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"A story about the day after tomorrow." A montage of international landmarks engulfed in mushroom clouds provides the apocalyptic global view, which swiftly descends to the tattered figure shambling along the deserted highway. The first movement is a noli me tangere between the pregnant widow (Susan Douglas Rubes), whose dazed reserve would become the heroine's catatonia in Night of the Living Dead, and the bearded philosopher (William Phipps) who remembers Hiroshima. Other survivors materialize, the black ex-GI (Charles Lampkin) hoping "for a piece of security," the wizened bank clerk (Earl Lee) who expires on the wind-swept beachfront, the mountain-climber (James Anderson) brimming with old materialism and prejudice. Amid the ashes of the world ("I'm glad it's dead!"), between the frail new garden being cultivated and the road leading to the radioactive city, Adam and Eve trying to start over. Largely derived from Lifeboat, Arch Oboler's admirably grave parable of nuclear unease sets off the stark line of thought that runs through Fear and Desire, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, Last Woman on Earth, and quite a few Twilight Zone episodes. The filming is at once spare and concentrated, at times even Rossellinian: Groups of characters are encircled by deep chiaroscuro at the Frank Wright Lloyd house, details like a sign reading "Back in five minutes" litter the devastated landscape. The widow's trip to the remains of downtown Los Angeles is a tour de force of handheld tracking shots and distant sirens, with just enough of a skeletal hand revealed inside a stalled car to graze Dalí's Rainy Taxi. "Behold! I make all things new," reads the closing card, a Book of Revelations quote as a clarion call for independent filmmakers. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |