{"id":1296,"date":"2018-12-16T20:29:22","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T20:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2023-01-22T22:29:11","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T22:29:11","slug":"film-review-the-day-the-earth-caught-fire-1961","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=1296","title":{"rendered":"FiLM REViEW: The Day The Earth Caught Fire, 1961"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/figure>\n

Striking titles against a great backdrop.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Searching for a vintage black and white sci-fi movie, we stumbled upon this gem, from 1961.<\/p>\n

The male and female leads, Edward Judd and Janet Munro, are only vaguely familiar to me, whilst amongst the supporting cast – from third on the bill Leo McKern to a young uncredited Michael Caine – there’s a plethora of familiar acting talent.<\/p>\n

\"The
The film starts and ends with a hot yellow tint to the picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
Maguire attempts to keep Stenning on track.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Disillusioned journo Peter Stenning (Judd) is boozing himself towards professional failure and personal collapse. His only support comes from colleague Bill Maguire (McKern). But Stenning’s personal implosion starts to assume different proportions, when a lady he encounters at The Met Office drops the bombshell that nuclear tests have changed the earth’s axis, with terrifying global consequences.<\/p>\n

\"The
The films veracity is helped by the use of real locations.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the scale of what’s happened becomes apparent, both globally and locally, normal life goes out the window. The paper struggles to continue functioning, as does everyone, from individuals to organisations, as the ramifications of the disaster start to bite: temperatures soar, weather patterns change, water is rationed, the Thames dries up, and society starts to fall apart at the seams<\/p>\n

\"The
Harry’s Wine Bar also features in Rumpole.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interwoven with this are the subplots of Stenning’s blossoming affair with Jeanie (Munro), the Met Office girl, and the day to day life of Maguire and co, at the newspaper offices and their local watering holes. Running through all these threads numerous scenes also show how society begins to unravel, and some of these are very imaginatively done, and make great viewing.<\/p>\n

\"The
An early sign of worse to come us a creeping mist\/fog.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
Another view of the Thames, dried up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are some superb panoramic ‘matte painting’ backdrops. And numerous scenes showing London streets and landmarks desolate and sweltering. It’s all very effective. And, given current fears over global warming, both prescient and somewhat surprising, given the film’s vintage.<\/p>\n

But I guess it belongs rather to the post-WWII nuclear apocalypse genre, as opposed to the more recent greenhouse gases issue. Still, in essence it’s the same sort of thing; humanity commits techno hari-kiri.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Maybe not a truly great film. But certainly an interesting discovery, possibly even worthy of the epithet ‘gem’? And perhaps also deserving of cult status, as an insight into our perennial fears of self-inflicted doom? Definitely worth seeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Striking titles against a great backdrop. Searching for a vintage black and white sci-fi movie, we stumbled upon this gem, from 1961. The male and female leads, Edward Judd and Janet Munro, are only vaguely familiar to me, whilst amongst the supporting cast – from third on the bill Leo McKern to a young uncredited … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “FiLM REViEW: The Day The Earth Caught Fire, 1961”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-kU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8190,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions\/8190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}