A futuristic drama concerning the construction of an underground passageway from England to the United States, The Tunnel (1935) was an ambitious project.  It is perhaps better known by its alternative title, Transatlantic Tunnel, for two reasons.  That was its title in America, and it was also retitled with the longer moniker in England because it came only two years after a German production called The Tunnel, which chronicled the building of a tunnel from Germany to North America.  Both Tunnel films were written by Curt Siodmak, a man who became a mainstay in American science fiction.

It should be noted that the personal drama portrayed in the 1935 Tunnel is perhaps less than compelling.  Richard Dix is the single-minded engineer who persuades England and America to invest in his dream, and who sacrifices his own happiness to fulfill it.  The strife to which he submits his wife, son and best friend is genuine enough, but it plays rather dully; Maurice Elvey’s direction is sometimes static.

Where the film succeeds is in its depiction of the technological march into the future:  video phones allow better communication than we currently experience, while the job of digging the gigantic passageway and constructing the structure which supports it is dynamic and impressive.

The other area in which The Tunnel impresses is its depiction of the political and economic forces set in motion by the tunnel’s construction.  Dix finds prosperous backers to fund the gigantic project, but some of them have hidden agendas of their own.  The movie demonstrates that even such a socially worthy civic project — world leaders hail it as a tool to promote world peace — can be and often is used by speculators as a means to build profits, and that when its profitability is in question, such speculators would rather abandon the project rather than finish it for the good of the world.

So although its drama is a bit on the dry side, I find this movie to be quite modern in its understanding of the political and economic real-ities it portrays.  It also seems like a movie that could be remade now, using enhanced special effects and modern elements such as the threat of terrorism and climate change, and be even better than the original.  My rating for The Tunnel:  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  (10:1).