Things to Come - Photo Gallery, 1970
by Nick Cooper © 2004-2021
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.
When Roxana first appears, she is railing against the character of Wadsky for no readily apparent reason. This cut scene occurs between Gordan leaving the airfield in disgust, and the first shot of Mary in the marketplace:
The Market. Camera swung round to the stall of gewgaws and old dresses. Roxana sailing down upon the trader. Roxana is a consciously beautiful young woman of eight and twenty. Her face is made up rather skilfully. In contrast to the dirty and dispirited people in the Square, she and her two attendant women seem brilliantly bright and prosperous. Her costume is best described as a collection of finery. It has been got together from the wardrobes and presses that are still to be found in the abandoned houses. It consists chiefly of an afternoon dress of circa 1935. Wadsky's stall is stocked with such findings.
Roxana, advancing: "Where is Wadsky? I want to speak to Wadsky."
Wadsky, who has been lurking behind his stall as she advances, pulls himself together and comes out to meet her.
Roxana: "You had a piece of flowered stuff, a whole length, seven yards, and you did not tell me of it. You kept it back from me, and you gave it to that woman of yours. And she's got a new dress - a new dress."
Wadsky disputes with his arms and shoulders while she speaks and when she pauses he Says: "Ooh Lady, I showed you that piece."
Roxana: "Don't outface me, Wadsky. You have done that too often. You kept it from me!"
Wadsky: "Lady! You said: 'I don't want stuff like that.'"
Roxana: "Why! I had been asking for weeks for that very thing for the summer - light flowered cotton stuff."
Wadsky: "Oh, but Lady!"
Roxana: "How dared you? One would think I was of no importance in Everytown."
Roxana turns to her first attendant. "Don't you remember? - I said I wanted light stuff with flowers."
Attendant remembers dutifully.
Roxana appeals to her further. "What is the good of a lover - what is the good of a powerful lover, if one is to be treated like this?"
Roxana to Wadsky, who is bowing, very disgruntled. "I'll tell the Chief. I've warned you before. Everything first to me."
Swing away from her to another part of the Market Square. A little excited knot is formed round a ragged man.
Man: "I saw it with my own eyes."
Crowd laughs.
Woman: "First you drink and then you see things."
Man: "First I heard the noise, then I looked up and there it was - far away up in the sky - over the hills."
Gordon is seen coming through the Square towards them. He hears the last remarks of the man. "What did you see?"
Man: "An aeroplane - flying - away there over the hills. Just about dawn it was."
The crowd jeers at him. Gordon looks at the man, sums him up, shrugs his shoulders, and goes on his way.Mary is buying vegetables from the peasant with the horse-drawn car....
[After the discussion about the car, the scene continues:]
Gordon and Mary finish their purchases and go towards the laboratory.
Mary: "You are late to-day. Did you get anything done?"
Gordon: "Nothing. The machines are rotten. There's no petrol. It's mockery for the Boss to set me at it. We'll never get one of them up. Flying has become a dream for Bosses and such-like drunken men. There was a drunken man over there, by the by, swearing he saw an aeroplane this morning."
Mary: "Richard!"
Gordon: "What is it?"
Mary: "You won't think me mad?"
Gordon: "Eh?"
Mary: "I heard an aeroplane this morning."
The existence of the photograph of Roxana with Wadsky is good evidence that the scene was shot, not least because it is referred to in the extant footage. Similarly, Ann Todd's delivery - stressing the "I" - only makes sense in the context of the scene with the drunken man and Gordon's subsequent mention of it, so there is strong circumstantial evidence that it was shot, along with the additional dialogue between Mary and Gordon.
In the next two photographs, Cabal emerges from and then - below - climbs down from the cockpit of aircraft WT34. Both shots are extremely common in publicity material.
Visible above the Boss's foot, the unmistakable shape of a Thompson Sub-Machine Gun can be seen propped up on the table in the corner. It is never seen to be used in the film, but does appear again in the foreground of the scene in which Simon Burton tells the Boss about Gordon's escape.
In the extant footage, the Boss explaining his intentions to Roxana in the bedroom dissolve directly into the attack on the mine workings, but in between the Film Story had this cene:
Scene outside the Town Hall. A small troop of mounted men with a flag leaving for the war. Two led horses are brought up and the Boss and Roxana appear and mount.
The whole body rides off.
A small not very enthusiastic crowd watches their departure. There is a feeble cheer as the detachment goes off.
The photograph below shows this, with Margaretta Scott in the same outfit she is seen wearing during the subsequent attack.
Following the banquet (above), Roxana visits the cell below the Town Hall, and has a disjoined conversation with Cabal. The Stover Script details four shots - running to approximately 1m 19s of dialogue - immediately prior to the sudden appearance of the Boss, but the Film Story has two additional sections of dialogue earlier in the scene:
Roxana: "I don't think any man has ever understood any woman since the beginning of things. You don't understand our imaginations. How wild our imaginations can be."
Cabal decides he will not interrupt her.
Roxana: "I wish I were a man."
She stands up abruptly: "Oh if I were a man!.... Does any man realise what the life of a woman is? How trivial we have to be. We have to please. We are obliged to please. If we attempt to take a serious share in life, are we welcomed? And all the while---- Men are so self-satisfied, so blind, so limited. I see things happening here----! Injustice. Cruelty. There are things I would do for the poor - things I would do to make things better. I am not allowed. I have to pretend to he eaten up by my dresses, my jewels, my vanities. I make myself beautiful often with an aching heart. But I'm talking about myself. Tell me about yourself - about that greater world you live in. Are you a Boss? You have the manner of one who commands. You are sure of yourself. You make me afraid of you. Of the people you come from. Of what you are. Before you came I felt safe here. I felt - things were going on as they have been going on.... Always.... No hope of change.... Now - it's all different. What are you people trying to do to us? What do you mean to do to this Boss of mine?"
Followed by:
Roxana: "I see. And our Combatant State here?"
Cabal: "Has to vanish into the shadows. After the Tyrannosaurus and the sabre-toothed tiger."
Roxana stands looking at him. He leans against the table and smiles at her.
Roxana: "You are a new sort of man to me."
Cabal: "No. A new sort of training. The old Adam fundamentally."
She goes off at a tangent again. "I suppose at the bottom of her heart every woman despises a man she can manage. And all women despise men who run after women."
Cabal: "You're not by any chance thinking of the Chief? Where is he to-night?"
Roxana: "Drinking and boasting. And after that, he hopes to betray me without my finding out. Vain hopes, I'm afraid. We needn't think about him. If I said I still love him, it is as one loves a dirty troublesome child. I love him and he doesn't matter. What I am thinking about is you. And this new world Of yours - oh, it's your world - that I can feel advancing on us."
Pause.
Cabal: "Well?"
Roxana: "Have men of your sort no use for women?"
Cabal: "Madam, I'm a widower and a grandfather. I see these things with a philosophical detachment. And I don't quite know what you mean by use."
Roxana: "A man is a man till he's dead. Don't you still want the help of a woman? Have you no use for that closeness of devotion you can never get from any man? Don't you see I have been working for you already? See what I have done for you! I have saved Harding from ill-treatment. I got you half released so as to work with Gordon. I may be able at last to release you altogether. Why do you despise me?"
Cabal: "I don't despise you in the least. I think you are the most civilised being I have met yet in Everytown."
Roxana: "More than your friends?"
Cabal: "Oh, much more."
Roxana is pleased. She presses on to her next step. "Why don't you confide in me? There's Gordon, there's his wife Mary and her father Harding, and you are all - together, in some way. Something carries you all along. Do you think I don't know you are planning things and doing things? Why cannot I help you? I know this place, these people. I am a sort of queen here. Am I nothing at all to you?"
The Stover Script omits most of the above, but continues:
The two.
CABAL: It has to vanish, like the Tyrannosaurus and the saber-toothed tiger.
The two.
CABAL: Do you think you could get me my plane? They haven't put it out of action, have they?
ROXANA: No, he wants to use it and he doesn't know how. There it stands with six guards night and day. I couldn't get at that just now.
CABAL: What are you proposing to me?
ROXANA: Nothing. I came to see you. I wanted to look at you. I'm interested in you.
CABAL: Well?
The two, from the side.
CABAL: We wouldn't forget
ROXANA: We wouldn't forget. Who cares about we? Would you forget it?
CABAL: Why should I in particular?
The two.
The two.
Shooting towards the door of cellar. Boss enters and comes down. Roxana and Cabal step into foreground. Their back to the CAMERA.
ROXANA: I said I should talk to him and I have.
BOSS: I told you to leave that fellow alone.
A common accusation of Things to Come is the at best uneven and at worst minimal role of the female characters, but any such impression is entirely due to the surviving footage, rather than what was originally intended, or even what appears in the Stover Script. As a sub-text to the overall theme of the advancement of humanity through science and order, Wells clearly though it was important to speculate on the changing role of women, but the loss of so much of the dialogue that deals with it is utterly counter-productive, but again the Film Story was even more explicit:
[#604] Mary: "He's a great man. My father knew him years ago. My husband worships him."
Roxana: "He's so cold - so preoccupied. And so - interesting. Do men like that ever make love?"
Mary: "A different sort of love, perhaps."
Roxana: "Love on ice. [#605-606] If this new world - all airships and science and order - comes about, what will happen to us women?"
Mary: "We shall work like the men."
Roxana: "You mean that? Are you - flesh and blood?"
Mary: "As much as my husband and father."
[#607-608] Roxana with infinite contempt: "Men! Sometimes - when I think of lean grim Cabal - I believe this world of yours must come. And then I think - it can't come. It can't. It's a dream. It will seem to come but it won't come. It's just a new lot of men at the top. There will be wars still. Struggles still."
Mary: "No, it will be civilisation. It will be peace. This nightmare of a world we live in - that is the dream, that is what will pass away."
Roxana: "No. No. This is reality."
[#609] Mary, staring in front of her: "Do you really think that war and struggle - mere chance gleams of happiness - general misery - all this squalid divided world about us, do you think it must go on for ever?"
Unfortunately, also missing is Gordon's actual escape. The photograph seen below apparently shows Gordon preparing one of the Boss's aircraft, but the Film Story has no corresponding scene, so presumably it was a late addition to the script the published version was based on.
What does appear in the book is this detrailed description of how Gordon's first flight in the rebuilt aircraft::
The aeroplane, flying. In the aeroplane is Gordon at the controls. He is satisfied. Behind him sits a rosetted guard. Gordon turning the machine round. Then a long shot of Everytown far below. The machine flies on. The guard stirs. He protests inaudibly because of the roar of the engine. Gordon disregards him. Guard taps Gordon's shoulder, signs for him to return and presently, finding no response but a cheerful smile, points his pistol. Mutual scrutiny. Guard weakly menacing. Gordon points over the side of the cockpit. He smiles suddenly, having taken the measure of his man, and puts his fingers to his nose. The aeroplane jerks sharply upwards, and the guard, no longer pointing his pistol, but gripping tight, is manifestly scared.
Aeroplane looping the loop then the falling leaf trick.
Guard's ordeal through all this motion. He drops the pistol and grips the side.
Pistol falling, hitting the ground and exploding.
The aeroplane seen flying away over the hills.
This dissolves directly to Gordon telling of his escape in the conference room at Basra (seen later after Cabal has been freed and Everytown subdued), rather than the surviving aerodrome setting that shares some of the same dialogue:
"And so I got away," says Gordon's voice.
As the voice is heard, the last scene dissolves into the next.A conference room at Basra, rather like an ultra-modern board room. It is bleakly and rationally furnished. Telephones have been restored to the world. Through a large open window one sees the great and growing aerodrome of Basra with a number of aeroplanes coming and going. Far off there is a group of smoking factory chimneys. It is a sudden contrast to the general ruinousness that has prevailed throughout the film since the war sequences. A dozen young and middle-aged men sit at the table indifferent to these familiar activities outside, and Gordon stands talking - too excited to sit.
Gordon: "And so I got away. That is where you will find Cabal. The Boss of Everytown is a violent tough - he may do anything. There is no time to lose."
A Middle-aged Man: "Certainly, there is no time to lose. Half squadron A is ready now. You ready to go with them, Mr.----?"
Gordon : "Gordon, sir."
The middle-aged man begins to dial a telephone.
A Young Man: "This gives us a chance of trying this new anaesthetic, the Gas of Peace.... I wish I could go...."
Wipe off to next scene.
Despite the relocation of some of this dialogue to the aerodrome - where Gordon is visibly accompanied by a rather bewildered soldier from the Boss' rag-tag army - a much-used still shows Gordon in the conference room, again with the would-be guard behind him:
There is a possibility, of course, that two versions of the arrival of Gordon and the guard were shot,one in the Conference Room and one on the Aerodrome, and it was the latter that was used.
After Everytown has been subdued with the Gas of Peace, Cabal contemplates the dead Boss, and then aims his observations on womankind at the sleeping Roxana and Mary:
Cabal.
DISSOLVE:
Cabal comes up to Roxana who is lying asleep.
The two, he kneels beside her.
The two as Cabal stands up.
Cabal.
The Basra airmen walk through the square, as the people on all sides start to awaken.
Dawn breaking over Everytown. Dawn sky. Vista of a side street. Sleeping figures lie scattered about. Gordon and a knot of companions, several young airmen and two women, also in black leather, come through the ruins. They are no longer masked. One of them tears down a rosette flag in passing. [added emphasis]
This was clearly shot, as it corresponds exactly with the next four photographs below. The two Airwomen are discernable in the first and second (one is leaning over to check on the people on the ground), and then feature more prominently in the fourth; the tearing down of the flag is in the third, along with a still-gasmasked Cabal on the right.
The following two versions of the same photograph of the Basra conference room demonstrate an extreme example of differences that are sometimes encountered in printed stills. The first is the UK original coded WM-483, and the second the American version coded WM-203A. As can be seen, the first is somewhat wider, and includes more of the floor in the foreground, while WM-203A shows more of the background behind and above.
This composite shows how the two versions nominally overlap (the slight rotational difference is not accounted for).
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 |
| 03/05/10 | New images |
| 09/05/10 | New images |
| 29/05/10 | New images |
| 06/08/10 | New images & amendments |
| 11/08/10 | Amendments |
| 15/08/10 | New images & amendments |
| 06/10/11 | New images & amendments |
| 22/10/17 | Hosting transfer & amendments |
| 24/12/17 | Corrections |
| 16/03/21 | New images & amendments |
| 04/01/24 | Corrections |
| 02/02/24 | Additional text & amendments |