The Tunnel
The Tunnel (1935) Rewatch? ❎
Wow, that was a confused film. I don’t really know the book the film is based on but yeah, weird stuff.
The basic idea is that a person who built the channel tunnel wants to build an Atlantic tunnel straight to America which will, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, suddenly lead to world peace.
Now, obviously I understand the propaganda part of all this, close relations with the US and Britain and long live capitalism, huzzah! but much like that argument, the entire thing completely falls apart if you think about it for even so much as a second. If there was rather more to the film than this, fair enough, but there really isn’t anything to distract from this tunnel being the harbinger of peace on Earth and there being nothing else of substance there.
There are a few things that try - at some point it becomes clear that you can get Atlantic tunnel sickness and go blind whilst digging, that the dedication to the tunnel building is such that it has repercussions at home and there’s a whole lot of stuff about shareholders fucking around to get control of the tunnel, one shareholder wants control to sell weapons which would obviously not be good for world peace. This is all superfluous to the film’s big idea that we must capitalism a way to world peace with a big tunnel. It never managed to distract me once because every single time, it would find a way of getting back to the tunnel being v v important and here comes world peace, yay.
I don’t think world peace would happen, tbh.
Still, there’s a couple of grand shots in there (some I believe taken from a previous attempt at filming the story) but largely I’m too done with this shit in 2024 and the films message doesn’t resonate through the ages for me, really. At best, I give this film an “aww, bless” out of ten.
> 11th October update
Ok. Having read up a bit on the book now, the film misses the book’s punchline out (after all that effort, we didn’t need a tunnel because aeroplanes exist, ho ho ho) but does keep some of its dodgier, anti-Semitic elements. No wonder it’s confused! It’s supposed to be making a vague point about progress, not be an invite to a dreamy capitalist future with world peace now a done deal.
Still. Sounds like the book is one for me to avoid as well all the same.