High Treason
Entry updated 23 December 2024. Tagged: Film.
UK film (1929), subtitled "The Peace Picture". Gaumont British Picture Corp. Directed by Maurice Elvey. Written by L'Estrange Fawcett, based on the play High Treason (first performed 1928; ?1929) by Noel Pemberton-Billing. Cast includes James Carew, Basil Gill, Benita Hume, Raymond Massey, Jameson Thomas and Humberston Wright. 95 minutes, cut to 69 minutes. Black and white.
This forgotten curiosity, one of the earliest UK sound movies, was quite a big film in its day, when it was seen as a kind of English Metropolis (1926) – a comparison that does not for an instant hold water despite Fritz Lang's film being the direct inspiration for Pemberton-Billing's original play. Set in the world of 1940 (featuring a Channel tunnel rail link which is duly bombed by terrorists; television; Airships landing on London skyscrapers), it envisages a tense political situation between United Europe, to which England belongs, and a teetotal Empire of the Atlantic States, dominated by the USA. The Peace League saves the world from war by assassinating the hawkish leader of United Europe. The production design is singularly unstriking and the story absurd; but some enthusiasts including Frank Edward Arnold wrote positively about the film.
High Treason, which had been dubbed for sound partway through production, was simultaneously released in sound (with the action taking place in 1940) and as a silent film (set in 1950). The two versions are visually almost identical, though the sound version was cut for American release. [PN/DRL]
links
previous versions of this entry