Man Who Saw Tomorrow

After 9/11 it instantly flooded back to me. I'm horrified as to how many people go out to deny Nostradamus's vision. Regardless of the "45 degrees/ forty and five 40.5 degrees" types of arguments, the worst is NOT over yet. "The third Antichrist very soon annhilated Twenty-Seven years his bloody war will last. The heretices are dead, Captives exiled, Blood soaked human bodies, and a reddened, icy hail covering the earth."

In this sub-genre of the documentary arena, the Unknown was a prominent feature. Topics ranged from Stonehenge to Bigfoot, from Atlantis to the Bermuda Triangle, from ESP to ancient astronauts, from the paranormal to Noah's Ark. In "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow", the topic is the grandaddy of all psychics, physician Michel de Nostradamus.

What makes this particular pseudo-science offering so compelling is the presence of Mr. Orson Welles. Welles was obviously well past it here, both at his heaviest weight and yet strangely frail in appearance (Welles would pass away a mere four years after this film), but his acting is without flaw as both host and "presenter" of the film. Welles makes the case, although the case is otherwise pretty flimsy for the "predictions" and "prophecies" of Nostradamus.

As others have mentioned, the writings of Nostradamus are vague enough to be interpreted many different ways, and several have been debunked, but the film is great fun nevertheless. Obviously, some cash was spent to make this a decent presentation, and on the whole, the film is darn good despite being somewhat dated.

One side note of interest to film fans is that several of the "world ending" special effects on display here were culled from the George Pal sci-fi classic "When Worlds Collide". Pal would undoubtedly be pleased (as should be fans of his work), that the effects from his 1951 sci-fi opus were still impressive enough to be spliced into a film made thirty years later.

• Genres > Documentary

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