High Treason
Entry updated 2 September 2024. Tagged: Film.
UK film (1929), subtitled "The Peace Picture". Gaumont. 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 and Jameson Thomas. 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 Pemberton-Billing's direct inspiration. Set in the world of 1940 (featuring a Channel tunnel rail link which is duly bombed by terrorists, television, and aeroplanes landing on London skyscrapers), it envisages a tense political situation between United Europe, to which England belongs, and a United America. 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 was also simultaneously released as a silent film. [PN/DRL]
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