Old Sci-Fi Films

When I was in Seattle, I picked up the book The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies.

Naturally, that's led to my watching some sci-fi films I hadn't seen before.  (That was the whole point.)  Here are some of them.

La Jetee

This French short was the basis of Terry Gilliam's great Twelve Monkeys, and just as Gilliam is a wildly original filmmaker, director Chris Marker made some original aesthetic choices as well.  Most notably, this motion picture has no moving pictures, just a collage of stills with an audio track (mostly narration).  Yet it works, and the choice actually seems like a shrewd way for an indie filmmaker to work around the issue of special effects.  Here it is on youtube with English narration:



Colossus:  The Forbin Project

"Colossus" is the story of the US military's handing control of its nuclear arsenal to a massive, artificially intelligent computer, Colossus, and like many stories' beginnings, "it seemed like a good idea at the time."  The story is compelling, complex, and clearly a precursor to 1983's WarGames, though much darker.  Conveniently, it, too, is available in its entirety on youtube:



Fahrenheit 451

Given that this film is based on a Ray Bradbury book and directed by Francois Truffaut, it seems set up to be great.  It's not.  It fails on so many levels I stopped watching after 30 minutes.  First, the tone and cinematography of this one are really terrible.  I've never watched Truffaut's films, though I've always heard great things about them.  But the staging of the opening sequence seemed so amateurish that I'm not in a rush. And putting the story on film exposed the absurdity of the book.  I mean, if you're going to burn about 50 books in a dry environment, you don't need a flamethrower.  A single match will do just fine.

Soylent Green

I approached this film well aware of its notorious ending.  What I wasn't prepared for was what a prescient, chilling presentation it is of the future (i.e., now present day).  Set in 2022, the world swelters under the effects of global warming.  Food is scarce.  Unemployment is rampant.  The masses struggle to survive; the wealthy are unaffected.  Does this sound familiar?  Watch this film.  Watch it again!

Since "Star Wars," sci-fi has been my favorite genre, but lately, I find it uniquely relevant to our lives.  Only sci-fi can capture the relentless effects of science and technology on our lives.  These effects don't just change our external realities; they change our consciousness, too, as human interaction evolves away from face-to-face contact, toward web surfing.  Unfortunately, it appears our mastery of science has far outpaced our ability to use it wisely.