THE FINAL PROGRAMME
UK, 1973, 89 minutes, Colour.
Jon Finch, Jenny Runacre, Hugh Griffith, Patrick Magee, Sterling Hayden, Harry Andrews, Graham Crowden, George Coulouris, Basil Henson, Ronald Lacey, Julie Ege, Sandy Ratcliff, Sarah Douglas.
Directed by Robert Fuest.
The Final Program is unusual science fiction. However, a number of interesting science fiction films were being made in the early 1970s including The Terminal Man by Mike Hodges as well as Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green. An alternate title for this film was The Last Days of Man on Earth.
The film focuses on a billionaire physicist played by John Finch (Polanski’s Macbeth, in Hitchcock’s Frenzy). His father won the Nobel Prize for creating a program for self-replicating humans. However, the microfilm with the plan is lost. The physicist is joined by the sinister Miss Brunner (Jenny Runacre) and they traverse Europe in order to find the microfilm – including a time in an abandoned Nazi bunker. Their journey finally takes them to the Arctic and the setting up of an experiment to see whether the program works – with the physicist and Miss Brunner as the subjects of the experiment.
The film is intriguing, especially in the mentality of the 1970s science fiction, based on a novel by Michael Moorcock.
The film was directed by Robert Fuest who made a version of Wuthering Heights in 1970 with Anna Calder Marshall and Timothy Dalton, the two Doctor Phibes horror films with Robert Quarry and The Devil’s Rain with Ernest Borgnine and John Travolta.
The film has a very strong supporting cast of British character actors as well as Sterling Hayden. The screenplay contains sardonic wit as well as the conventions of the action thriller and science fiction speculation.
1. The overall impact of this film, its tone, purpose, visual and plot qualities, themes?
2. The indications of the title, the ultimate ironic comment on the title? The playing with dreams of immortality, hopes, astrology and superstition, scientific expertise, human arrogance and pride? The result?
3. The importance of the decor and settings, the trappings of the future world, the technology and gadgetry, the arty and pop sets, English locations, Turkey? The appropriateness of the jaunty musical theme? In what mood do they put the audience? Preparation for what is to come, the ending?
4. The film's comment on a future world situation: the flip comment on wars, the destruction of Amsterdam, the various mistakes that people were making, astrology, the sense of the final times, material exploitation, wealth? The irony of Nobel prize awards to the Cornelius family? The stealing of plans, doing deals with? The sides holy atmosphere and the flippery? The flip remarks of the hero? What kind of world, what kind of values?
5. The Cornelius family - the father and his blend of the Hindu traditions and science, a man of ideas, his plans, his sense of the final time? The importance of his death and its repercussions for Jerry, for Miss Brunner and her scientific associates? The opening with his funeral and Jerry's reaction? Dr Smiles and his pursuit? The microfilm, the build-up to the mechanisms in Lapland?
6. The future world and its ironic and comic strip destruction? The film's comment on the vision of Cornelius by its results? Jerry as hero? First meeting him at his father's funeral, his youth, offhand manner, his having, received Nobel prizes? His relationship with his brother and the hostility, his sister in her drug coma? The kind of world that he lived in home, stealing planes, deals, visiting sideshows, with glamorous women? The encounter with Miss Brunner and scepticism? his going along with her, his fascination for her behaviour e.g. her assimilation, Jenny? his brother's house and the suffering of violence? His being awakened in the hospital and his attitude towards what had happened - flip? The decision to go to Turkey and his experience the melodramatic, Saturday matinee style of his pursuit of brother and his brother's death? the motivation for his going by Dr Smiles and his having to adapt, the destruction of the machinery, the takeover of Jerry and his being reduced to a Humphrey Bogart sounding ape? The reversion of the evolutionary process by science itself? An expected ending? His final remarks to the audience and hobbling away?
7. Miss Bruner as heroine? The cold scientific woman, her appearance, costumes? Her control of Jerry, her absorbing people e.g. Jenny playing the piano, sexual liaison, absorption? The attack on Frank's house and her presumption and being caged? Her decision to go to Turkey and her persuading of Jerry? The confrontation with Baxter, getting the microfilm and achieving her mission, absorbing him? The reason for her absorbing people? Was this clear in Lapland? The computer? Miss Brunner's role in the production of the formula and immortality? Miss Brunner as embodying the cold scientific view and plans for the future world? Her messianic dreams? The erotic sequences and the irony of her being absorbed by Jerry? The new messiah that she had created a reversion?
8. Frank as an ordinary seeming character, violence against his brother, the fight, catching Miss Brunner, doing the deal in Turkey, the shootout at his death? - as if he had strayed from another film?
9. Dr Smiles and his sinister smile, his presence at Cornelius' funeral, his trying to persuade Jerry? His presence in entering Frank's house? liaison with Miss Brunner? His fellow doctors and their pride in the systems, duel, the sonar energy? The explanation of their scientific research? The build-up to the creating of the new messiah and the irony of their deaths?
10. The gallery of minor characters - and the strong cast who played them for such small roles e.g. Patrick Magee as sinister Baxter, Stirling Hayden as Lindbergh and his stealing of the planes, Harry Andrews as the butler, Julie Ege as the glamorous woman in the night club, Hugh Griffith as Cornelius?
11. The details of the plans for the use of the brains, the production of the immortality?
12. The irony of the achievement and the flip ending? The nature of this 'put on'? Its purpose and impact? The irony of the conventions of science fiction - the presentation of a future world, insight into the present world, contrasts and comparisons?
