The Shining Future (1944) User Reviews

A strange look into the optimism of 1944 about the future.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 28 October 2020]

"The Shining Future" is a short film made to further the bond drive in order for the United States to fight WWII. It is available on YouTube if you are interested.

The film is a strange one when it begins...supposedly in 1954 in a family's living room. In this screwy view of the future, it's already a lot like the Jetsons! You see folks flying all about in airplanes instead of cars...and one of the characters talks about wanting one of those rocket instead of a helicopter! Soon after, they turn on a television-like device and watch to see what life was like back in 1944!

What follows are a variety of famous Hollywood actors singing about war and victory as well as Cary Grant reading a very moving letter from a dying soldier. All in all, very interesting due to the many guest appearances. Worth seeing.

By the way, the same material in this film was used in another short from 1944...."The Road to Victory". However, "The Road to Victory" was shorter and this expanded version was apparently aimed towards Canadian viewers, as there's a short prologue with Herbert Marshall to that effect.

The acts featured in "The Shining Future" which are not in "The Road to Victory" are Deanna Durbin, Benny Goodman with Harry James, a skit with the Great Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) as well as a song and lecture from Bing Crosby. All in all, an interesting and unusual peek into the past.

A Plastic Fur Coat For Mother

[boblipton · 6/10 · 14 February 2021]

It's 1960, and the skies are dark with flying cars. Jimmy Lyndon complains to mother Olive Blakeny about having to eat steak for dinner again. Then father Charlie Ruffles has them set the retroscope to 1944, so they can watch and listen to to a bunch of stars try to sell war bucks nds to Canadians.

It's a pretty good array of musical talent, and the non-musical folks on display are pretty good too; as one reviewer elsewhere remarked, it's Cary Grant's only sci-if movie. It's mostly movie stars, and the various studios cooperated in having their talent appear in this short short and distributed by Warner Brothers. That was standard procedure during the War.

Ouch. Scary.

[gkeith_1 · 10/10 · 17 December 2015]

Ouch. Scary. 1944 predicting the future of 1954. Son in future 1954 wants personal airplane to replace driving a car. Backtracking. 1954 skies are cluttered with personal flying vehicles. Shades of The Jetsons.

The son said lets turn on the reverso-scope. Today, we might say retro-scope. It looked like a television, lol. This was creepy and bizarre.

Parents said remember the old days of not so many personal luxuries. Remember the old days of doing without. This is 1944 predicting the future. It is now in today's reality, 2015, and those personal commuter airplanes never happened. This whiny kid came off as an ungrateful brat.

There were some 1944 entertainers performing, to get people to buy war bonds. Frank Sinatra. Bing Crosby. Cary Grant. Jack Carson. I don't remember seeing Deanna Durbin. Either I was too sleepy, or perhaps she was in a Canadian war-bonds version. Wasn't she from Canada? Anyway, Frank was a very hot singer/crooner at the time.

We were smack inside World War Two during this 1944 futuristic prediction. The scoop was that a confident military victory was in sight. That ugly war was to end the next year, in 1945. Economic prosperity was coming, but junior son of Charlie Ruggles wouldn't really be able to get a pilot's license for his backdoor sky-wheels. Can I have da keys, Dad, so I can fly Miss 1954 to da prom? It nevah happened.

Wasn't this the kid I saw squeakingly-voiced romancing Elizabeth Taylor in "Life with Father"? Oh, yes, but my jaw originally dropped and I kept saying to myself, "Henry Aldrich," "Henry Aldrich."

I am an historian and a futurist. Let us predict the 1954 kid's future. Say he went to college in 1958-1960. Did he graduate in 1962-1964? Did he go to NYC and become one of the Mad Men? Did he get married around 1967 and start having children around 1970? Did he then have to save up his own adult dough in order to buy his own commuter plane? Did everybody have a personal hangar on their own backyard landing strip? Was it ticklish to remember back in 1954 when he only wanted one itty-bitty plane instead of an old-fashioned car to drive around? Perhaps he now has two or more planes, with his children wanting their own personal Jetson-flymobiles when they get older. Perhaps each child by 1985 has her/his own TV on the wall tuned in to the old days of 1954, which is perceived to be so old-fashioned and archaic. Oh, how revolting.

This was part of a series of films honoring the December 1915 birth of TCM Star of the Month Frank Sinatra. Happy 100th Birthday, Frankie!!!!!