I remember seeing a TV special on early film. I featured a silent science fiction film from the 1920s. I don’t remember the title. Set in the 1960s it involved America and (united) Europe going to war. Supposedly it was groungbreaking in terms of the future it portrayed and featured a tunnel between Britain and France, television, and female conscription. Did this film actually exist?
Are you maybe thinking of Things to Come? Though it wasn’t silent.
No, that’s not it. It might have been a European film.
“Le Tunnel sous La Manche” (English title: “Tunnelling the English Channel”) (1907) 20 minutes
Probably not it. This is about the the PM and the French president going to bed and dreaming of a disaster occurring in the tunnel, then scrapping plans to go forward with the project when they wake up.
Author’s note: “Even today [1984] the proposition is regularly reappraised, but beyond film and fiction versions it is doubtful that we shall ever see it.”
“The Great German North Sea Tunnel” (UK, 1914)
This is about a German invasion of the UK using a tunnel. However, this film is considered lost, and little other information exists about it.
“Der Tunnel” (Germany, 1933)
This tunnel connects Europe and the US, but there’s no war involved.
“The Tunnel” (UK, 1935)
This tunnel connects the UK and the US, but still no war.
All information from “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies.” Phil Hardy. 1984
Funny, I was just reading a review of this yesterday. It’s the British movie High Treason (1928), which was released in talkie and silent versions; the British Film Institute has copies of both. The year in which the story is set is never specified.
Oh, there’s also a Hollywood movie with similar themes, Men Must Fight (1933). This has been shown on Turner Classic Movies.
Thanks!
I would like to see that film.
When the NFT last ran the BFI’s silent print of it a couple of years ago, the screening was packed, yet the general feeling amongst those of us there was that it was rather disappointing. The fact that you only ever see that same still of the impressive model of a futuristic Charing Cross Station hides the fact that the rest of the production gets pretty ropey. Nor has the plot dated at all well.
As I’ve pointed out on the Dope before, the story of Noel Pemberton Billing’s libel trial during WWI - as mentioned in the link; the underlying issue was really his claim that there was a vast, German sponsored conspiracy of lesbians, including Margot Asquith, infiltrating the country - is entertainingly told by Philip Hoare in Wilde’s Last Stand (Duckworth, 1997).
Hoare places the plot of High Treason as happening in 1950, though I don’t remember whether that was spelt out in the version I saw.
Well, they do have a man date from the people.
aaaaaarrrrrrrgh.
To complicate matters, out of curiosity I dug out the NFT programme notes. It quotes at length from a contemporary review of the film in The Bioscope from 1929 that states that it takes place in 1940.
As does my copy of the aforementioned “Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies.”