The Man Who Could Work Miracles
A celestial experiment grants a man unlimited power over reality.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles is a 1937 British fantasy comedy film directed by Lothar Mendes and produced by Alexander Korda. It stars Roland Young alongside a supporting cast that includes Sir Ralph Richardson. The film is an expanded adaptation of H. G. Wells's 1898 short story, with Wells himself revising the plot to incorporate his socialist frustrations with the British upper class and the growing threats of communism and fascism in Europe.
Quick Facts
- Director
- Lothar Mendes
- Producer
- Alexander Korda
- Based on
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles; 1898 story in Hampton's Magazine, H. G. Wells
- Writer
- H. G. Wells; Lajos Bíró
- Starring
- Roland Young
- Joan Gardner
- Ralph Richardson
- Music
- Mischa Spoliansky
- Cinematography
- Harold Rosson
- Editing
- Philip Charlot; William W. Hornbeck
Facts from the source article.
Plot
The film opens in the celestial realms, where three superhuman entities observe Earth. Two of them despair of the planet's inhabitants, but the third continues to care. The other two dare him to conduct an experiment to see if such lesser creatures can handle power over reality. The only limit imposed is that no control over a person's free will is allowed, as decreed by their master. The one who controls Power chooses a human subject at random and bestows it upon George Fotheringay, an English middle-class haberdasher's assistant. In a pub, Fotheringay argues about miracles and inadvertently causes one by willing an oil lamp to turn upside down with the flame burning steadily downward. At home, he performs similar feats, such as lifting his table and bed, enlarging a candle extinguisher, and turning his bed into a cornucopia of fruits and bunnies. He later makes a policeman's freckles vanish and, after cursing a policeman to hell, relocates him to San Francisco. Unable to decide how to use his powers, Fotheringay consults local vicar Mr. Maydig, who plans to abolish famine, plague, war, poverty, and the ruling class.
Reception
In The Spectator, Graham Greene called the film a muddle, criticizing its direction, production, casting, and special effects as slow, vulgar, and unconvincing, and found Wells's original story pretentious. Writing in The New York Times, Frank Nugent described it as a delightfully humorous fantasy with an undertone of sober Wellsian philosophy, praising Roland Young's performance and Lothar Mendes's direction for achieving a sound balance between the jocund and the profound.
More in Films Based on Science Fiction Short Stories
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