I caught this on TCM today, and despite the story being atrociously bad, the scenes were very well planned out, and the camera techniques were really ahead of its time. Whoever was behind the camera, they really did their job. Anyone else agree?
shareI had an issue with the camera techniques. I got sick of the sudden close ups of the main characters faces. One second we are looking at a car and the people around it then boom - we are two inches from the face of a main character. Other than those events, it was pretty good.
shareYes, it was good clear photography, the way it should be, both indoors and outdoors. Crisp lighting too.
It's interesting to read the story on which it was based, The Gods Hate Kansas, published in a magazine in the US in 1941. It was reissued as a paperback novel in 1964 and I've read it (you can get them on ebay). Anyway, in the 1940s sf magazines were big sellers in the states, with a wide circulation. They were called "the pulps" because of the cheap pulp paper they were printed on. The authors were paid a penny a word and usually didn't keep the copywrite for their work.
The novel is certainly dated, but the film scriptwriter has kept pretty closely to Millard's original, the main change being altering the action from Kansas to England.
For anyone interested in the history of science fiction and also how the film industry acquires its source material, I recommend reading the original.
Paul Murphy.