A wonderfully produced, directed, photographed and well-acted sci-fi film containing a fast-paced witty script, characters with depth and a frightening believable plot.
Directed by Val Guest
Produced by Val Guest, Frank Sherwin Green
Written by Wolf Mankowitz, Val Guest
Music by Stanley Black, Monty Norman
Cinematography: Harry Waxman
Edited by Bill Lenny
Production company: Val Guest Productions
Distributed by British Lion Films (UK), Universal-International (USA)
Running time: 98 minutes
Budget: £190,000 (approx.)
Cast
Edward Judd as Peter Stenning
Leo McKern as Bill Maguire
Janet Munro as Jeannie Craig
Michael Goodliffe as 'Jacko', the night editor
Bernard Braden as the news editor
Reginald Beckwith as Harry
Gene Anderson as May
Renée Asherson as Angela
Arthur Christiansen as Jeff Jefferson, the editor
Austin Trevor as Sir John Kelly
Edward Underdown as Dick Sanderson
Ian Ellis as Michael Stenning
Peter Butterworth as second sub-editor
Michael Caine as a police constable
Trailer
Sixty years ago panic engulfed the entire world.
Sixty years ago the United States and the former Soviet Union simultaneously detonated nuclear devices.
Sixty years ago the world’s weather changed dramatically.
Sixty years ago the earth’s axis of rotation altered by eleven degrees.
Sixty years ago Daily Express reporter, Peter Stenning and Meteorological Center telephonist, Jeannie Craig met and fell in love.
What do all these events have in common?
What links these seemingly unconnected occurrences?
**********************
“The time is now 10:41,
19 minutes before countdown….
19 minutes.”
The silence is palpable with the absence of civilization’s hustle and bustle, its chitter and chatter, and its clamor and confusion. What made life gleamingly nimble and agile now lies dull, dead and dormant – mute phones, motionless fans and deceased elevators.
“It is exactly 30 minutes since the corrective bombs were detonated. Within the next few hours, the world will know whether this is the end or another beginning. The rebirth of man or his final obituary. For the last time, man pursued his brother with a sword, and so the final fire was kindled. The Earth that was to live forever was blasted by a great wind towards oblivion. It is strange to think that barely 90 days ago…”
Read on for more…..
Spoilers follow below…...
“DAILY EXPRESS FOR BIG NEWS!”
Flash back in time to the office of the Daily Express whose function is stated almost ironically in a prominently displayed sign that reads “IMPACT!” But it is the teletype that tells the tale (or the truth, if you will) as it churns out the known facts of events occurring around the world:
“Ascot Racecourse, new grandstand collapsed. About the only thing not underwater in that area seems to be Windsor Castle.”
“Big earthquake piece from Jakarta.”
"Exeter marooned. Five to six feet of water, main Devon roads.”
“New York announces it was detonated 25 miles from the South Pole. Must be the biggest bang yet.”
“Four transatlantic jets grounded with reported navigation trouble.”
”What causes navigation trouble?”
“Sunspots.”
“I can't stop the bloody bomb. It went off 10 days ago!”
“Make sure my obituary is up to date”
Enter Peter Stenning amid an almost torrential downpour of rain: Stenning had once been a respected journalist with the Daily Express, but whose life since his divorce has taken a downward spiral into the liquid contents of a whiskey bottle. The mediocre assignments he is now given only serve to whet the blade of his jaded and sardonic tongue. The one pillar in his disintegrating life who prevents him from completely toppling over is his only friend and somewhat of a father figure, the acerbic reporter, Bill Maguire who even resorts to covering for Peter by writing his copy.
"Spitsbergen reports the largest earth tremors ever recorded."
While Stenning is wallowing in his own brand of self-pity and wearing it like a badge of honour while viewing existence with a jaundiced eye, more profound events are brewing and beginning to percolate in the minds of his editor, Sandy and his friend and colleague, Bill.
Sandy informs Stenning that “there's usually a lot of sunspot static this time of year, and during the last week it's been heavier than ever.” Sandy then tasks him with writing up “a 500-worder for the leading page” incorporating “a couple of items about navigation trouble.” When Stenning refuses to take his assignment seriously on the grounds presumably of it being not worthy of the likes of such a journalist as him, Sandy points out to him that he is not indispensable and that “this paper isn't built to carry passengers.”
It is quite apparent that for Stenning "the thrill is gone….. really gone" and that he is merely marking time and going through the motions, if that. He recognizes the cure for his self-imposed malady, namely that he should get his “finger out and peck on the typewriter.” Little does he realize that reality is beginning to close a bit more in on him forcing him to do just that – his job!
Stenning is soon on the phone hoping to be put in contact with Sir John Kelly of the Meteorological Department to inquire about sunspot activity. It isn’t long before he finds himself involved in an exchange of insults with a young typist / telephonist, Jeannie Craig “from the pool” who instead insists on putting Stenning through to the press office. Matters are made worse when Jeannie overhears Stenning refer to her as being “a bigger threat than radiation.”
Of course, what we have here is a precursor to a future romantic relationship not based on some trite love at first sight formula. Instead, we have a more believable feeling of dislike and contempt at first hearing.
Having failed to get “much change out of her,” Stenning decides to go directly to the department to “shake her till the tilt sign goes up.” Meanwhile, Bill is on the phone to Professor Lambert “about these seismograph readings of the latest American experiment.” As the camera slowly moves in on Bill, we learn that they amount to “something pretty huge.”
“It's a perfectly routine, harmless, silly season story”
There’s nothing wrong with Stenning’s nose for news or skill at extracting information from obstructionist official channels that thrive on secrecy. Having sneakily insinuated his way into Holroyd’s and Kelly’s offices, Stenning tries to obtain confirmation “that the static, the monsoon, the compass trouble, and the terrible shows we get on television are all caused by sunspots. And that the sunspots are caused by bigger bomb experiments.” He doesn’t seem able at this point to grasp the enormity or significance of the possible connection or relationship between them. Instead, its importance for him lies merely in obtaining a quote he can use in an article!
DAILY EXPRESS
QUAKE TERROR GROWS!
Back in the news room, the teletype rat-a-tats the following message: "Russia announce world's largest nuclear test explosion, Siberia, last Monday, 8:00 p.m. Force of bomb stated exceeds American by 20%." The insane stupidity of the superpowers’ nuclear competition is succinctly summed up by the comment “anything you can do, I can do better.”
The rapid-fire dialogue reflects the sudden frenzy generated by the realization of the significance contained in the timing of the US and Soviet nuclear tests and the need to get that out to the public in the next edition. The situation is now clear from the available evidence: “Mankind let off two for the price of one. That accounts for all that rattling in the Spitsbergen attic” and “amounts to the biggest jolt the Earth's taken since the ice age started!”
“Because he's my kid, that's why!”
In the midst of any impending disaster or calamity, there exists a myriad of individual personal calamities that people have to contend with and are considered by them as being just as important. Peter Stenning is no exception as we discover when his friend Bill, fresh from once again writing up and submitting an article he was supposed to have written, accompanies Stenning to the pub for a drink and a bite to eat.
As for Stenning’s divorce from his wife, Bill suggests that he just forget it as “no woman's irreplaceable, no matter how much you love her” and that “there'll be somebody else sooner or later.” Well, that constitutes pretty much a pal’s advice that’s well intended and is so easy to say.
During their conversation, however, it turns out that “it's the kid” that’s at the heart of Stenning’s personal turmoil. He resents the way his seven year old son is being brought up and feels that he will turn out to be little more than “a right bowler-hatted, ‘Who's for tennis’, toffee-nosed gent” who wont be his son. This seven year old boy is the one thing in this rotten old world that Stenning does care about.
It doesn’t require much to join the dots to deduce what occurred with Stenning’s marriage when the pub’s proprietor, May declares to Bill that she would not like to be a newspaperman’s wife “coming home all hours of the night.” When Bill replies that “we sometimes come home in the middle of the day,” she suggests that could be embarrassing. Bill then looks in the direction Stenning has departed and states, “yeah, it has been, for some…..”
“We are not a political party, and we have no intention of becoming one. We derive our support from individuals of all walks. The campaign for nuclear disarmament opposes all tests, manufacture, stockpiling, possession or intended use of nuclear weapons.
The world today is imperiled by nuclear anarchy. Nuclear weapons no longer threaten the enemy, but the whole of mankind. The fact that we are living in a nuclear age should be a challenge, not a threat. Instead of building bigger, better and more weapons, we should be concentrating on the tremendous task of feeding the hungry, healing the sick and clothing the naked.
Let us abandon our nuclear weapons...And may the best man win!!!”
In the midst of a Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament rally in Trafalgar Square, we find Stenning navigating his way through the crowd when suddenly the CND protest descends into violence. As if portending impending doom for the world and its silly humans, an unscheduled solar eclipse occurs of which Stenning takes a picture with a purloined camera.
“I don't want guesses, I want facts!”
At a meeting in the editor’s office of the Daily Express, the area of focus is not the eclipse of the sun that Stenning took the picture of, but instead it is of the more pertinent matter of “why there's been an eclipse of the sun 10 days before it was due.”
There is a definite tension between the people’s right to know and be informed versus official secrecy and downright obstruction. Hence, we have Sir John Kelly who “wouldn't even say good night in case it was taken as an official comment on the future of mankind” which in itself suggests that “information's being withheld in Downing Street.”
While much is being learned and digested about a matter of potential global importance, Stenning is beginning to re-learn much about himself in terms of his own hubris, exercising a measure of humility, his role in the scheme of things and taking personal responsibility for his actions. When told that his paper cannot use his picture of the eclipse, he is tasked with taking it over to the Evening Standard who “might be able to make the first late night.” Considering this to be beneath such a hot-shot journalist like himself, he suggests that he’ll “send a messenger right away.” The editor, however quickly reminds him that it’s his picture and that he should follow it through himself.
The exchange of looks between Bill (who nervously anticipates Stenning’s likely reaction) and Stenning (who is on the verge of erupting but chooses to acquiesce) speaks volumes. As does Bill’s look of relief when Stenning exits!
“Are we suggesting it has something to do with the double bomb?”
In the absence of official open and truthful information, people can only be left to draw their own conclusions or to speculate. To answer the question above, all the editor has to go on are agency reports of “ten days of torrential rain in... peak summer months” in Southern France, Sicily and Libya; “the Nile flooding the Egyptian deserts for the first time in known history”; the arid wastes of Western Australia “two feet deep in water; floods in New Zealand and “at home, an un-tabled eclipse.” All such events can be followed in a straight line down a map.
Before the news at 1.00, Sir John Kelly addresses the nation on radio and television. In a reassuring but almost patronizing tone, he rattles on about solar eclipses and distances of the moon and the sun from the earth. He then suggests that “it is an extraordinary thing that astronomers can tell with such a degree of accuracy what their movements will be many years ahead.” Sir John goes on to explain that it is no wonder that some people “start searching for wild causes” and that many of his audience “will blame the unfortunate concurrence of the two nuclear detonations, but that would be nonsense and “is certainly nothing to worry about.”
“No, you better go now, Mike. It's almost 1:00”
With a looming global disaster forming in the background to people’s lives, Stenning tries to eek out as much quality time with his son as possible at a fun-fair. It’s almost as if it’s a race against time as Stenning and his son flit from one ride to the next. Stenning in a nice bit of irony tells his son before they go on the ghost train that “we haven’t much time left.” Unlike the thrills and scares of the ride, an all-too real scary prospect for the whole world is beginning to unfold.
On a more personal level for Stenning is the fact that the good fun times with his son have to end too soon to be replaced by the more repressive straight-jacketed constraints imposed by the boy’s disproving nanny and his “angry” mother. Young Mike seems destined to be gobbled up by a particular social order with its predetermined world view, its mores, its prescribed and sanctioned forms of conduct and its accepted and conventional ways of living, all apparently with little room for dreaming.
“Well, I suppose that's the end of our summer”
DAILY MAIL
Brighton At 95!!
Daily Express
Its Never Been So Hot!
The full import and implications of such headlines seems to be lost in the Summery whirl of carnival and bikini-clad distractions. A great day for a sun-bake!
Their verbal jousting is suddenly interrupted by a huge ominous wall of mist rolling down the river until it envelops the park and the surrounding areas. Jeannie and Stenning then make their way together with a lost little girl through the thick fog. The scene is reminiscent of the dense pea-soup smogs that repeatedly smothered London in the 1950s.
As the heat-mist blankets the city, the couple make their way through traffic chaos, increasing paralysis and mounting panic. Jeanie seems to be quite impressed by Stenning’s handling of the lost girl which indicates another more human side to his character.
While Jeanie is very adept at keeping the likes of Stenning and his advances at bay, Stenning is not shy about attempting a bit of professional probing, so to speak. For instance, when Jeannie questions Stenning about the fog and its thickness, he responds with the comment, “well, it's your switchboard, you should know.” He later follows this up by stating to Jeanie, “I'm fascinated to know what your friend Holroyd makes of this.” Once a journalist, always a journalist!
When the couple get to Jeannie’s place, the camera takes our view slowly above the line of the heat mist. It is as if we are entering a world above the clouds removed from the everyday chaos of the world below.
With Jeannie, Stenning has definitely met his match. While he’s all for abandoning the usual preliminaries, like the “slow build-up, hot hands at the movies, knee troubles at a coffee bar,” Jeanie tells him to “just use the phone and go.” Jeanie represents a challenge for Stenning and is probably therefore a far more interesting woman than he might otherwise have met.
Once again we are back in the editor’s office to find him expertly orchestrating the only story in town for his paper: “We've got to play this mist, and we've got to play it big. I want to give it saturation coverage. I want a recap on the rain, the heat wave, the eclipse. I want a comparison of the statistics and weather charts going right back to the first meteorological reports in 1854.” This process of presenting major news events is something we are familiar with in our own era of the 24 hour news cycle – saturation ad-nauseam coverage.
These days, we tend to think in terms of major events occurring nationally or globally as being ‘unprecedented’ which is a word we have heard used interminably in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. It seems that the Daily Express editor is looking for a similar ‘unprecedented’ angle for the looming crisis when he states that he wants “to know if anything like these conditions has ever happened in recorded history.”
The scene in the editor’s office is very instructive in terms of the faith we place in science to explain why a crisis might occur and what can be done to overcome it. In this case it is the crisis involving a heat mist that is four storeys high and which “in two hours…. virtually paralyzed a third of the globe.” Is it due to the nuclear bombs that exploded? Perhaps it was due to “an unusual amount of condensation from the unusual heat following all that rain.” Or was it caused by a mass of extremely cold water penetrating into the warmer currents” due to an unusual amount of melting ice at both poles” resulting from “the combined thrust of the explosions (shifting) the tilt of the Earth.” The end result: “a complete change in the world's weather.”
While Jeanie is very adept at keeping the likes of Stenning and his advances at bay, Stenning is not shy about attempting a bit of professional probing, so to speak. For instance, when Jeannie questions Stenning about the fog and its thickness, he responds with the comment, “well, it's your switchboard, you should know.” He later follows this up by stating to Jeanie, “I'm fascinated to know what your friend Holroyd makes of this.” Once a journalist, always a journalist!
“Jeannie's Club”
When the couple get to Jeannie’s place, the camera takes our view slowly above the line of the heat mist. It is as if we are entering a world above the clouds removed from the everyday chaos of the world below.
With Jeannie, Stenning has definitely met his match. While he’s all for abandoning the usual preliminaries, like the “slow build-up, hot hands at the movies, knee troubles at a coffee bar,” Jeanie tells him to “just use the phone and go.” Jeanie represents a challenge for Stenning and is probably therefore a far more interesting woman than he might otherwise have met.
“This is going to be a night of nights”
Once again we are back in the editor’s office to find him expertly orchestrating the only story in town for his paper: “We've got to play this mist, and we've got to play it big. I want to give it saturation coverage. I want a recap on the rain, the heat wave, the eclipse. I want a comparison of the statistics and weather charts going right back to the first meteorological reports in 1854.” This process of presenting major news events is something we are familiar with in our own era of the 24 hour news cycle – saturation ad-nauseam coverage.
These days, we tend to think in terms of major events occurring nationally or globally as being ‘unprecedented’ which is a word we have heard used interminably in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. It seems that the Daily Express editor is looking for a similar ‘unprecedented’ angle for the looming crisis when he states that he wants “to know if anything like these conditions has ever happened in recorded history.”
The scene in the editor’s office is very instructive in terms of the faith we place in science to explain why a crisis might occur and what can be done to overcome it. In this case it is the crisis involving a heat mist that is four storeys high and which “in two hours…. virtually paralyzed a third of the globe.” Is it due to the nuclear bombs that exploded? Perhaps it was due to “an unusual amount of condensation from the unusual heat following all that rain.” Or was it caused by a mass of extremely cold water penetrating into the warmer currents” due to an unusual amount of melting ice at both poles” resulting from “the combined thrust of the explosions (shifting) the tilt of the Earth.” The end result: “a complete change in the world's weather.”
Jeannie and Stenning’s relationship meanwhile proceeds to develop amid the steaming, sweaty tropical atmosphere gripping London. Unable to get home, Stenning stays at Jeannie’s flat on condition that he sleeps in the bathroom. We begin to notice gradual changes in Stenning’s character and behaviour. He insists that he’s “normal’ and “human” underscored by his toying with Jeannie’s nickers, but to Jeannie he’s just a predictable “pushover.” She would prefer him to be “hard to get” and should make her fight for him. Then when considering whether to pour himself a drink, he wavers uncharacteristically, telling Jeannie, "maybe I will ...maybe I won't..."
A call from the office brings a request from Bill for Stenning to go to the Met Centre to obtain “some comparative ice floe figures for the last 20 years.” He informs Bill that he’s “made a new contact.” Somewhere along the line Stenning will have to make a decision between the kind of relationship he wants with Jeannie and the imperatives of his job if it is to survive.
After Jeannie asks Stenning what the incidence of “crazy weather’ means, he says to her, “don't ask me. You know more about what's going on than I do,” and that she’s been “running around that office for months, trying to hide signs of the elephants that passed.” Stenning wants to know what she’s heard which is tantamount to asking her to compromise herself in terms of the sensitive security conditions of her employment.
Stenning may need Jeannie as a contact and source of vital information, but her importance to him is something approaching a matter of life and death in terms of who he is as a person. Of course he wants to make love to Jeannie, to hold her, to kiss her and that she definitely does appeal to him. More importantly, he appeals to her to fight for him.
As to whether or not their relationship will last will depend on whether or not the above tensions and contradictions that are involved can be resolved.
Daily Express
Cyclone Horror
Blitz Rescue Goes On All Night!
While a tempest of sorts is occurring on the bed in Jeannie’s flat, outside Nature is unleashing her fury on London in the form of a cyclone that uproots trees, overturns vehicles and flings puny pedestrians hither and thither. Yes, the earth has moved in more ways than than one for the love-making couple ensconced in their tiny Camelot castle above the now dispersed mist. In fact, by morning the scene on Fleet Street is “like the old Blitz days." Many in the audience would have had vivid memories of the London Blitz during World War Two. For audiences of today, we can conjure up images in our minds of the consequences of climate change and global warming in the form of increasingly severe cyclones, heatwaves, floods, droughts and so on.
“Even though ye hide in the secret places of the Earth, ye shall be found out for the last judgement - Come with me.
Repent!”
When Stenning returns to the newspaper office the next day, it seems that while he was away yet again, the staff have been very hard at work, as “most of the night duty staff have only just left.” Stenning’s frequent absences are putting a dent in his reputation which is now becoming quite tarnished. His boss tells him that “wherever you were you'd have been of more use here” and even his friend, Bill is starting to lose patience with him after Stenning didn’t come through with the ice floe figures he required.
In the face of all the turmoil and chaos around him, Stenning performs like a self-obsessed petulant child. He blurts out declarations such as, “well, you'll be glad to hear I've just about had the whole issue’” and “I wanna turn it in…..Turn in my job, jack it in, resign…….I am sick of being the ass end of Bill Maguire's donkey……. I'm like a cub reporter here!”
Yes, ‘Look at me! Look at me! I’m so sorry for myself! I need an audience! I’m a drama queen!’ Well, buddy, you’re the one who is in control and responsible for how you react to events. If you decide to play the victim, it’s you’re decision.
As if Stenning were a child acting like child, Sandy explains to him that the paper could no longer print his material because he simply was not writing anything worthy of printing anymore. As if placating an errant infant, Sandy asks him to just think about it before acting rashly – just as an adult would expected to do.
“The stupid, crazy, irresponsible bastards!”
Jeannie soon contacts Stenning and they agree to meet at the Battersea Park fun fair. At the fair’s pool / restaurant we can see in the background the Big Dipper roller-coaster and a sign that reads “NEWS of the World” as if foreshadowing the global nature of the news and events to follow and the ride humanity is about to embark upon.
High up in a carriage of a slowly rotating Ferris wheel, after some agonizing over the matter, Jeannie informs Stenning about what she overheard at the Met on the switchboard and makes him swear to secrecy. Yeah, right! A journalist! Definitely a question of trust here. What could possibly go wrong?
As Stenning departs May’s pub with Bill, he reveals to the latter that the “nutation” of the earth (“slight oscillation on the Earth's axis...caused by the pull of the sun and the moon on the Equator”) has changed. In addition, “there’s been an 11- degree variation” of the earth’s axis. It all amounts to a shifting of the earth’s tilt, probably indicating “an east-to-west tilt.” It takes a lot to stun Bill, but this news certainly has done that.
Daily Express
World Tips Over
Equator Moved, Say Scientists
The view of the Daily Express front page story is followed by scenes of destructive flooding. The world is in the grip of an impending calamity and it is a scenario that modern audiences can identify with considering the Covid-19 pandemic and global effect it is having, combined with the ever present fears surrounding climate change and global warming.
“Preventative custody”
Despite his earlier promise to Jeannie, Stenning is determined that the story should come out (without disclosing her identity) and that the population be made aware of what the British government has been trying to hide from them. However, once the story breaks, Jeannie is arrested as the likely source of the leak. The breakdown of the relationship between Stenning and Jeannie is the price to be paid for Stenning breaking the trust she had in him.
Later on in the newspaper editor’s office, Stenning has become an emotional firework incandescent with rage over how the authorities can throw a young lady in into jail while there are so many more important things bedeviling the world that need attention.
In a verbal slap in the face to society, followed by a knee to the collective groin of our civilization, Stenning rails against all those who now “want to read about the filthy, self-destructive force humanity carries around rotting in its belly. Now, when it's too late.”
It’s all very well to point fingers at others and blame governments for society’s misfortunes and ills, but sometimes it does us good if a mirror is held up to each of us to see where a large part of the blame lies. Stenning feels he knows exactly where that blame lies when he declares that “the human race has been poisoning itself for years with a great big smile on its fat face.” Jefferson then explains to him that is the way it is because “people don't care about the news until it becomes personal.”
For Stenning, it has become personal and to hell with professional objectivity!
“I wonder who writes his punch lines”
A government’s legitimacy lies largely in the bond of trust it has established with the governed. The Prime minister’s speech shows clearly that the government does not trust those it governs with the truth and instead resorts to issuing misinformation and meaningless platitudes. This in itself is enough to generate the kinds of things the PM supposedly condemns, namely; “many wild and irresponsible rumors” and a “general lack of facts.” Unfortunately, it is often the case that much of the truth that lies behind the facts also tends to be mislabeled as rumor.
The acknowledgment of a “displacement in the direction of the polar axis” and its significance is downplayed and attention is diverted away from its likely cause with the explanation that there is ample “evidence that the tilt of the Earth has been altered more than once in the history of its evolution, and it has survived them all.” The most that can be expected is that “some of the seasons, as we know them, may be disturbed and change their intensity” and that everyone should have “the utmost confidence the world's scientists can produce solutions for any of the climactic problems we are likely to meet.”
While acknowledging the possibility of the nuclear tests being responsible for disturbing the motion of the earth, scientific opinion is supposedly divided on this issue. Nevertheless, the audience is assured that “the four major powers have now reached unconditional agreement to cease all further tests, experiments, manufacture and work on nuclear projects.”
The montage of global disasters such as blizzards, hurricanes and floods, as well as scenes of protest and civil unrest seem to belie the picture of calm reassurance being painted by the PM. To say the least, the PM’s audience assembled in the pub listening to the radio broadcast are less than impressed. How similar this speech and its intent appears to be to many modern-day official pronouncements concerning crises such as global warming, climate change and the recent Covid-19 pandemic! Downplaying, denial, diversion and downright deception become the order of the day!
Stenning and Bill leave the pub and enter a street which bears the scars of the recent violent weather. Suddenly, a fire engine races toward the scene of a conflagration that has erupted at Covent Garden. For audiences at the time, the footage would have recalled to mind the aftermath of the bombing of London during the Second World War.
The information and messages that follow are conveyed in the very manner that is adopted by the newspaper media: Impact via headlines, pictures and graphics; brevity; a sense of immediacy; placement and juxtapositioning of stories and reports…..
What follows is a sequence of front page stories reporting on catastrophes resulting from the two nuclear bomb blast’s effect on the planet & minor stories on the very person responsible for bringing the cause of this global calamity to light.
Daily Mail
Market Inferno
Met. Office Girl On Secrets Charge
The Evening News
Reservoirs At Danger Point
Secrets Girl – Prime Minister Questioned
Traitor or Heroine?
These reports are followed up with posters:
Evening News
Temperature Highest
This Century
Evening Standard
Drought:
Emergency Plans In Full
Next there appears footage of baked and cracked earth and dying livestock followed by film depicting the Epping forest fire.
More newspaper reports complete the sequence:
Daily Express
World Rations Water
145 degrees Phew!
Secrets Girl Freed
But She Is Not Returning To Her Ministry Job
********
“Just turn on your taps and hear the rude noise of progress”
Upon her release from custody, Jeannie takes up a position at the Daily Express. Of course this is going to bring her in contact with Stenning from whom she tries to convince herself and others she has moved on.
Bill does his best to convince Jeannie that she ought not to continue blaming Stenning for “blowing that story” she gave him on the grounds that “no journalist would have any right not to!” Besides, considering the global crisis facing them, Bill tells her that “this is no time to waste time.” Jeannie, however still appears to be obstinate causing Bill to remark that “she's a bright girl. It's just her sense of proportion that's a bit bent.”
Meanwhile, the scale and scope of the crisis is beginning to take shape when it is discovered that hospital emergency water trucks have been rammed and relieved of 5,000 gallons of their contents.
Temperatures have been soaring with the Mexico delta recording 145.6 degrees Fahrenheit, USA, Texas at 141.3 and Rome at 139, not to mention the “pretty terrifying” famine death count.
Shockingly and closer to home it is learned that at Battersea Park “they're putting up long sheds” of the “army type” along with “trucks full of piping and shower bath fittings” and “500 gallon water tanks complete with purifying systems.” This has also been happening at Hyde Park, Richmond, Wimbledon, Highgate, Hampstead and “most of the open spaces.”
It is obvious that community washing centres are being constructed strongly suggesting that “there'll be no more private water at all.” Such a realization would be as unsettling as having to come to grips with personal distancing measures, lock-down procedures and witnessing large tents being erected outside hospitals and what that implies, as has been the case with the current Covid-19 pandemic.
The true import of what is going on can be gleaned from Jefferson’s advice to Stenning to get his son to the country as he doesn’t think “things in the cities are going to be too pleasant.”
“a delightful smell in the universe of charcoaled mankind”
In Jefferson’s office, it is learned that the Russians have held an international press conference at which they announced that the two big nuclear explosions “did more than alter the tilt. They made an 11-degree shift in our orbit. And we're moving towards the sun.” They also accuse Western scientists of knowing about this all along but they “were trying to work something out before they broke it.” (Sound like something familiar recently?) It seems that there are only four months before the earth becomes a toasted planetary marshmallow!
"WE ALL NEED WHATEVER WE CAN GET"
It is apparent that Bill, with his background in science, has a realistic grasp of what is at stake, while those around him flounder about trying to make sense of it all or impotently rail against the new circumstances.
In reply to one of the paper’s ‘boys,’ Bill with his tongue firmly and bitterly in his cheek advises him “to cancel your life insurance. Sell up and have an orgy.” He then implies that all the young man can do under the circumstances is his job and that he ought to “pop off to the library” and bring him everything they have on “melting points.” Yep, that’s as about as serious as it can get without losing one’s head when confronted by the “daddy of all mistakes.”
For other people, all they can do is just accept the situation or act like Bill’s wife by buying black market water for her sweet peas as if nothing has changed.
Then there are those (like Stenning at one time) who would drink and be merry or self-medicate and dull the pain with alcohol. Interestingly enough, Stenning at this point turns down the offer of a drink from Bill who recognizes the significance of that refusal which he judges to be “quite right.”
Stenning does, however fall into the category of those individuals who refuse to accept the way things are as being merely a fait accompli. They would rather shake their fist at the world and rage with anger at its stupidity and smugness at believing “we're all so bloody clever at outsmarting nature! ‘Anything you can split I can split better.’”
Bill knows full well there is at least one important and necessary thing each individual can rely on and hold on to in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and that something – “some special data” - awaits Stenning in the archive library in the form of Jeannie.
The scene next shifts to a government water rationing station in Hyde Park where the camera slowly tracks along a line of limp, sweaty and bedraggled city folk queuing for water. Painted on the side of the water truck is a sign that reads: ‘WATER IS LIFE: SAVE IT.’ It seems that just about every catastrophic event involves by its very nature some kind of long queuing up process, as we have seen in the recent Covid-19 crisis with long queues outside social security offices, supermarkets, food distribution depots and the like.
While most people accept the dreadful situation for what it is and do display patience, decency and good sense, sometimes frustration and desperation causes people to act irrationally and selfishly. At the water rationing station, disorder begins to erupt with heated tempers and the police struggling to maintain order.
Having come fresh from his reconciliation with Jeannie, Stenning encounters his ex-wife who, together with her new partner, is taking their son away from the city and into the country where it is hoped things might be a bit better. The new partner offers his hand to Stenning who realizes that all the old bad feelings and emotional baggage seem “pretty ridiculous now" in the face of the new circumstances. Desperate times can also help people to put things into perspective.
*********
Words Unheeded
Bedraggled clusters of humanity gather around loudspeakers
Amidst the scorched desolation of an urban landscape,
Once ruled over by flocks of pigeons.
As people seek hope from tenuous crackling threads
Of words from their leader,
A single pigeon lies on its back
Atop a truck’s hood, deaf to the message
With its wings out spread –
Unnoticed
And quite dead.
*******
The time has come for the Prime Minister to give a statement outlining the truth of the situation facing humanity:
"Attention, please.
There will be an emergency
announcement of national importance
by the Prime Minister
at 9:00 tonight."
“This is London.”
“I feel that at this time, it is senseless to minimize the gravity of our situation or to deny the danger of the course decided upon…... Perhaps it is comforting to know the decision has been taken jointly by all governments and heads of state throughout the globe acting in complete accord.
Drastic conditions demand drastic action. Scientists are unanimous that we must attempt to change, or at least check, the movement towards the sun.
And so, all thermonuclear bombs, the largest ever devised, will be detonated simultaneously, 100 miles apart, in the west of Siberia. And to this end, they have been working with all possible speed before conditions of heat make assembly uncontrollable. No one, and I repeat, no one, can tell us exactly what this massive explosion will effect. One thing is certain, however. Without it, we are a doomed planet.
With it, we can only place ourselves in the hands of the Almighty.”
“We're makin' a great clean end, man. Real cool, clean finish”
As the situation worsens with increasing panic and disorder, Stenning tries to make his way to Jeannie's flat in Chelsea, where it apparently has always been “pretty bad down there.” Stenning soon finds out just how bad it is as he attempts to inch his car through a throng of wild Beat generation youngsters playing jazz music and hurling water at each other.
As his car comes to a halt and is overturned by the out-of-control crowd, Stenning is confronted by a scene which seems to depict a nihilistic generation without hope abandoning itself to anarchy and an excessive outpouring of emotion charged with sexual abandon and violence. The constraints of the old repressive order are being quickly cast aside for whatever can help them cope with the inevitability of the coming doomsday, clearly showing that “they’d rather it was all over...”
After extricating himself from between the grip of a frenzied girl’s thighs wrapped around his waist, Stenning makes his way into Jeannie's flat where he finds himself in the midst of a mob of youths trying “to give the dirty little cow a bath." Whatever turmoil had been brewing in the dark pit of Stenning’s psyche, now finds a violent outlet as he engages in a fist fight in an attempt to get the youths away from Jeannie and out of the flat. In the process, one of the youths loses his footing and grip and plummets down the lift-shaft.
As the time approaches for the “big bang” scheduled for Wednesday, 11:00 a.m. we are now back in the office of the Daily Express. Stenning, a man now reformed by a woman and an Earth about to catch on fire, still has his old biting sarcastic wit to comment upon the dying embers of civilization.
When it is learned that “there's five cases of typhus in North London, and they're expecting more” due to “ black market water, mostly,” Stenning quips, “four a gallon. Typhus, no extra charge.”
With the prospect of typhus and the use of nuclear devices (ironically, the same technology that got the world into the current predicament) to save the world, Stenning observes, “at least we have a choice now….Typhus or leukaemia.”
Feeling that he has nothing more to contribute at the office, Stenning tells the editor that he’s “done enough work for one lifetime” and is going home. When told that he needs an inoculation injection, he remarks, “against what? The end of the world?”
“The time is now 10:41.
19 minutes before countdown.
19 minutes.
The time is now 10:46.
14 minutes before countdown.
14 minutes.
14 minutes before countdown.
You are advised to stay inside.
The time is now 10:47.
The time is now 10:51.
Nine minutes before countdown.
Nine minutes.
The time is now 10:52.
Eight minutes before countdown.”
After ‘Zero’ is mercifully reached, the only indication of the massive detonations is a sprinkling of dust drifting and wafting down from the ceiling of the pub. Stenning the journalist ends his report which forms the closing narration. However, is devoid of cynicism and sarcasm. It is probably his finest bit of reporting:
“So man has sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Perhaps, in the next few hours, there will be no remembrance of the past and no hope for the future that might have been. All the works of man will be consumed in the great fire out of which he was created. But perhaps at the heart of the burning light into which he has thrust his world, there is a heart that cares more for him than he has ever cared for himself. And if there is a future for man, insensitive as he is, proud and defiant in his pursuit of power, let him resolve to live it lovingly, for he knows well how to do so. Then he may say once more, truly the light is sweet, and what a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to see the sun.”
"World Saved" or "World Doomed?"
As Stenning’s narration proceeds, the film concludes ambiguously with the presentation of two possible futures in the form of two different front pages of the Daily Express: one proclaiming the success of the detonation, the other, “H-Bomb Blasts Fail. Now Nation Prays.” This is followed by a panoramic view of some of London’s sites and ending with a close up shot of the cross atop St-Paul’s cathedral then fading to black……. with no credits.
*********
What of the future? Do we merely travel along a path that inevitably leads to our annihilation with no means or will to change our fate? Or, as in the background of the Daily Express newsroom in the film, is the ‘EXIT’ sign always there for us to see pointing to a way out for us? Is there always a way out of predicaments of our own making if only we are prepared to take a different path toward a better future?
Points Of Interest
The Day the Earth Caught Fire was partly made on location in London and Brighton, and featured the actual Daily Express, using the paper's headquarters, the Daily Express Building in Fleet Street, London.
Arthur Christiansen appeared as the Express editor, a version of himself - the real life Express editor which served to lend a realistic and an urgent credibility to the newsroom briefings featured in the film.
The film itself was shot in black and white but in some prints, the opening and closing sequences are tinted orange-yellow to suggest the scorching heat of the sun. The film was shot in anamorphic widescreen using the French Dyaliscope process.
Some of the simple but very effective techniques employed by Val Guest include the clever incorporation of stock footage to depict floods and various global disasters, all very seamlessly accomplished.
The role of the news media is presented from the standpoint of the traditional printed press and its decades old technology, a world away from the various news media formats and technologies available in the 21st Century. Just as far removed from our modern era is the political landscape which in the film is defined through the perspective of the Cold War. The issues raised by both however, still seem to have relevance for audiences sixty years later. For instance, the tension between the notion of a free press and the obstacles to achieving this erected by governments and the effects of social media and its dissemination of misinformation and rumor.
In The Day The Earth Caught Fire, Jeannie’s arrest shows the price that is often paid by whistle-blowers who attempt to reveal the misdeeds and hidden agendas of those in authority in whom we place our trust. Modern audiences will be aware of what happens to those who try to disclose the truth: from journalists thrown into Egyptian jails; the disgraceful US vendetta against Julian Asange; the Chinese authorities’ treatment of the doctor who initially tried to make known the extent of the danger posed by the Covid-19 virus; police and security raids on Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC and on a journalist’s Canberra residence; pressures to reveal journalist’s sources, through to the efforts of totalitarian regimes around the world who try to prevent the truth from being known.
Instead of Nuremberg-style rallies and forming Facebook flocks of dyslexic fools waving bits of cardboard and bleating Trumpian phrases like “Fake NEEEEWWWWWSSSSS!” we should do everything in our power to encourage a free and diverse and independent media and strengthen the role of investigative journalism.
Despite the ending of the Cold War which forms part of the film's context, the threat of global destruction through nuclear war still exists as a real possibility. Since 1961, the nuclear club has gained more members than just two superpowers. Notice toward the end of the film the clocks gradually showing the time edging closer and closer to 12.00 just like the well-known Doomsday clock! I wonder just how far away we are today from 12.00 – closer than we think?
The film suggests that the times were definitely a-changin’ with distrust being shown toward traditional upper-class and Establishment attitudes and values. The government no longer appears to be working in the interests of the governed and consists of “stupid, crazy, irresponsible bastards” who merely spout platitudes at the population.
In our own era there’s a considerable amount of distrust around the world toward governing ruling elites.Take for instance, the lame and dishonest pronouncements and actions of officialdom in modern day China or an organization like the World Health Organization who have been reported as having resorted to misinformation, deception and deliberate falsehoods in the face of the current worldwide pandemic.
It is also just as lame and dishonest when a major authority figure like the US President initially attempts to dismiss the threat being posed by a global pandemic that is killing thousands of his own citizens as being exaggerated or even a hoax that will be over quite soon with things getting back to normal in no time. Not to mention offering advice that an injection of disinfectant and a dose of UV rays will fix everything up! This despite the available evidence and the weight of the prevalent expert advice and opinion.
When it looks like it’s not back to business as usual, dishonest deflection is resorted to with blame being sheeted home to the Chinese, the various states and governors and the World Health Organization. Get the picture? Like a virus, official dishonesty, cover-up, and misinformation itself spreads and infects society with mistrust and division and needs to be vaccinated against, no matter where it occurs.
The global crisis depicted in the film and humanity's attempts to deal with it conveys the notion of how science no longer can be relied on to provide answers to all of the world’s problems. In fact, it is often the source of those problems.
The Day The Earth Caught Fire in a way illustrates the kind of problem we’re having in our own era when it comes to the science of climate change and talk of global warming. Not being an exact science built on absolute certainty in possession of all the answers, any scientific pronouncements on the subject can just as easily leave itself open to the charge from detractors and deniers as being little more than “guesswork” or “science fiction.” But science built on observation, the examination of available evidence, the testing of hypotheses is all that we have to help us explain why things happen and what do about them if they present us with a problem. Unfortunately, it is this kind of advice that is based on science that is too easily ignored or overlooked for political reasons by many of those in authority.
An awkward but important question that is raised by the film concerns the strength and endurance of modern civilization in the face of extreme threats to its very survival. To what extent might we have "gone soft" thereby undermining social cohesion and replacing it with hysteria, panic and self-interest? What happens when all the old certainties are removed, when one is a single pay-packet away from destitution, when one’s personal security and liberties are taken way and all is left is an empty stomach and no hope for the future? Our sense of community is fragile at the best of times and can become very fragmented in the face of disaster.
In our own recent pandemic crisis, we have seen most people sensibly abiding by the restrictive measures designed to combat the spread of the virus. However, there have been some instances of people fighting over items in supermarkets and abusing checkout staff. There have also been those who are more concerned with the need to have a round of golf rather than show some measure of self-control in the interests of the greater good. And of course there are those mad militia, far right contrarian peanuts in some US states and in Europe who claim to be libertarians or think that the’ south is gonna rise again, ya’ hear!’ who think that the recent lock-down measures are part of some grand evil conspiracy and therefore refuse to accept the ‘mark of the beast!’ Yep, desperate times bring ‘em all out of the woodwork!
It is amazing how in just about any era there occurs a feeling of concern and even fear about society’s youth. In The Day The Earth Caught Fire, there is a definite anxiety about the youth of London at the time as being dangerously unpredictable, and reckless at a time of national and global crisis. In our own era, young people are unfairly labeled as being self-absorbed snow-flakes who are addicted to technology. Hello? Anybody recall the Climate action protests when many young people got up of their backsides and took to the streets and social media when everyone else stood about tut-tutting about them not being in school and needing to remain out of sight?
With the current concern over the effects of a warming world, the film’s disturbing scenario has relevance to modern audiences considering the recent heat waves experienced world wide along with wild fires in Australia, Europe and California. All such occurrences have tended to leave us believing that they are "unprecedented" – a word that has had considerable (over) use throughout the current Covid-19 crisis.
Often it is a lack of knowledge or appreciation of history that makes us think that what happens in the here and now is completely ‘unprecedented.’ The Black Death was ‘unprecedented’ for those living in the medieval era when more than a third of the world’s population died from the Bubonic plague; The Spanish Flu was ‘unprecedented’ for those in 1918 & 1919 in which over 600.000 Americans (50 million globally!) perished with a third of today’s population!; The Great Depression was ‘unprecedented’ for those who lost their livelihoods after the Stock Market Crash of 1929; The First and Second World Wars were ‘unprecedented’ for those who lived and fought at the time and in which millions died as a result.
It goes to show that there is nothing intrinsically special about any particular era of human civilization nor indeed of the human race itself. Somewhere out there there is probably a hunk of space rock, a gamma ray burst, a solar flare, a virus, a bacteria, an extra-terrestrial species, a super volcano or even a present or future human course of action that will determine our final fate. And if the end did come for our species, would the universe care or even notice our passing? Yet, still we’ll grimly struggle on trying to find a way to survive as life always tries to find a way…..
The ambiguous ending of the film makes me think of what might happen once the current Covid-19 pandemic subsides and the world is free of its grip on the human, social and economic life of the planet. Will things simply go back to what they were despite the glaring spotlight that the pandemic shone on our way of life: governmental deceit and mismanagement; political imperatives taking precedence over citizens’ health and well-being; influence exercised by powerful vested interests; social and economic inequality; diminishing rights to privacy and increasing monitoring and surveillance; the cult of consumerism and endless growth; obsolescence and waste; fragmentation and tribalism; rising political populism; environmental degradation; adverse climatic effects due to global warming? Or, will another path be found to travel that leads humanity to a future that is a negation of all those destructive forces that currently bedevil the world?
An awkward but important question that is raised by the film concerns the strength and endurance of modern civilization in the face of extreme threats to its very survival. To what extent might we have "gone soft" thereby undermining social cohesion and replacing it with hysteria, panic and self-interest? What happens when all the old certainties are removed, when one is a single pay-packet away from destitution, when one’s personal security and liberties are taken way and all is left is an empty stomach and no hope for the future? Our sense of community is fragile at the best of times and can become very fragmented in the face of disaster.
In our own recent pandemic crisis, we have seen most people sensibly abiding by the restrictive measures designed to combat the spread of the virus. However, there have been some instances of people fighting over items in supermarkets and abusing checkout staff. There have also been those who are more concerned with the need to have a round of golf rather than show some measure of self-control in the interests of the greater good. And of course there are those mad militia, far right contrarian peanuts in some US states and in Europe who claim to be libertarians or think that the’ south is gonna rise again, ya’ hear!’ who think that the recent lock-down measures are part of some grand evil conspiracy and therefore refuse to accept the ‘mark of the beast!’ Yep, desperate times bring ‘em all out of the woodwork!
It is amazing how in just about any era there occurs a feeling of concern and even fear about society’s youth. In The Day The Earth Caught Fire, there is a definite anxiety about the youth of London at the time as being dangerously unpredictable, and reckless at a time of national and global crisis. In our own era, young people are unfairly labeled as being self-absorbed snow-flakes who are addicted to technology. Hello? Anybody recall the Climate action protests when many young people got up of their backsides and took to the streets and social media when everyone else stood about tut-tutting about them not being in school and needing to remain out of sight?
With the current concern over the effects of a warming world, the film’s disturbing scenario has relevance to modern audiences considering the recent heat waves experienced world wide along with wild fires in Australia, Europe and California. All such occurrences have tended to leave us believing that they are "unprecedented" – a word that has had considerable (over) use throughout the current Covid-19 crisis.
Often it is a lack of knowledge or appreciation of history that makes us think that what happens in the here and now is completely ‘unprecedented.’ The Black Death was ‘unprecedented’ for those living in the medieval era when more than a third of the world’s population died from the Bubonic plague; The Spanish Flu was ‘unprecedented’ for those in 1918 & 1919 in which over 600.000 Americans (50 million globally!) perished with a third of today’s population!; The Great Depression was ‘unprecedented’ for those who lost their livelihoods after the Stock Market Crash of 1929; The First and Second World Wars were ‘unprecedented’ for those who lived and fought at the time and in which millions died as a result.
It goes to show that there is nothing intrinsically special about any particular era of human civilization nor indeed of the human race itself. Somewhere out there there is probably a hunk of space rock, a gamma ray burst, a solar flare, a virus, a bacteria, an extra-terrestrial species, a super volcano or even a present or future human course of action that will determine our final fate. And if the end did come for our species, would the universe care or even notice our passing? Yet, still we’ll grimly struggle on trying to find a way to survive as life always tries to find a way…..
The ambiguous ending of the film makes me think of what might happen once the current Covid-19 pandemic subsides and the world is free of its grip on the human, social and economic life of the planet. Will things simply go back to what they were despite the glaring spotlight that the pandemic shone on our way of life: governmental deceit and mismanagement; political imperatives taking precedence over citizens’ health and well-being; influence exercised by powerful vested interests; social and economic inequality; diminishing rights to privacy and increasing monitoring and surveillance; the cult of consumerism and endless growth; obsolescence and waste; fragmentation and tribalism; rising political populism; environmental degradation; adverse climatic effects due to global warming? Or, will another path be found to travel that leads humanity to a future that is a negation of all those destructive forces that currently bedevil the world?
Love these old SciFi flicks. Thanks for the coverage!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ed. My pleasure. Glad there's so many people who still enjoy and appreciate the classic sci-fi films.
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