They Came to a City

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.

Based on J. B. Priestley's play, 9 characters from wildly different social backgrounds disappear into the dark one night and arrive at a vast structure which has an entrance to a new, never seen, city. Each of the 9 enter and then decide whether this apparent Utopia is for them or not.

Strange, wordy piece making little attempt to hide its stage origins. This was intended to look at Britain towards the end of the war and how as a society it was to land in its feet. Regrettably, Priestly, who appears briefly, clearly has decided which characters and classes are the good guys and which are the bad. So whilst there are certainly some interesting characters and ideas here, this rather didactic lecture makes it clear that the hard working, poorer and the left wing seeking the searches for Utopia are all right and the right wing are all upper class idiots frightened of change and only interested in money. It's all far too black and white with too many cliched characters and political speeches, particularly by free thinking revolutionary Dinmore played by John Clements who cries for change eloquently whilst the upper classes mumble and moan. It's a pity, because it's a fun idea and with a gentler touch and perhaps more ambiguity it could have been more interesting than it is. An intriguing but not wholly successful cinema oddity.

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.

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.,

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.