COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)
— RANKING: 66 —
DAWN OF THE COMPUTER AGE: In this shamefully neglected classic, the title character, Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Eric Braeden), an updating of the scientist whose good intentions lead to potential annihilation, stands before his computerized creation. Courtesy: Universal.
CREDITS
Universal Pictures; Joseph Sargent, dir.; D. F. Jones, novel; James Bridges, scr.; Stanley Chase, pro.; Michel Colombier, Stanley Wilson, mus.; Gene Polito, cin.; Folmar Blangsted, ed.; Alexander Golitzen, John J. Lloyd, art dir.; Edith Head, costumes; Don Record, optical effects; Albert Whitlock, special photographic F/X; 100 min.; Color; 2.35:1.
CAST
Eric Braeden (Dr. Charles A. Forbin); Susan Clark (Dr. Cleo Markham); Gordon Pinsent (The President); William Schallert (CIA Director Grauber); Leonid Rostoff (Russian Chairman); Georg Stanford Brown (Dr. John F. Fisher); Willard Sage (Dr. Blake); Alex Rodine (Dr. Kuprin); Martin E. Brooks (Dr. Johnson); Marion Ross (Angela); Dolph Sweet (Missile Commander); Paul Frees (Colossus, voice only).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
This is the voice of World Control.
COLOSSUS, TO HUMANKIND
BACKGROUND
British sci-fi writer Dennis Feltham Jones (1917–1981), a World War II naval commander, published his novel, Colossus, in 1966, at the height of the Cold War. Universal had picked up the rights and considered transforming this unusual story into one of their newly popular made-for-TV movies. Television seemed a good option because the project required a limited number of sets and, despite its genre, little need for expensive F/X, as we never actually “see” Colossus or its Soviet counterpart, Guardian, only the outer edges of these modern monstrosities. However, the unexpected success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) verified not only the box office appeal of science fiction but also the importance (via HAL) of cautionary fables about the coming age of advanced computers. Studio executives reconsidered Jones’s book for a theatrical project.
Brilliant scientist Charles A. Forbin has spent his life in experimentation designed to better his nation and the human race. He believes his efforts have been worthwhile, thanks to his new invention: Colossus, a supercomputer that will flawlessly (or so it seems) oversee all nuclear weapons in the United States. The president fetes Forbin, though this official ceremony ends abruptly when Colossus detects its doppelganger, a similar Russian system, likewise just completed. Bonding, the two create a language all their own and communicate constantly. Shortly, they arrive at a joint conclusion: rather than compete by serving the two sides in a Cold War, they will work together to eliminate war. If that initially sounds like a happy prospect, humans soon learn that peace and prosperity can only prevail if they are reduced to pawns in a master plan devised by machines that people originally believed would exist “to serve man.” (That phrase, of course, had earlier been used as the title for a famous—some might say infamous—Twilight Zone episode.)
THE FILM
Aware that the Cold War had cooled, James Bridges (1936–1993), who had been creating impressive scripts for TV’s The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, toned down the book’s deeply suspicious situation between the superpowers. He heightened the narrative impact by streamlining the tale so that all of humankind unites around an imperative: not only to survive, but also to resist a monolithic common enemy to human freedom. The desire for self-determination, the essence of humankind, is dismissed by Colossus as a sentimental emotion that must be extinguished if order is to rule the world, this established as a key theme that would be further developed in later films.
Universal hoped to cast Charlton Heston but producer Stanley Chase insisted on an unknown to add a sense of everyday realism. Simultaneously, director Joseph Sargent vetoed Universal’s plan to create a set design for Forbin’s laboratory, instead shooting exteriors at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Far from a fantasy, this film projected what could occur the day after tomorrow . . . or, for that matter . . . today.
THEME
The concept of sentience, as introduced in 2001, was vastly expanded here, emerging during the 1970s as an overriding theme for near-future science fiction. The great fear was that cyborgs, robots, computers, and other creations might develop a sense of self, their human-level intelligence (or, in some cases, a consciousness far beyond that known to humans) resulting in synthetic creatures that come to perceive themselves as a race. Each individual “member”—with a will of its own, though not a soul—would inhabit a terrain that reaches beyond human understandings of morality and mortality. This could allow for logic to fully supplant emotion, a computer deciding that the best manner to avoid future war would be to enslave—or, if necessary, eliminate—people. Dr. Forbin emerges as yet another example of the Dr. Frankenstein figure, the idealistic scientist envisioned more than a hundred years earlier by Mary Shelley, his name also beginning with an F, a hint as to their similarity.
TRIVIA
Eric Braeden, who would achieve lasting daytime TV stardom via The Young and the Restless, had earlier played Nazi villains under his birth name, Hans Gudegast, in TV shows such as The Rat Patrol.
Joseph Sargent would go on to direct all five episodes of the acclaimed 1985 TV miniseries Space. His earlier associations with the genre include directing the fondly remembered Star Trek episode, “The Corbomite Maneuver” (November 10, 1966); four episodes of The Invaders (season 1, 1967); and the 1969 pilot/TV movie template for The Immortal.