Come, written by H.G. Wells and based on a number of his stories, Kubrick "exclaimed in anguish, 'What are you trying to do to me? I'll never see anything you recommend again!'" Clarke remembered in 1972.
I cannot imagine Stanley Kubrick "exclaiming in anguish" so much as mocking testily. But, if the director did indeed say that, he did have a point. Wells' later science fiction work in light of "The War That Ends All Wars" casts its eye less on the fantastical and more on the sociological, with the world's fate hanging on the desires of the gifted and the merely covetous. It may sound fine in the abstract, but Wells seems to forget that History is the slaughterhouse registry of the Powerful against the power-less.
It is 1940, and a Christmas party is being thrown by scientist John Cabal (Raymond Massey). But the festivities are overshadowed by the fear of an imminent war being radioed on the news. Cabal's fellow guest Harding (Maurice Braddell) is also glum, but Pippa Passworthy (Edward Chapman) is not so pessimistic, and looks on the bright side—even if it happens, it will spur technological progress, which is a good thing, right? Cabal sticks to the basics: "If we don't end war, war will end us." And, as if to mock everyone's sentiments, the attacks begin that night.
It turns out that everybody is right. The war does advance technology, at least in the sort of armored vehicles and flying battalions that reign terror. As for the people, they are literally bombed into the stone age, fleeing to underground bunkers and sewers for protection from the devastation, and, in their struggle to survive, allow themselves to be ruled by autocratic strong men—their proverbial man on a white horse—who fill the vacuum and their pockets as those craving power always do. In this case, it's "The Boss" Rudolph (Ralph Richardson), who has taken over the management of "Everytown" since the end of the war in 1966. But, the conditions have led to a pandemic of a final biological tactic, "the wandering sickness," and "The Boss" ignores the efforts of Dr. Harding (Maurice Braddell) with his own solution—shoot the sick down in the street, and expands his plans by ordering his mechanic, Richard Gordon (Derrick De Marney) to try to fix the remaining planes to bomb the outliers beyond his control in "The Floss Valley" and take over their deposits of oil and shale to turn into oil for the planes.
But, in 1970, an answer arrives from the skies. John Cabal arrives on a newly designed airplane and informs Harding and Gordon that he has come from Basra, Iran, where survivors of the war have established a new government, World Communications, where mechanics and engineers have formed The Brotherhood of Efficiency to bring new technology to the survivors to rebuild civilization and join the new government in banning war and advancing mankind. Sounds good, except to the guy in charge. Following the maxim that "Equality is seen by the privileged as oppression," Rudolph captures Cabal and forces him to work with Gordon on the old planes, but his plans are thwarted when the "Wings Over the World" contingent of World Communications is alerted to, and they fly over, releasing their "peace gas," which sounds like a bad euphemism, but merely gives the citizens a good night's sleep.
All except for Rudolph, who has a bad reaction to the "peace gas"—a fatal conflict of interest, maybe—and dies. It's a little convenient, but metaphorically apt, it seems. It allows Cabal to announce that old autocracies are as dead as Rudolph, allowing a new world to start, allowing "a new life for mankind." No one mentions that it also means no technological solution can be perfect.
And...scene.
There follows another montage of the building of that "new life" as the world's population moves underground and start building new bright and shiny civilization-cities, where people are able to progress and live in peace. So much so, that Cabal's grandson Oswald (Massey again) looks to conquering new worlds and expanding our horizons off the Earth with a planned moon-shot. But...there's always gotta be a critic. "Sure, you can Build Back Better," but how are ya gonna pay for it? In this case, it's the sculptor Theotocopulus (Cedric Hardwicke), who's pissed because he's lost an art grant of something because of all the money spent on Cabal's space-cannon, or something.
Actually, no. His argument is less practical. He believes that humanity is tired of progress. "All sorts of people" are saying it, I guess. Enough so that he forms a mob to try and storm the space-cannon to try and stop it from launching (wouldn't you volunteer to stop a rocket launch...like one of those Saturn 5's that turn the surrounding acreage crispy?). But, Cabal, having seen the rise of petty autocrats before, decides he's going to ignore the mob (in all his Randian objectivism) and is able to send the manned probe into space, despite the Luddite uprising, and looks to the audience and intones "All the Universe, or nothing? Which will it be? Which will it be?"
Me? I'd look for a third option.
I gently mock, but Wells' story is all vague philosophizing without any practical demonstrations or innovations. Things look nice, and all, in that futuristic Fritz LangMetropolis kind of way.*But, is everybody benefiting from the new technology? Is everybody housed and fed? Is everybody working...or do they need to work? And if they're working, are they working for bad bosses? And this "Brotherhood of Efficiency"...if they're using "metrics", you can count me out. There's no details here, just a sleek gloss-over. And the black and white of it isn't just in the photography, but in the binariness of choices. Is it always just a choice between progress and...(oh, what's the opposite of "pro?" Oh, yes) "congress?" And Wells' thinking seems to be that all the world needs to get along in technological advancement (if, of course, everyone advances equally regardless of class or income—if, indeed, there are such concepts in his utopia). One would argue that television, the computer, and the internet all have negative consequences, despite the best of intentions. Maybe even enough to tilt things out of balance. There's a limitation to what you can convey with a monolithic society...as opposed to extra-terrestrial monoliths
Kubrick did take something from Things to Come, though, and that is in the use of long stretches of montage, not to convey the passage of time (he did that in a single famous edit), but, rather, as a visual instruction manual on how things have changed and have become in the film (despite the technological advancements and accomplishments) every-day and banal. As a result, there are less moments of upturned faces and speechifying in grandiloquent tones. That seems less human to me and more autocratic, which, if I'm reading the film correctly, is just the sort of Coming Things Wells cautions against.
* One should put out that Things to Come is probably most influenced by Metropolis, which was made just nine years earlier, right down to the binary philosophical arguments, although Lang (and his scenarist Thea von Harbour) did come up with that third option. Mind? Heart? How about working in conjunction?
Seventy eight years ago tonight (at 8 pm EST, in fact), Orson Welles chose to do a radio broadcast just for Hallowe'en—a radio adaptation of H.G. Well's novel of "The War of the Worlds" on his "Mercury Theater On the Air" broadcast on the CBS radio network. Welles' "Mercury Theater" show was not that popular, and so a lot of people didn't hear the introduction of the piece stating clearly that it "presenting 'The War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells"; most of those listening to the radio at that time of the evening were listening to the more popular "The Chase and Sanborn Hour", which featured ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy (yes, a show with a ventriloquist was very popular on radio). But, twelve minutes into the comedy show, there was a song interlude, and people did then what they do now—they surfed the dial, looking for something better until the segment was over and they could turn back. And what they found was this:
At about twelve minutes in, the broadcast was just getting interesting: a faux dance music program was being presented and interrupted by "news bulletins" reporting that plumes of incandescent gas had been seen leaving the planet Mars and headed for Earth. A "return to scheduled programming." Then another interruption saying that meteorites have landed near Grover's Mill, New Jersey (as opposed to Woking, Surrey in Wells' novel) and Princeton expert Professor Richard Pearson (Welles) is brought in to speculate that there is no life on Mars. The next segment is a "live report" from Grover's Mill where "reporter Carl Phillips" (played by Frank Readick, who had "prepped" for this segment by listening to reporting of the explosion of The Hindenburg) reports on the opening of the cylindrical meteorites, the appearance of tentacled creatures wielding a death beam that incinerates the crowd... And then...silence.
The original script (by the ubiquitous Howard Koch) was deemed too dull by Welles, and a new draft was created, inspired by an Archibald MacLeish radio-play "Air Raid" (in which Welles had appeared). The idea was not to dramatize events as in the novel, but to use the medium of radio to provide the context and the drama of how such an invasion might play out under the circumstances and over the air-waves. More than the audio of a staged play (as most of these things were), it was very much of its source—a radio-play, by, of, and about the experience of getting the news live over this new medium, unfiltered and immediately...without a chance for resolution.
"Panic" may be too strong a word for the result, and the newspapers played it up to discredit the reliance of radio for news,* but there were many, many, many people who heard the simulated news-casts and, now used to recent advances that allowed "news flashes" interrupting programming, and at a time when Germany was making moves on Austria and Czechoslovakia, took them for the real thing. A cursory search on the dial would have told them that the only network broadcasting the events at Grover's Mill was CBS, but the events were so compelling that not many switched away. Some merely left their radios in their panic to avoid "the coming invasion." It wasn't until the 43 minute mark in the broadcast (which ran no commercials as it was not sponsored) that the network broke in to remind listeners that they were, in reality, listening to a radio-play. This was necessitated as the CBS switchboard in New York was flooded with calls to the point of incapacitation.
For Welles, three things happened: he became a nationwide celebrity, "The Mercury Theater On the Air" got a sponsor and became "The Campbell Soup Hour", and Welles was lured to Hollywood by RKO Studios, where they hoped he might make a film of "The War of the Worlds," to cash in on the notoriety. He had other plans.
A film of "The War of the Worlds" would have to wait.
The War of the Worlds(Byron Haskin, 1953) Twenty five years after Welles' broadcast, George Pal made a Technicolor movie out of Wells' novel. Like the radio broadcast, it updated the story for the times. The time is the present and the phenomenon is world-wide while the film concentrates on cylinders landing in Linda Rosa, California, outside of Los Angeles. By chance, Dr. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry), a scientist involved with America's development of the atomic bomb happens to be fishing nearby when the nearest craft zooms overhead. Investigating, he finds a crowd of people, including Linda Rosa residents Silvia van Buren (Ann Robinson) and pastor Matthew Collins (Lewis Martin), her uncle. The glowing craft is giving off radioactivity and so three locals elect to stand guard until the thing cools down enough to be investigated, and Forrester elects to wait until morning in town.
Before he can return the meteorite opens up and a snake-like periscope rises from the crash. As the three men approach, the scope emits a shrieking heat-ray that atomizes them on the spot, and knocks out power to the town, alerting Forrester that something's happened and he finds out that Earth is under attack from Martian war-machines, shaped like flying manta-rays.**
** Although not a tripod as in the novel, the Martian attack-ships start off elevating on three beams of energy that then disappear (no doubt owing to the cost of animating)
The 1953 movie is interesting for its inclusion of nuclear power and weaponry into the mix—eight years after Hiroshima and amid other films that, at the time, used atomic energy to produce horrors in Nature. Religion is given far more importance in the 1953 movie than the novel (where Wells dismisses it entirely), although it proves ineffective in the short term, but is given the credit for the long-term outcome. Forrester stands in for Wells' unnamed narrator, separated from his fellow survivors and struggling to evade the war machines to get back to his wife—in the movie's instance, its the newly reunited Ms. van Buren, Forrester's former student.
Pal's version became a classic, one of the few science fiction films that the Hollywood establishment took notice of besides its receipts (in no small part due to Cecil B. DeMille's championing of it), winning a de facto Oscar for its spectacular effects combining wire-and-model work and animation (the machines were so popular they were re-used in Pal and Haskin's Robinson Crusoe on Mars). It is still well-regarded as a superior sci-fi adventure film. The Wells estate was so enthusiastic with the result that they gave Pal the pick of any of Wells' stories to make another film of. His choice was The Time Machine, which was released in 1960.
War of the Worlds(Steven Spielberg, 2005) Fifty two years after George Pal's film and sixty seven years after Welles' broadcast, Spielberg completed his unofficial trilogy of Earth invasion films (after Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-terrestrial) with his own version of the Wells story, again, updated for the times and without the article "the" in the title, so as to avoid confusion with the original. The invasion is, once again, world-wide, although attention is centered on the east coast of the United States. This "War" was made within the memory of the 9/11 attacks, as Spielberg stages large infrastructure-dusting battles that tip over intersections and vaporize human beings (leaving their clothes to float empty to the ground). The attackers are not named as "Martians" but acknowledged as "other-worldly" with a suspiciously complicated origin—evidently, they've been long buried in the Earth, only needing the transmission of a spirit via lightning storm that simultaneously energizes the war-machines and knocks out the surrounding power grid. These machines are more the design of Wells' original intent—ungainly tripods that still manage to do sizable damage with its heat-rays, black smoke, and red vegetation that carpets the area in a means of terra-forming (all from Wells' source novel).
Although it may seem like a "typical" Spielberg project, it is an odd blend of Wells' and Spielberg's sensibilities, and in fact, anti-Spielberg sensibilities. Wells' story was about his narrator trying to get back to his wife amidst the chaos of the war. Spielberg has the same story-line, but his protagonist is another Spielberg "common man" (or as common as Tom Cruise will allow himself to be), who must rise to the occasion—in this case Cruise's Ray Ferrier is a dead-beat, uninvolved dad who must get his kids back to his estranged wife, amidst all the chaos.
Given that CE3K and ET were films by a less mature Spielberg that broke families apart, while offering them a glimpse of the heavens, this time, Spielberg's protagonist is doing everything he can (as in Wells' novel) to re-unite his family. Spielberg has grown up by the time these aliens visit Earth. And yet, for all his heroics, the film has more in keeping with the ending of John Ford's The Searchers, as Ferrier is left standing in the street of his in-laws' brownstone (and they're played, naturally, by Gene Barry and Ann Robinson from the '53 version), satisfied enough that he has brought them together, but acknowledging that he is still an outsider without regard for acceptance as reward. He's done what he should have been doing all along. And mature enough now to not expect anything from it. It's one of my favorite Spielberg endings.
* The Slate article preceding this asterisk debunks the myth by citing lack of evidence—not the most reliable indicator—but what's strange is that when stations repeat the stunt (as reported on Radiolab's episode about the broadcast), the results tend to skew the same way. There are always going to be a few that will panic, and with mob-mentality as an accelerant, things can get out of hand...even for Martians to handle.
The film centers around "The High Tribunal of Outer Space"—basically a three-tiered court-bench, a couple of desks and a floor of fog, with a circle of extras and as cheap a set as has been used in Hollywood—where the High Judge (Cedric Hardwicke) is holding court. It seems that mankind has created a new weapon, a "Super-H-bomb" and the survival of the species is in the balance. So, a case is being made—not that it would apparently do any good—of whether mankind (or species-kind) should survive. Nothing is said of how the outcome will be dispensed or if any interference is going to be made to influence the outcome. 
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