"THINGS TO COME
[To the Editor of THE SPEcraToa.] Sin,—I hope I am not being unduly spiteful if I express the - hope that one of these days Mr. Michael Roberts may in person learn something of the complications of film production. Then he will not be so eager to represent the film Things to Come as the complete and undiluted expression of my attitude towards life. He ignores the possible struggle with producer, directors, art director, box office influences, editors and cutters and the intricate multitude of practices that have grown up about this elaborately entangled art. To express even the simplest ideas that are not entirely conventional upon the screen is like shouting through thick felt in a thunder- storm. I am bound to assume the honesty of Mr, Michael Roberts' criticisms, but I can do so only by doubting his— what shall I call it? —general alertness. He calls this film The Shape of Things to Come. But that is not even the title of the film. It is the title of a book which Mr. Michael Roberts does not pretend to have read, of which indeed he is quite remarkably unaware. Nor is he aware that the "treatment," as they call it, of the film itself is published in book form (Things to Come). It differs widely from the film and it con- tains some prefatory remarks which do at any rate hint at the difficulties of film production. Finally, a clearer head than Mr. Michael Roberts had at the time when he emerged so sadly disappointed from the film show—to which I fear he had gone with set intention of emerging with that disappoint- ment—would have discriminated between what may come and what is desirable. I think the world, largely through just that want of general alertness which Mr. Michael Roberts displays, is staggering towards widespread .warfare and gangster rule and that there is a possibility of a hard world system ruled largely in the spirit of technicians and men of science emerging from that disorder. The world is in for a hard time and I do not think a regime of concerts, pictures and sentimental religiosity will help it very much. That is how things are going as I see them, but I am not asking that they should go that way.
As I said in effect in reply to a previous attack in The Spectator, if this is not the drift of things, what is the drift? Is it " heresy " even to enquire ? Is the Christian divinity going to do it all for us while we play croquet ?—suffering, rather solemnly but quite passively, from "thoughts too deep for tears "but playing croquet all the same ?—Yours faithfully,
H. G. WELLS.
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