Tales of Future Past v2

Wah?

Okay, Britain 1950 as seen in the 1928 film High Treason. Never heard of it? Not surprised. It was one of the earliest of the talking pictures and the studio was so nervous about its chances that they not only made a talking version, but a silent one as well just in case.

Maybe that's just as well, seeing as one critic said about one performance,

Does Mr. Goddard still think that a stutter adds to the humour of a character, or is this the effect of the sound reproduction?

It was also a film that was so overtly anti-war that it promoted itself as the "Peace Picture," which is interesting, as it has a rather strange storyline involving a peace movement that tries to avert a war with a queer combination of Ur Greenham Common women draping themselves over biplanes to keep them from taking off and the chairman of the movement assassinating the president of his own country by blowing him up.

Very peace loving, indeed.

For our purposes, however, we're more interested in the future London skyline. I'll be the first to admit that it's a truly frightening jumble of brick and mortar, but it's streets ahead of the real-life architectural atrocities that have been visited on the city since the war.

And there's not a Ferris wheel or Millennium Dome in sight.

Previous/Next