We've all seen movies where the story is set in the year 2525, or some other distant future time. It did give me a bit of a jolt though when I watched this movie in 1960, and Tony Perkins looked at the calendar showing the page for January 1964. That hit close to home, and nuclear war was not off the table in 1960.
shareI know what you mean. I felt the same thing in '60, as a little kid (yes, my parents took me to this movie!). Kind of like 1984...until 1984 actually came and went!
The book was written in 1957 and took place mostly in 1963 -- six years off, with the war having occurred in 1961. Close enough to be alarming, but even over half a century later, having made it safely past those deadlines, the story has lost none of its power. You just sort of ignore the dates.
It helped that for once, Stanley Kramer showed some restraint. He didn't get into the details of how and why the war happened, which would have really dated the film big time. This ultimately allows the film to be about characters confronting this kind of scenario and we don't pay as much attention to the scientific absurdity of radiation covering every part of the globe or that no one is digging underground shelters or coming up with some kind of ark solution to perpetuate the human race.
I also think the strength of the film over time lies also in the fact that Gardner's performance may be the most autobiographical type of role of her career. The beautiful woman forever unlucky in love with a drinking problem really hits more to home when you think of how her life ultimately went.
The problem with the film is that it has a very choppy script, with a number of stray, isolated items from the book thrown in without explanation or connection to anything in the movie. One gets the impression of a hastily edited, or cut and pasted, screenplay. This is apart from the film's true absurdity of having only Australia remaining while everyplace else in the world, even New Zealand (a virtual impossibility, as I've noted elsewhere) is dead.
But one thing that the film can't be faulted on -- which the book can -- is the failure to build shelters to preserve a nucleus of humanity -- the "ark" you mentioned. In the film, although as usual the script has contradictory lines of dialogue on the subject, it's clear that there's only five to seven months left, nowhere near enough time to construct the living space required; and even if this could be done, from what Osborne says in the conversation in the sub, it sounds like it will be a very long time, perhaps centuries, before the planet is habitable again, which would make any attempt at preserving mankind too formidable an obstacle to deal with because of the number of generations that would have to be born, live and die below ground.
By contrast, in the book there's a period of roughly two years between the end of the war in 1961 and the time radiation reaches Melbourne, the most southerly point on the Australian mainland, in 1963, during which underground shelters for at least a few thousand could have been built in the extreme south to maximize construction time. And in contrast to the hazy but ominously-long period of planetary uninhabitability suggested in the film, in the book it's explicitly stated that the radiation will pass within 20 years at the latest, and probably sooner, meaning that any group relegated to shelter underground would only have to do so for a relatively brief, or manageable, length of time before reemerging into a "clean" world -- at least in the Southern Hemisphere. Under those circumstances the failure of any government to at least try to preserve a remnant of humanity by building an ark capable of sustaining a colony of human beings (plus animals, plants and so on) for two decades or less is baffling and inexcusable. Certainly they might have failed in this endeavor, but it would have been worth a try -- what had they to lose? But there was every reason to believe colonies of humans could have been preserved in the most southerly areas -- Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, South Africa (whites only at that time, of course!), ready to emerge back into the sunshine by 1983 at the latest.
Shute's failure to address this glaring gap in logic is a major flaw in the book. But under the different time elements in the film, such a step was not feasible.
Drinking aside, I don't know how truly "autobiographical" Gardner's characterization of Moira was in this film, but it was certainly one of her best performances. I believe it was Time magazine that wrote in 1959, "Miss Gardner has never looked worse or acted better," and there was much truth to that.
I'd take issue with the "never looked worse" comment since her swimsuit scene with the wet hair shows her at the best she ever looked to me. And from that point on, other than her one scene in "55 Days At Peking" in the white gown it was a slow downward decline.
I sort of recall one Gardner bio that suggested there was more filmed that got cut which could account further for the choppiness you note.
I think your points are correct, in a strict sense, but that you miss the point in the bigger picture. And holding a 1959 film (hey, that was even before Star Trek!) to current hyper-reality standards is misguided. However Ms Gardener was indeed smokin' in this film. Rachel Ward did her best - and did it very well - in the 2000 version but...
sharebrianshoebridge1,
Sorry, but I'm not sure what you meant when you wrote,
I think your points are correct, in a strict sense, but that you miss the point in the bigger picture. And holding a 1959 film (hey, that was even before Star Trek!) to current hyper-reality standards is misguided.
That hit close to home, and nuclear war was not off the table in 1960.The period 1959 to 1964 (the year the film was set) saw beside this film, other famous nuclear war-ning films such as Fail Safe and Dr Strangelove (etc.)🐭 share