Things to Come (1936)

 "There may be an air raid, but it is not likely to be a dangerous one."

The quote above may have tickled me somewhat, the opening titles may be big and epic in a way that would later be subtly spoofed, not least by the Monty Python movies... but this is a serious film, with what little humour there is of the grimmer sort. It's also rather superb, with superlatively stylish direction, sets and costumes matched admirably by a magnificent cast headed by the highly impressive Raymond Massey.

It's bloody good. That's dealt with. But far more interesting is to look at how the future was seen in 1936 by the seventy year old H.G. Wells. This is no Whig version of future history with uninterrupted progress, but nor do we see the socialist utopia we may perhaps have expected from Wells. Mercifully, there's no hint of any of that eugenics nonsense.

What there is, though, is a war beginning eerily close to when the Second War would actually start, perhaps not hard to guess at the time: the international politics is kept intentionally vague, but the identity of the enemy was, I suspect, clear to the original audience. The devastation of the bombing of the city reflects, perhaps, a "the bomber will always get through" mentality and the prediction that there would be no declaration of war (such barbarism!) predicted not so much the Second War but every single war ever fought since then.  

The war lasts for twenty-six horrifying years, and is followed by a plague- interesting viewing in 2021. We see a near-collapse of civilisation with much warlordism and philistine dismissal of culture and technology as everything declines... until a bunch of grim, sonorous airmen save us all with their friendly chemical weapons. We then get a progress montage until it's 2036, mankind is set  to fly around the Moon for the first time... but a load of luddites riot against progress for some reason.

Yes, it may be described as po-faced. But it's gripping, really well-made and a fascinating look at a time, eighty-five years ago, when the future looked like this and a wife could say that she wanted to "serve" her husband and make him "heppy" without raising too many eyebrows. A unique and wonderful film, and a true visual triumph.

Reefer Madness (1936)

"Bring me some reefers!!!"

Oh dear. This is, obviously, a film well known to be Plan 9 from Outer Space levels of bad, the ultimate in low camp. This is of course entirely because of its absurd claims about "marijuana" which the very silly opening text describes as a "deadly narcotic" that is apparently addictive and leads to violence. The first scene, rather clumsily, is a lecture on the supposed dangers of the drug before we move on to the cautionary tale that forms the basis of the film. This is, apparently, "based on actual research", but the film appears to have been made by people without any knowledge of how weed is smoked. No one coughs, no one gets the munchies, no one passes on a joint. This is, I suppose, funny at first but doesn't make the whole film worth watching. A pity; while I personally do not endorse prohibition there is a real discussion to be had on such matters as cannabis psychosis.

The acting is appalling, but the dialogue and functional characterisation deserves no better. The narrative is clumsy and, beyond the hysterical depictions of cannabis, the only thing worthy of note is the rather disturbing depiction of how the justice system works, with the jury being quite shockingly tabloid- minded and a miscarriage of justice narrowly averted by suspiciously convenient means. If this film succeeds in putting across any message at all, it is on the evils of capital punishment.

This isn't Plan 9 from Outer Space. It isn't amusingly bad. It's just bad, as bad as it gets.

As You Like It (1936)

"He that sweetest rose will find / Must find love's prick, and Rosalind."

Well then. This saucy, decidedly queer play, new to me, is not what I expected from Shakespeare, and the fact that this is a post-code film from 1936, subtitles for YouTube provided for cultural reasons by the US Government (I bet Trump has put a stop to that) only serves to show how intrinsic to the play this queerness is.

I know Shakespeare, I flatter myself to say, better than most. I have a mere undergraduate degree, from Nottingham uni, but before tonight I knew 22 Shakespeare plays to varying extents, now 23. And until tonight I have given no more than perfunctory acknowledgement to queer theory in relation to the bard. I am, of course, aware of the trope of women dressing as men in such plays as Twelfth Night, but have accepted this as early modern LGBT (let us not forget the T) only in the generic way that one must accord to all cross-dressing. And yet... here Rosalind calls her male disguise "Ganymede", Jove's eponymous catamite. It's hard not to see deliberate, glorious, authorial queerness here. And that's before considering the wonderful sexual ambiguity of pretty much all of Rosalind's lines once she takes on male guise. It's doubly wonderful that this happily queer character should be played here, with a noticeable accent but a great deal of charm, by Elisabeth Bergner, a Viennese Jew who had fled Hitler's Berlin.

Ok, queerness aside this stuck me as a relatively ho-hum Shakespeare comedy with moments of lyrical genius, not quite up there with his best, but that's a relative statement. But there's much to marvel at with this somewhat ancient artifact. My reason for watching this was the presence of Henry Ainley, father of the actor Anthony Ainley, well-known to us Doctor Who fans and subject of a splendid biography. Ainley, though, turned out to be the exemplar of something truly fascinating; the theatrical delivery of Shakespeare of a certain era, still "traditional" although pretty much beyond living memory, against which the more "naturalistic" delivery of actors such as Lauence Olivier.

Also notable are the presence of John Laurie (Private Fraser in Dad's Army) as a young heartthrob and a young Peter Bull- the Soviet ambassador in many James Bond films- as a young yokel. This film is fascinating, in the public domain, and on YouTube with proper subtitles.