THE TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL (1935)
Article #293 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-2-2002
Posting date: 5-19-2002

An engineer’s dream of building a tunnel to connect England and America takes a high toll on those involved, professionally and personally.

I really enjoyed this impressive science fiction drama, a movie that carefully balances the spectacle with the human drama. I admire the scope of the movie, in that it deals with the events in business, personal, and political terms without losing its sense of focus on the engineer protagonist, played by Richard Dix. It’s a tribute to this movie that I didn’t actually know how it was going to end; whether the tunnel was going to be completed or not remains a question until the very last minutes of the movie. The movie also doesn’t settle for easy moralization; you are merely shown the price that is being paid to accomplish this task, and are left to decide for yourself whether it is worth it or not. Science fiction dramas are rare beasts, and it’s always nice to find one that pulls it off.