They Came to a City

Lovely piece about assorted people who discovered a happy land far far away - and some found it happier than others. But as noted elsewhere, the Utopia is portrayed without any explanation of how we got there. As another reviewer says, it captured the mood of the times. That mood produced the Attlee government - and after six years of it, it took another 13 before Labour got in again - and Harold Wilson had the sense not to promise Utopia. Unfortunately, The comparison with Lost Horizon is very apt, but Shangri-La doesn't work without it's supernatural elements - which unfortunately we don't possess.,

The main title actually says 'J. B. Priestley's They Came to a City', and the film constitutes the second of three brief wartime flirtations with fantasy by Ealing Studios.

Coming late in the war when enlightened opinion was already contemplating what was to come next, the ideals it expressed had already found voice in the Boulting Brothers short 'Dawn Guard' and thematically owed a lot to Sutton Vane's 'Outward Bound', James Hilton's 'Lost Horizon' and Priestley's own 1937 fantasy 'I Have Been Here Before'; while the striking production design seems to show the influence of German silent cinema.

Beginning and ending with the genial figure of Mr Priestley ambling on and off, it's not for all tastes, but is certainly quite unlike any other British film before or after.

This is a very unusual film as its a 1940s surrealist one made by Ealing Studios and is simply unknown by the majority of the public. Trust Talking Pictures TV to bring it back to the public consciousness in 2024.

I was attracted to this film as I have a soft spot for old movies which have an air of the surreal, as its always interesting to see how fantasy elements are executed without the crux of CGI and computing power. A great example of a film that does this well is A Matter Of Life And Death.

The current film however is not on the same level, as it has less of the fantasy elements of Life And Death. It is basically a film about nine individuals from the social ranks of British society who are granted the opportunity to enter into a Utopian ideal city. The majority of the film is each character voicing their reasons of whether they have decided to stay in this city or return back to the previous lives. Where the movie falls flat is that its basically a communist propaganda reel in which the haves are evil and the have nots are virtuous. The problem with the author of this story is nobody seems to have told him that Utopia's simply don't work. People being as they are, so the entire notion of people deciding on whether to stay is irrelevant. To argue that point doesn't matter because its a movie makes no sense, because the film is an obvious social commentary. Of course its the bad people who don't want anything to do with the Utopia and the good people who do. More propaganda. But unless the author can come up with the magical way that an entire city can run where everybody is happy all the time and there are no problems because everyone works together, its a moot point to pour disdain on people who would refuse to live there. Maybe its because they know its all an unobtainable fantasy. The far left have always had this fantasy of a Utopia which they think would happen if everybody did what they said, and this movie is a great example of such flawed and simplistic reasoning. Its obvious from the ratings that many people either found this boring or recoiled at the communist slant of the narrative. Its an interesting watch for how strange it is, its simply not a great movie and its political angle comes across as extremely naive, maybe the collapse of communist societies hadn't happened yet.

Not exactly highly entertaining but it's not supposed to be entertaining as it's a comparison of posh rich people to poor ones.

Unsurprisingly the rich posh ones are not keen on a society where all are equal so the privileged positions that they currently enjoy would be lost. Eighty years later and nothing has changed as the rich continue to get richer and the poor get poorer.

My favourite character was the washerwoman who held the film together with her comments.

The set must have been very cheap to construct as it seemed to have been made of plywood painter to resemble stone.

Worth a watch but don't expect any excitement like a car chase for example.

THEY CAME TO A CITY is based on a play by J.B. Preistley and stars Googie Withers and John Clements. It's sort of an "Outward Bound" story of disparate people who find themselves on a road that leads to a monolithic waiting room before a giant door. While waiting, each person explains his/her life, hopes, gripes, etc. When the door finally opens they descend in "the city." We never see it. As they emerge from the city, some are struck by the new social order, happiness of the people, the freedom, etc. while others are repelled by what they see. This utopia seems based on socialist views.

Coming toward the end of WWII, the story is framed by a couple sitting by a roadside overlooking a manufacturing city. They are arguing about what kind of world will emerge after the war. Will things be different. A man wanders by (J.B. Priestley himself) and he joins in, telling the story of his utopia.

Those who hate "the city" include a selfish dowager who browbeats her mousy daughter, a man of the landed gentry who lives on inherited money, a ruthless industrialist who makes money in order to make more money, and a jealous wife who hates anyone to has the things she wants. Those who like the city include the mousy daughter, an old charwoman, the henpecked husband, the world-weary barmaid (Withers), and the stoker (Clements) who has searched the world for a paradise.

While not very cinematic, the overall idea is quite interesting, and the actors (mostly from the stage play) are quite good. Besides Withers and Clements, the film co-stars Raymond Huntley and Renee Gadd as the Strittons, Ada Reeve as the charwoman, Mabel Terry-Lewis and Frances Rowe as the dowager and daughter, A.E. Matthews as the industrialist, Norman Shelley as the landed gentry.