Customer Reviews

World of Tomorrow

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I remember seeing this film on public television years ago, and it made a permanent impression on me. I've been hoping it would come out on DVD, and finally it has. Anyone who has ever yearned for a bright, utopian future will find it inspiring to see how a previous generation (my parents') dealt with those hopes and dreams. Sure, a lot of the film footage it uses can be gotten elsewhere, but this movie, narrated by Jason Robards, tells the story behind it. And it's not "just a story about a Fair," but about our fascination with the Future, something which due to world events was evidently very real for Americans at the time of the Fair. Of course, it's a little bit quaint in spots, too--after all, the Fair was nearly 70 years ago--but that is part of its charm as well.

Jason Robards narrates this ironic documentary about the '39 World's Fair. When it opened, the world was poised to enter a new age - but not the one envisioned by promoters or visitors of the fair. Archival footage shows optimistic American visitors walking across fair grounds imagining a clean and egalitarian era of flying cars and robots and not the devastating global conflict that was already casting a shadow (one of the nations represented at the fair ceased to exist before their expo had). Robards narrates as an adult but subtle intonations allow a child's wonderment to poke through before the adult reality reasserts itself.

The story of the '39 Fair is itself the story of hope. It begins with the Great Depression. Though largely dissipated by 1939, its scars remained fresh in America. Futurism - a shared dream of liberation through efficient and highly advanced technology - was the only emotional defense against those scars or the fear of a return to the bread-lines. In Robard's words, the organizers of the Fair hyped the future as an escape from the past: the symbols of the fair weren't an obelisk and a globe (though they resembled those shapes), Robards reminds us, but a "Trylon" and a "Perisphere". The future holds an almost magical grip on America (tunes from "The Wizard of Oz" highlight that) but one that's obviously unattainable. Having done such a good job informing that underlying fear, "Tomorrow" insulates its subject from condescension - the inhabitants of a short movie produced by GM would seem laughable (once they get to the fair, they never leave the General Motors expo; also "remarkable" or similar words come to dominate all their dialog).

The wonderful megalopolises never appeared - on the contrary, the world would soon be dotted with smashed and burned cities. The wonderful consumer goods soon to be within reach of every working American remained a dream for about a decade, and the dazzled teens who wandered the fair grounds in a daze would soon be dispatched to points east and west - many never to return. "Tomorrow" deftly shows how the exuberance of the Fair died well before the Fair actually closed, and much sooner than the horrors of the next age began. By 1940, the Fair was probably outstaying its welcome (which included luminaries like Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Einstein & Groucho Marx). Re-tooling the Fair for 1940, new organizers played up the seedier aspects of entertainment to boost profits. Robards's ur-childlike narrator grows melancholy as archival footage shows the Fair reconfigured to look less like Disneyworld than pre-Disney "Times Square". "Tomorrow" is wonderfully ironic because it's the story of promises and hopes dashed, and a delicate narrative that brings both to painstaking life. I originally watched this when dragooned off to a summer cottage where PBS was all the TV (or any entertainment for that matter) available. Nevertheless, I found "Tomorrow" haunting and absorbing, and stuck through a pledge-drive to catch every last minute.

A wistful retrospective of the 1939-40 NYC World's Fair, which laid out in amazing detail a bright future inadvertently and ironically set against the backdrop of a world descending into WWII. The film would have been less emotionally coherent, but a better documentary, if it had gone on to indicate the ways in which the tomorrow imagined then was in fact realized, though less benignly than projected, in Title 1 urban renewal, the US Interstate Highway program, and Robert Moses's bridges, tunnels, and roads in and around NYC. Despite that, the film is remarkably good & very much worth seeing.

Excellent. A wonderful review of the World's Fair and how it changed as the world changed during 1939-1940.

A fascinating look at how the people of 1939 thought the future would look. The future being 1960. While the predictions weren't all accurate, this account of the fair is well done, colorful, and is the reason I've had an interest in the fair since I was a teenager and have collected some of it's souvenirs.
Glad to see it's on DVD now.

whimper. Just like the World's Fair of 1939-40 itself, all the fireworks on that last day notwithstanding. At first you'd swear that it's a promotion for the movie the Wizard of OZ with the allusion to it & the music. The movie fared better than the fair over time. But I'm a sucker for old newreels & home movies. I love peeking back 65 years. 1939 was the year to see the fair. It had a scientific emphasis to it. By 1940 much of the world was at war. Somewhere along the way, New York City felt this should be a money-maker. It didn't, in fact, it lost. So, for 1940, the bean-counters were called in. The great visions for the future were dumped for a common carnie atmosphere. It still lost $$$. The biggest losers were the fair-goers, but they probably didn't realize it at the time. The Middleton Family from Indiana showed up & demonstrated that new wonder, television. That part of the future came true. The expressways of the future & a modern new kitchen with a new refrigerator & dishwasher, were apparently a big hit. It's a fun documentary & important cultural history.

Most of this video is from home movies taken at the 1939 World's Fair. If you find the subject interesting you should consider this video. There is something about a film/video that greatly enhances one's experience that still photographs cannot.

The film is narrated by Jason Robards, who does a good job describing his experiences when he attented the Fair. It delves into the Fair's history, exhibits, and the relevance of the fair to pre-war US.

The print leaves a lot to be desired however. I cannot ascertain whether the video has been copied too many times or if the film had deteriorated when it was transfered. Sometimes details are hard to make out and the color bleeding is bad. Al in all I recommend it with a caveat.