They Came to a City

A British drama; A story about how people might live if they were presented with the opportunity to live in a utopia, an "ideal" city, exploring their hopes and reasons for doing so. This is an eloquent, stagy allegory based on a play of the same title by J. B. Priestley. The direction, acting, and photography are all good, apart from occasional fits of overcooked melodrama within its bounds. It is an intelligent screenplay, but the tale within it lacks cinematic dimension with long, static sequences of dialogue; the audience is robbed of the pictorial element of what is hinted at about the mysterious settlement. Tied to this is a quite heavy political slant in the script, which is left for the viewer to accept as a task rather than for them to explore by diversion; the audience is locked out. Though the theme of universal friendship is explored well.

A very pleasant surprise. This is an allegory about an imagined socialist paradise, and the judgements that various archetypical citizens would have of it. I Loved it.

It happens that I watched this - on FUBI - on the same night that I watched a documentary about Jane Jacobs, the sociologist of cities and advocate of bottom-up community building. This was a perfect follow up.

It's presented as a series of exchanges between the disparate characters, contrasting their values, experience and social orientation. While it could be criticized as didactic and predictable, I found it well executed and fun. I especially loved Googie Withers as the working class gal whose been around the block a few times but isn't ready to go cynical.

In tone and flavor it's like a blend of Capra with Powell & Pressburger.

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.

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.

I usually enjoy malcolmgsw's reviews but this time we have to agree to differ: I consider this, far from being the worst British film, rather amongst the best. Of course, it depends upon what one considers important, how one views our history and the changes in politics. Not long ago, millions of Brits had a vision of a better and more just way of managing things and hopes for a better life for all. This film may have helped the Attlee government gain power the next year, but now all is lost and gone since Clause 4 was thrown out in 1995. The present generation is unhappy but doesn't seem interested in the hopes which this film is concerned with. The acting and the lighting effects are powerful, so it really wouldn't do to sit with one's eyes shut. Of course, if you're hoping for light entertainment and giggles, this film is not for you. It ought to be mentioned that the verse of poetry is taken slightly out of context: 'I dreamed that was the new city of Friends' with a capital 'F', meaning Quakers. It was about the hopes for the founding of Philadelphia in 1681. When a child, Walt Whitman was deeply influenced by a powerful Quaker preacher, and it shows in verses such as this. I can't imagine Whitman would mind his words being applied to this story.