across the gulf of space

[sergebroom]

"...No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinised and studied, perhaps as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. (...) Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic , regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us..."

- from The War of the Worlds, by H.G.Wells

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

And these plans included Tom Cruise....

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Argh. Don't remind me of that movie. Heck, I much prefer Jeff Wayne's 1976 musical adaptation in spite of some of the music suffering from its having been written when Disco ruled. And of course there is the early Fifties movie. (Did you know that Hitchcock had been working on his own version in the Thirties?)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know that.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

It's true. Back when it started, circa 1974, Cinefantastique has a special issue on the making of George Pal's movie. One of the articles was about previous attempts at adapting the book (which Wells dismissed as an inconsequential work of his youth, by the way). Hitchcock had started pre-production work on one, but it was shut down because of disagreements about who owned the story's movie rights. Sergei Eisenstein had apparently tried too, but I can't remember why that went nowhere.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Wow! That is interesting. I'm not sure the young Hitchcock could have done justice to Well's story. Eisenstein, now, that's another matter.