Things to Come - Photo Gallery, Behind the Scenes
Presented here are a number of stills from the author's collection, broadly divided into actual general production or publicity stills, along with reprints from various publications of examples specifically from "lost" scenes. Where appropriate, they are accompanied with explanatory text, in which extracts from the Film Story or Stover Script in green denotes footage surviving in the 92m 42s print, blue in the Gutlohn Print but not the 92m 42s Standard Print, purple is the apparently lost Stover Script material (i.e. not in 92m 42s or Gutlohn), while red is dialogue and description unique to the Film Story.
This public house is seen briefly in the 1940 Christmas Eve montage. Director William Cameron Menzies is standing with one leg up on the boom microphone trolley at left; behind him are set designer Vincent Korda and producer Alexander Korda.
Long shot of the massive Everytown set, built on the site of Denham Studios. Below the makeshift staircase up the side of the building on the left, the scene where the Boss is introduced to Mary Gordon is being shot.
A striking portrait of Margaretta Scott as Roxana Black, the Everytown Boss's mistress. Only in this very detailed photograph can it be seen that her ear-rings and necklace are actually made from 1930s British coins!
This picture probably shows Margeretta Scott and Maurice Braddell either departing for or arriving at the former Brooklands racing track, which was the location used for the aerodrome used by the Boss's "air force."
H.G. Wells, Pearl Argyle and long-suffering director William Cameron Menzies.
Publicity portrait of Pearl Argyle. The original caption on the reverse reads:
"When your grandchildren drop in for tea in 2036 their hostess will receive them in an afternoon gown like this worn by Pearl Argyle in 'Things to Come', if H. G. Wells has correctly anticipated the curator's whims of that day, in his first motion picture story."
Note the small television set on the table she is leaning on.
At first glance it seems that this photo shows - and, indeed, it is oftened captioned as such - to show Maurice and Catherine in the Space Gun capsule. Rather than seats, however, most the extant footage is overhead shots showing them being strapped into the capsule in an upright position in their usual costumes at the end of the film. "Most" being the operative word, because in fact one brief shot in the film during the launch sequence shows them sitting down wearing the different garments seen here
Ralph Richardson pulls a suitably manic expression, whilst drawing his revolver.
Test shot of the costume originally intended for Margaretta Scott's Rowena character. In the end, the more simple outfit seen below was used.
Amazingly, one of the biggest casualties in terms of lost footage is the event that drives the narrative in the last part of the film, namely Theotocopulos's speech to the world. In the Standard Print, it seems that he makes a few disjointed arguments, and suddenly the entire population rebels! The Stover Script does have more of this speech, although since it retains the timescale of the Standard Print, events still seem to progress to near-anarchy far too quickly. It is only in the Film Story that the disgruntled sculptor gets to argue his full case in a speech more than ten times longer than what survives now, while having it take place in the narrative considerably earlier than the revolt allows time for discontent to fester and grow. The speech is also intercut with reactions from various members of the 2036 population - either for or against his arguments - and the few reaction shots of viewers that are now seen hardly do justice to the initial premise.
One reason for the radical re-working of this part of the film may lie in the fact that Cedric Hardwicke was not actually the original choice for Theotocopulos. The Film Treatment describes him thus: "a tall, slender man, bearded... like one of the figures in a picture by his ancestor [Domenikos Theotokopoulos] El Greco." In fact, all of Theotocopulos' scenes were initially shot with Ernest (Bride of Frankenstein") Thesiger in the role, but these were discarded because (ironically!) Wells was supposedly dissatisfied with the actor's voice. Nobody bothered to tell Thesiger this, and he actually turned up at the premiere in the full belief that he was still in the film, although he did successfully appear in its companion piece, The Man Who Could Work Miracles the following year. Some long-shots of the crowd approaching the Space Gun appear to show Thesiger, rather than Hardwicke, who only appears in these scenes in close-ups of him surrounded by a tight knot of his followers.
The lateness of Thesiger's replacement is also proven by an unlikely source. One oft-seen still shows a head-and-shoulder shot of Hardwicke on the large screen in the Square of the Everytown of 2036. Since no footage actually shows him on the screen as such, this would appear to be a dummied-up publicity shot, especially since a version exists of the same, except with Thesiger instead of Hardwicke, which has even been used on the packaging of some video releases:
A reflection of the publicity for the film when showing in the United States, with huge crowds outside the Rivoli Theatre, New York.
RETURN TO THINGS TO COME INDEX
| 07/04/04 | First upload |
| 03/01/05 | New images |
| 27/03/06 | New images |
| 21/01/07 | New images |
| 07/06/09 | New images |