High Treason

High Treason is a 1928 film based on a play by Noel Pemberton Billing. Set in the London of the “future” (the 1950s), the film features cigar-shaped cars and airships over a skyline rather more like that of New York City. The plot resolved about a “Peace League” battling a band of evil agitators while the world’s superpowers stand on the brink of devastating war.

Perhaps more “retro-futuristic” than steampunk (even though there’s dirigibles there!), the film provides an intriguing glimpse into what seemed possible during the Interbellum. As a past projection of the future, it should be of interest to any steampunk enthusiasts, if only because we learn that combat gear of the future includes high heels!

  • Yikes. Fascinating, but NPB is better known as (to quote one biographer) "the Goering we never had" - during WW1 he used his MP's office to persecute theatre artists, Jews, Germans, and gay & lesbian people for allegedly forming a "cult of the 28,000" to start the war or make Britain lose. I'd always thought of that film as an odd postscript to his terrifying career. Thank God he disgraced himself (named in a divorce suit) and had to quit politics before he really became "the Goering we never had."
  • Fred Simkin
    Regardless of his politics the film looks interesting from a pictorial perspective. Does anyone know if there is a bit torrent of it somewhere?
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