HIGH TREASON. GB/Tiffany, 1929; Maurice Elvey, director; Benita Hume, Jameson Thomas, Humberston Wright, Basil Gill, James Carew, Judd Green, Milton Rosmer, Henry Vibart, Irene Rooke, Renee Ray. Shown at Cinecon 41, September 2005.

   This was a science fiction film previously unknown to me and to, I suspect, a majority of the audience. Although it was filmed in both sound and silent versions, the sound track had decomposed, and only the silent version appears to survive.

   Set in the mid-20th century, some twenty years after the date of the film’s release, it chronicles an explosive situation in which subversive capitalists and terrorists, working behind the scenes, are attempting to set off a war between the two major international powers represented by North America and Britain and continental governments.

   (The writer of the program notes seems to think Britain and the US are a co-joined superpower even though the film makes it clear that Washington and London are the leaders of their respective alliances.)

   This was released two years after the seminal German science fiction film, Metropolis. High Treason has none of the visionary power of Lang’s film but its simplistic view of the future city (airplanes landing on roofs, and TV) is somewhat compensated for by a plot which culminates with the murder of the leader who’s pushing for war by the world’s leading pacifistic in an attempt to derail the race toward disaster.

   It’s certainly superior to the rather silly American SF film Just Imagine (1930) but it will not be until 1936 that Britain, with the release of Things to Come, will produce an important science fiction film.