Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…

All this talk on Picturenose (writes Cillian Donnelly) about Ronald Emmerich’s big-budget end-of-the-world thriller 2012 (2009) has prompted me to revisit this 1981 curio – a kitsch docu-drama based on the prophecies of the seer Michel de Nostradame, who is more commonly known as Nostradamus.

Nostradamus, for the uninitiated, was a 16th-century physician who, as a handy sideline, was apparently able to predict the future, with said predictions written in elusive verse known as the Quatrains. The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, (1981) examines these claims through a mish-mash of styles that include dramatic reconstructions, stock footage, and Orson Welles.

Yes, Orson Welles, who presents the film from a dodgy library-like set complete with leather bound books and telescope in a wheezy voice. His gloriously hammy appearances provide the highlights of the movie.

So, what exactly did Nostradamus predict? Nothing less than all the major events in the world’s history – the French Revolution, Napoleon, Hitler and, er, Chappaquiddick. Best of all though are the predictions of the future (at least the future from a 1981 perspective) which, Orson assures us in a voice filled with melodrama, “are NOT the opinions of the producers”.

In these, we find out that a global famine in 1986 will turn us all cannibal (complete with magnificent artist’s renderings of vampiric, bloodthirsty humans), an earthquake will destroy San Francisco in 1988 and the world will be plunged into a 27-year World War beginning in 1994. Oh, and that Ted Kennedy will become the US President (good call, Sir).

The WW3 reconstructions, started by some mad Arab (the “third Antichrist, who will bring terror…terror…TERROR to the world after Napoleon and Hitler”) and represented here as a kind of bizarre mixture of Saddam Hussein and Darth Vadar, are so gloriously over the top, complete with exploding miniatures and booming sound effects, that one has to wonder about the scare-mongering mind that conceived them.

Viewed from a purely kitsch point of view, there is so much to admire in Robert Guenette’s film (the same director, interestingly enough, also made Orson Welles: What went wrong? (1992)) – the non-equity-style reconstructions (which has a bloke in an strapped-on beard gawping into a bubbling cauldron, quill at the ready), the portentous, echoing narration, the parade of ‘experts’ (psychic, seismologist, astronaut), the whole po-faced nature of it; but beneath all this lies a genuine note of pathos, the sad figure of Orson Welles.

Welles, from the period in his life when he was little more than a sherry salesman, cuts an undeniably sad figure; sometimes booming his lines, sometimes rather obviously reading from an autocue, sometimes forgetting to take the cigar out of his mouth. Was this really the destiny of the man behind the famous War of the Worlds broadcast and Citizen Kane (1941)?

Who would have predicted that?

90 mins.

Fancy thrilling to Nostradamus and Orson Welles for yourself? Watch the film here and, well, we couldn’t resist it, enjoy another example of Welles’ ‘work’ here. Aaaaaahhh, the French champagne….