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Beginning in 1934, British cinemas saw a steady increase in attendance, with figures during the period 1934 to 1940 reaching almost one billion. Besides being a source of entertainment, British cinema also assumed an important role in social contact and communication (Ambrosius & Hubbard 1989: 113). British films of the period projected the image of Britain as a ‘stable social hierarchy at home’, a ‘just colonial government abroad’, as well as presenting patriotic images of the monarchy and the armed services (Chapman 2003: 202). On the whole, the British populace seems to have been happy with the films that they were offered during the 1930s and those films served to help maintain consensus and the status quo (Chapman 2003: 202). A key demographic feature of 1930s’

Britain was the gradual ‘ascendancy of the middle class’. Few films overtly touched upon this crack in the status quo, yet in many cases it was present beneath the surface (Street 1997: 40).

In his autobiography, H.G. Wells discusses the genesis of the book that would eventually become Things to Come. He writes:

In this newly built Spade House I began a book which can be considered as the keystone to the main arch of my work. That arch rises naturally from my first creative imaginations…and it leads on by a logical development to The Shape of Things to Come [for which] The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind was, so to speak, the workshop.

(Wykes 1977: 79) Things to Come was not the first film version of a Wells’ literary work. Previous film undertakings included The Invisible Thief (Unknown, 1909), First Men in the Moon (Bruce Gordon, J. L. V. Leigh, 1919), The Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932) and The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933).

Wells was concerned to make sure that what he perceived to be the ‘vertical social stratification of today’ should not be projected into the future world discussed by Things to Come (Frayling 1995: 49). Indeed, Wells, who had been raised in the downstairs world of late nineteenth-century Britain (his mother was a chambermaid, and his father a gardener), struggled to escape this world, believing that an upper-class life was within his grasp. Having read, at an early age, Plato’s Republic, Wells also believed that change was possible in the hierarchical structure of English society. This notion was later given theoretical grounding while Wells was at university, where one of his professors was Thomas Huxley, a staunch defender of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Huxley’s teaching suggested to Wells that man was merely in the process of an evolutionary progression; one which was not fixed but could actually be moulded and shaped. However, Wells soon came to believe that in order for this societal change to take place it was essential that individual governments be replaced by a central government, one that would regulate a series of nation-states.

H. G. Wells’ Things to Come advances a utopian vision for the century which follows the year 1936. The story is set in the fictional English city of ‘Everytown’, and begins, prophetically, just prior to the events of World War II. The narrative follows the attempts of John Cabal and, subsequently, his grandson Oswald to establish a world where technology is not wasted in pursuit of war but is, rather, spent on the betterment of civilization. The efforts of Oswald Cabal eventually lead to the creation of a one-world government that ensures the safety of the citizenry. This progression of space from place of danger to a place of security is mirrored in Arthur Bliss’ score.

The projected Wellsian ‘liberal’ utopia, with its renunciation of parliamentary democracy, private property and individualism, was not the type of society that conventional liberal thinkers had envisioned (Coupland 2000: 543) but, then, Wells was not a typical Liberal. In July 1932, while speaking to a group of Young Liberals at an Oxford summer school, Wells urged the students to transform themselves into ‘Liberal Fascists’ and ‘enlightened Nazis,’ ‘who would compete in their enthusiasm and self-sacrifice with the ardent supporters of dictatorship’ (Mazower 2000: 23). This suggestion is not as outrageous as one might at first think, for one of the reasons why fascist ideology succeeded was because of the ‘political and social failure of liberal democracy’ (Mazower 2000:17). Indeed, by the mid-1930s the majority of European liberalism looked tired, with the organized Left having been smashed. This left the sole struggle over ideology to take place on the Right wing (Mazower, 2000:28).

However, in fascist eyes, Wells was considered more of a ‘socialist’; a fact that was reinforced when Wells made a trip to the Soviet Union to meet Joseph Stalin. Wells attempted to persuade Stalin that technicians, scientific workers, medical men, aviators, operating engineers, would best be in a position to supply the material for constructive revolution in the West. He suggested that a dictatorship of technologists, as opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat, would be a more successful way to manage revolution.

The Changing Conception of a Space As a Delineator In Film Score Style

Stalin was ‘singularly unimpressed’, but the concepts expressed by Wells would become key themes in Things to Come (Frayling 1995: 14).

In spite of Wells’ seemingly-socialist overture to Stalin, many were still perplexed by his seeming fascination with fascism. Spectators had to contend with the perplexing fact that Things to Come contained images of a race of revolutionaries who wore both the black shirts and the broad shiny belts of the fascist movement. These revolutionaries appeared to move and carry themselves in the semi-military manner of fascists; a fact which would have been apparent to an audience familiar with the sight of ‘blackshirts’

on British streets during the previous three-and-a-half years (Coupland 2000: 541). For Wells, the presence of the Blackshirts reflected his long-established theory of how the world state would be achieved, as well as the important changes which his thinking underwent in response to the specific political conditions of the early 1930s (Coupland 2000: 541). It was feelings similar to Wells’ that attracted Labour MP Oswald Mosley to fascism and, indeed, scholars such as Christopher Frayling believe that it is possible that Oswald Cabal, the principal character in the second half of Things to Come, may have been a vaguely-disguised allusion to Mosley. Mosley was not alone in feeling exasperated by what a fellow MP called the Labour leadership’s ‘passion for evading decisions’. At the 1930 Labour Party Conference, Mosley proposed a radical plan for economic recovery, which was rejected by the leadership on the grounds of cost. This failure prompted him to leave the party and to begin the move rightwards, which eventually culminated in the creation of the British Union of Fascists (Mazower 2000:134). Mosley stated:

This age is dynamic, and the war age was static…the men of the pre-war age are much ‘nicer’ people than we are, just as their age was much more pleasant than the present time. The practical question is whether their ideas for the solution of the problems of the age are better than the ideas of those whom that age has produced.

(Mazower 2000:134)

While working-class fascism can not be said to be the traditional refuge of labour, there is little doubt that during the 1930s there was to a certain degree sympathy for Mosley’s New Party (1931–2) and its successor, The Union of Fascists (1932–40). Indeed both of Mosley’s parties would eventually enjoy a good deal of influential support (Benson 1989: 184).

Arthur Bliss and the score for H.G. Wells’ Things to Come

Things to Come was the first of seven film scores that Arthur Bliss would compose.

Wells had met Bliss in March 1934, at the Royal Institution in London, where Bliss was

giving a lecture on ‘Aspects of Contemporary Music.’ Wells was immediately drawn to Bliss and found that he agreed with many of his ideas about modern music and art.

Wells suggested to Alexander Korda that they immediately engage Bliss to score the film, and Korda was so enthusiastic that he even agreed to let Bliss compose much of the score before the shooting took place, allowing many of the film’s key scenes to be fit the music (MacDonald 1998: 36). Such a practice was highly unusual in conventional film music practice, for the composition and application of the score is, generally, the final stage in the post-production process. As we have seen earlier in this book (indeed, this chapter), there are instances in film composition where the score predates the actual shooting or editing of certain scenes in a film. One of the more famous examples of this is ‘The Battle on the Ice’ scene from Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky. In this instance, Prokofiev precomposed the music for the scene so that Eisenstein could edit the images directly to the rhythm of the music. However, this practice was certainly more of an anomaly than the rule.

Bliss was honest about the fact that his motivation to work in the cinema was primarily monetary, which was borne out by Bliss’ way of turning each of his film scores into independent concert works (Lack 2002: 114). This fact did not limit the success of his film scoring but certainly made his work more commercially viable. His score for Things to Come is also remarkable for the fact that it satisfied music critics when understood as ‘pure music’, unattached to the cinema. The concert suite derived from the score was performed with great success at the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concert series in 1935, ‘winning many new friends for film music’ (Huntley 1972: 40). A set of three gramophone records of the score, issued by Decca and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bliss, are certainly one of the earliest British film score releases, if indeed not the very first.

Wells’ views on film technique were clearly collaborative, and he wished to include the composer as an integral part of the design. He disagreed with those who viewed the score merely as a type of decoration which could be added after shooting was completed.

This view prompted him to seek Bliss’ suggestions regarding the overall design of the film almost from the very beginning (Snedden 2000: 28). Wells was insistent upon recording the score in advance, a proposition which would have allowed him to construct the film around it. However, Korda argued for the score to be left in its pre-shooting, provisional state, with Bliss finishing it in the post-production process (Frayling 1995: 42). Ultimately, the outline which Bliss had completed by autumn 1934, and which was based on Wells’

original screenplay, remained largely unaltered.

According to Christopher Palmer (Sneddon 2000: 29), Bliss and Muir Mathieson—

Music Director at London Studios—saw the daily rushes as they came in each day and formed much of the score in reaction to these. Film music scholar John Huntley has called Mathieson ‘the most important single figure in the history of British film music’

(Huntley 1972: 34). Indeed, both Korda and Mathieson would play an important The Changing Conception of a Space As a Delineator In Film Score Style

role in the history of the development of British film music, for it was under their watch that important British composers such as Benjamin Britten and Arthur Bliss were engaged to compose for film. Bliss and Mathieson worked on broader issues surrounding the score in collaboration with Korda and Wells. And it has been said that Bliss’ music played an important role in bringing life to a rather stilted screenplay.

Raymond Massey, who played the dual roles of John Cabal and Oswald Cabal in the film, remarked that the ‘picture was fantastically difficult to act…because Wells had deliberately formalized the dialogue, particularly in the later sequences…Emotion had no place in Wells’ new world’ (Frayling 1995: 22). It was, perhaps, for this reason that Wells relied so heavily upon music for this project. Indeed, on the very first page of his original treatment, Wells described the story in musical terms, and made it clear that he wanted the film’s structure to mirror that of a dramatic opera, with the long speeches functioning as the opera’s recitatives and the large set-pieces being accompanied only by orchestra (Frayling 1995: 36). It was certainly for this reason that Bliss’ music, which was always at its most vibrant when it was responding to extra-musical stimulus, clearly added the dimension of human-ness to Wells and Korda’s enterprise.

In spite of Wells’ insistence that the film be driven and ordered by musical ideals, Bliss never truly believed that this was possible. In relation to this, Bliss commented that it was unreasonable to pretend that it was possible to blend music and mise-en-scène as closely as had originally been planned by Wells. Bliss added that ‘[t]he incorporation of original music in film production is still in many ways an unsolved problem’ (Huntley &

Manvell, 1957: 50).

Upon the film’s completion, Wells wrote that Bliss’ score had been an integral part ‘of the constructive scheme of the film’, and that the importance of his contribution made him ‘practically a collaborator in its production’. Wells continued that ‘in this as in so many other respects, this film, so far as at least its intention goes, is boldly experimental.

Sound sequences and pictures sequences were made to be closely interwoven.’ Cleary, in Wells’ mind, his desire to integrate the score from the inception of the project had been fully realized (Huntley & Manvell 1957: 49–50).

Critical response to the score was generally positive. However, critic Kurt London took issue with Bliss’ choice to employ a large symphonic force for the score, suggesting that the sonic output of such an ensemble far exceeded the recording limitations of the time (London 1936: 218). London wrote that while Bliss showed

‘an undoubted sense for film effects and the emphasis of pictorial ideas... [h]is orchestra, a big symphony orchestra, has not yet managed to free itself from the symphonic tradition’, suggesting that ‘[i]n future scores Bliss…will [need] to revise his style’ (London 1936: 217–18).

The changing conception of space

As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, we can understand the different approaches to these two film scores by seeing them in light of the changing conception of space that occurred at the end of World War II. As Buchanan and Lambert suggest, after World War II ‘[t]he deserted streets and shabby buildings signify not that “a people”…is missing, but that it has been targeted for termination’ (Buchanan & Lambert 2005: 1). Indeed, in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, the issue of space and habitability became all the more acutely central to the human experience. It was this question which would dominate the second half of the twentieth century as the key analytical issue concerning space. The primary issue was a very practical one: What does it takes to make space inhabitable? What does it take to make places from sites where the active place making infrastructure had been either destroyed or removed? (Buchanan & Lambert 2005: 2). This was a direct shift from pre-war spatial thinking, which was concerned with the seemingly-damaging effect that space was having on the modern individual (Buchanan & Lambert 2005: 2). However, after World War II, thinking about space changed with space being regarded as uninhabitable by definition. Prior to World War II, the concern had been how space affected the individual.

Following World War II, the emphasis shifted to quite a different proposition: whether could individuals affect space (Buchanan & Lambert 2005: 3).

Space is essentially ‘a discursive practice of a place’ (Conley 2005d: 258). With this accepted, place can be understood as ‘a given area, named and mapped, that can be measured in terms of surface or volume.’ Thus place only becomes space when it becomes the site of ‘existential engagement among living agents who mark it with their activities or affiliate with dialogue and active perception.’ In this sense, place is the equivalent of Deleuze’s concept of any-space-whatsoever (Conley 2005d: 258).

Thus, following on from this, we might identify the following differences in the conception of space before and after World War II:

Prior to World War II:

1. How does space effect individuals?

2. Is external space, as opposed to the safety of personal space, inhabitable?

3. What are the damaging effects of space?

Following World War II:

1. How can individuals affect space, if at all?

2. Is space uninhabitable by definition?

3. What is the meaning or lack of meaning in the any-space-whatever?

(Buchanan & Lambert 2005: 3) The Changing Conception of a Space As a Delineator In Film Score Style

The change between the pre-war spatial thinking which was concerned with the damaging effect that space was having on the individual, and the post-war reasoning which suggested that space had become largely uninhabitable, can be clearly discerned in the different approaches to the two films under consideration. Let us examine how.Things to Come is an ideological exploration of the way that a one-world government can improve the quality and stability of life on earth. However, Wells soon came to believe that in order for this societal change to take place it was essential that individual governments be replaced by a central government, one that would regulate a series of nation-states. It was this idea of a single super-power, in Wells’ mind, which would facilitate a better world—a world that was both part of the ‘utopian’ dream from mid- to late nineteenth century through to the 1930s and was also linked to the various economic difficulties of the time.

This transformation in the conceptual idea of space can be seen in the progression of Things to Come, which begins with a clear, if thinly disguised, sense of place: a place which Wells calls Everytown. The film considers the way that space (initially considered in minoritarian terms as represented by Everytown and subsequently in a remolarized, central ‘one world’ government) affects the life of the individual. The film moves outward, from an initial filmic and spatial world that exists within the borders of Everytown, through the eventual reimaging of the world under the government of Wings Over the World. The film ends with Oswald Cabal suggesting the possibility of carrying the one-world government into the far reaches of space. Thus it is clear that the narrative of the film embraces the three questions referred to above.

Bliss’ score, which exhibits some elements of modernism, begins with a musical vocabulary that can only be characterized as almost as Vaughan Williams-ish in its Englishness. Bliss’ score reinforces the Deleuzian pre-war notion of space exemplified in the movement image by:

1. Establishing a sense of place at the film’s opening.

2. Creating a series of time movement in five extensive sequences of montage (which I shall refer to as ballets) which serve to represent the passage of large portions of time within the narrative.

3. Creating a sense of motion and movement in a style very similar to the use of music in silent film.

4. Moving the film outward by adopting a progressively more modernist tonal vocabularly.

By contrast, Robert Frend’s Scott of the Antarctic is a post-war film that clearly grew out of a desire to restore a sense of national pride in a Britain that had struggled both during

By contrast, Robert Frend’s Scott of the Antarctic is a post-war film that clearly grew out of a desire to restore a sense of national pride in a Britain that had struggled both during