Were the film makers trying to hypnotize their audience? For the first seven minutes of this Jam Handy industrial film, the narrator keeps murmuring about "new horizons" in a soothing, syrupy voice while we are subjected to a series of pan shots that dissolve after an average length of three seconds.
After that, we get a brief look at the 1939 World's Fair, then a long pan shot of a proposed highway in 1960 while the narrator continues to talk calmly and random themes play on a pipe organ and a look at a city in 1960.
To some one in 1940 this might have been an interesting view of progress. To me it is creepy. The technocratic vision of the future it offered ("in which we are all interested, because that is where we are going to spend our lives") was one we briefly glimpsed and then lost when it turned out not to be the way anyone wanted to live.
After that, we get a brief look at the 1939 World's Fair, then a long pan shot of a proposed highway in 1960 while the narrator continues to talk calmly and random themes play on a pipe organ and a look at a city in 1960.
To some one in 1940 this might have been an interesting view of progress. To me it is creepy. The technocratic vision of the future it offered ("in which we are all interested, because that is where we are going to spend our lives") was one we briefly glimpsed and then lost when it turned out not to be the way anyone wanted to live.
