Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

DO YOU KNOW THIS MOVIE? # 3

A reader in the UK is trying to find the name of a movie he saw years ago. The plot certainly sounds familiar to me but I just can't remember the title. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Here's what my correspondent had to say:

"Back in the late fifties / sixties there was an old B&W film that was broadcast several times on UK TV. I was was very young at the time but I still get flashbacks to the film and have been trying to track details, so that I can watch it and exorcise this ghost. I can't remember the title or any of the actors; all I can remember was the plot and the atmospheric scenes - to my young mind it was an amazing movie and I yearn, more and more each year, to find it and watch it...

The movie was about a man who regularly travelled via a train and he found a strange old news-seller selling papers by the entrance to the train station - it was very foggy at the time - they had a discussion and he bought a paper. When he looked at the paper later he found it was showing tomorrows news - at first he thought they must have the wrong date and he read about a terrible disaster. The next day the incident happened just as it was written in the paper. He tried to find the news-seller again but it wasn't foggy and he couldn't find him. Then a few days later it was foggy again and he found the news-seller - he bought another paper and again it predicted the future, this went on a few times and he tried to prevent things from happening - I think this resulted in the news-seller telling the man that he couldn't change the future - it was already written. After that discussion the news-seller didn't appear again. I don't think the news-seller was visible to other commuters and he was only available to the traveller when this strange, very dense, fog appeared. I wish I could remember more, but I'm hoping that you'll be able to help me track this movie after all these years."

Does this ring a bell with anyone? My thanks in advance. 
 
UPDATE: Two readers have identified the film as It Happened Tomorrow; at least we're all pretty sure that is the correct film. Thank you! Amazingly, I had already reviewed this film on the blog, just couldn't remember the details or the name of it, LOL!

1 comment:

William said...

My thanks to two readers who identified this film as "It Happened Tomorrow."