I am generally wary of films with historical subjects (e.g. Unlike the majority of viewers I find 'Ben-Hur' terrible), but this one disappointed me less than some others. Pros: The picture is well acted and the sets are extraordinary. Both the interior of houses and the streets of 1784-London look absolutely convincing: the contrast of elegance and dirt, the mud, the lack of gutters and street lighting etc. On top of that brutality, child labour and so on - really convincing. All this is much better done than in any twenty-first century British period drama I have seen. I also liked the idea to show the twentieth-century scenes in black-and-white and the eighteenth-century ones in colour. Cons: The whole premise did not convince me, and I don't mean the time travelling bit. It is a fantasy film, after all. But that Tyrone Power is accused of insanity because he experiments with electricity and steam power is absurd. This is supposed to be 1784. Steam engines had been used in Cornish and Welsh mines for almost a century, Benjamin Franklin had experimented with electricity decades earlier, and Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta were just then on the point of major breakthroughs (battery power etc.). All in all eighteenth century Britain was fairly tolerant of excentrics; I guess Power would have had a good chance of getting away with his experiments, even of being admired. A minor point is that I found the music terrible. On balance, I guess for me the pros of this picture outweigh the cons, but not by much.
Review of I'll Never Forget You
