1929. Director: Maurice Elvey. Runtime: 90min.

Britain’s answer to Metropolis! This is a fascinating example of one of British cinema’s early ventures into sci-fi.

Imagining a future Europe on the brink of catastrophic war, the film sets an idealistic global peace movement against shadowy forces intent on conflict. Can London’s Peace League avert disaster and save the world? Unencumbered by early sound technology, the film’s remarkable production design is driven by spectacle. A bold Art Deco aesthetic dominates: sleek geometric sets, streamlined architecture and modernist interiors evoke a world shaped by machines, speed and faith in technology, reflecting both the optimism and anxiety of the late 1920s.

The science fiction trappings are exuberant and fun (tele-visor screens, a rocket-shaped car, bullet-railways) while the costumes occasionally tip towards oddball (think silver lamé!). Drawing heavily on contemporary Art Deco trends, the film presents the future as elegant, ordered and faintly unsettling.

Dir. Maurice Elvey | UK | 1929 | N/C U b&w | English intertitles | 1h 15m

With: Benita Hume, Basil Gill, Humberstone Wright

Performing live: Mike Nolan (piano)

Online programme notes: Laraine Porter

Screening material courtesy of BFI National Archive.

Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art