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FilmsMEDIAScifi

As The Earth Turns (1937/2019): a film mini-review by Evelyn C. Leeper.

As The Earth Turns’ (1937/2019) on Turner Classics Movies is a real curiosity: a silent film shot in 1937 but not released until 2019. Director Richard Lyford, who died in 1985, made several award-winning documentaries but this very early attempt of his languished until clips appeared in a ‘trailer park’ reel and people became interested.

It’s about a future war and the best that can be said about it is that it is not totally inept.

There are some weird ‘goofs’ in the script. One scene takes place in Washington, D.C., at ‘the Equatorial Time Center of the United States’, whatever that means. There is also a ‘tidal wave’ in Great Salt Lake, which has no tides.

The modelwork is painfully amateurish and the staging overly dramatic, with acting very much at the overdone level common to silent films. The music by Edward Hartman was apparently added recently but written in the style of silent films, keeping everything consistent. This is unlike Giorgio Moroder for ‘Metropolis’ or the Alloy Orchestra for various films.

Evelyn C. Leeper

June 2022

As The Earth Turns (1937/2019): a film mini-review by Evelyn C. Leeper.
As The Earth Turns (1937/2019): a film mini-review by Evelyn C. Leeper.

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