Le Jour où la Terre prit feu

What an absolutely devastating movie! I am still completely engrossed in it, and it has been a while since I took the DVD out of the player.

Was any science fiction movie ever more ambitious than this one? The staggering opening, tinted in reddish yellow and brilliantly composed in widescreen, looks like Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier, and has the same dry wasteland quality to it. Callous and unpublicized nuclear tests by both the Soviet Union and the US have upset the environment, causing record-breaking heat waves, floods, cyclones, eclipses, and what not, and we gradually find out that Earth has tilted and is hurtling towards the Sun where, in four months' time, the universe will savor "the delightful smell of charcoaled mankind", as put by a cynical newspaperman. The largest nuclear bomb ever made will now be detonated in Siberia, and no one knows what will happen now ... The environmentalist discourse seems extremely contemporary to us today.

Now, how to make intelligent, thoughtful entertainment out of that pulp?! Leave it to writer-director Val Guest who more than rose to the task. He put a heartbroken, newly divorced and slightly alcoholized reporter in the center, working for the London Daily News. He tries, with his science editor and surrogate father, to delve into what went wrong and who is responsible, and he falls in love with a switchboard girl with a cleavage. All this to keep the movie grounded, the drama realistic. All of this naturalistic drama is cross-edited with stock newsreel footage of natural disasters, and it works. It works supremely well, and you are sucked into the action, as the end of the world approaches.

All the actors are brilliant, not least Edward Judd as the main reporter, cynical, witty, vulnerable.

1961's "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" must be judged according to the parameters of classics as 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and not today's special effects mega productions in which the perspective of the disappearance of planet Earth is taken with cynic humor.

The idea came to director Val Guest during the Cold War in 1954, and it is under that decade's spirit that the movie is better appreciated. I remember seeing it when it opened, and I have never forgotten that experience, specially its tinted sequence. Sixty years later I am able to see it again, and it is still the same notable film, not the least affected by today's cinematic technology, because, in its core, Guest's motivation -the worry for the actions of mindless men who struggle to control the Earth- is still relevant.

If it is not highly regarded today as "The Day the Earth Stood Still", I think it has to do with the fact that Universal sold it as a B movie in the United States (although not so by British Lion in the UK, where it was a huge success, and won the film industry's top prize for its screenplay) and because not too many critics paid attention to it and wrote positive reviews, establishing it as an important science-fiction movie since then. Although there are very few re-enacted disaster scenes and it relies upon footage of real catastrophes, the tension is handled effectively in the newspaper's office where most of the action takes place, with its overlapping dialogues and constant flow of new information; and in the development of the romantic story in the midst of violence and terror in the streets. Edward Judd, Janet Munro and Leo McKern contribute good performances to this fine movie, shot in wide-screen Dyaliscope.

Good old-fashioned, black & white Science Fiction/disaster-movie classic that effectively emerges two giant contemporary fears at once, namely the Cold War and the rapidly evolving nuclear science. Whereas most other 60's Sci-Fi movies used the versatile side-effects of nuclear testings for grotesque apocalypse stories, involving mutated animals or even people, the premise of "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" is much more realistic and genuinely disturbing. A duo of Daily Express reporters discover, with the help of a weather girl, that the earth has been tilted off its axis because both the Russians and the Americans ignited their H-bombs simultaneously. The unusually high temperatures in Londen, as well as other inexplicable weather phenomenons, indicate that our planet is moving towards the sun very fast. Despite an obvious lack budget, director Val Guest (creator of other genre milestones such as "The Quatermass Experiment" and "The Abominable Snowman") did everything possible to make this film look like a captivating and paranoid drama. The images of a dying Londen, enshrouded in fog and heat, are truly atmospheric and there also are some very intelligent extra elements added, like new epidemics as a result of water shortness. Surprisingly enough, there's even room for an honest (and credible, for once) love-story between the cynical reporter and the overly-emotional weather-girl. Personally, I didn't really like the ending but it does typify 60's cinema greatly. The acting performances are splendid, with Leo McKern ("X-the Unknown"), Edward Judd ("Island of Terror") and the adorable Janet Munro (former child star of "Swiss Family Robinson"). The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a vastly underrated Sci-Fi gem, probably because it wasn't a Hammer production, and genre fans should urgently re-discover it. Highly recommended!

This has got to be one of the best sci-fi films ever made. Great plot, snappy and witty script, characters with real depth and histories, and a (debatably) great ending. What more could you ask for?

Although the plot is quite similar to that of 'When Worlds Collide', the realism of the characters and setting really lift the whole film far above its contemporaries. Its use of journalists to tell the story is similar to that of many of the classic works of literary science fiction (HG Wells' War Of The Worlds or John Wyndham's Kraken Wakes for example) and it follows a similar apocalyptic template as well.

The theme of mankind's actions causing havoc for the globe, which was originally a criticism of the cold war, is still very relevant today for quite different reasons. The parallel with global warming is obvious, and the graphic depiction of the effects of this are all the more disturbing because we see similar effects, on a smaller scale, around the world on a day to day basis. The film is shocking in its bleak vision of the havoc that mankind has brought upon himself.

Basically, this is the benchmark for all serious science-fiction, and makes a perfect partner for the other great of the cold war era, "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

This 1961 classic is truly underrated. Performances by Janet Munro and the great Leo McKern (Rumpole of the Bailey) are quite good, and Edward Judd, whose career is introduced in this movie come together to create a create a sense of building tension as the audience finds out the reason for the strange changes in weather.

Judd plays his character a little roughly, but that is to be understood, given his problems with his divorce and visitation with his young son.

Leo McKern's dialogue and facial expressions are superb and create the perfect persona of the seasoned veteran science writer who interprets and unravels the mystery for us.

Janet Munro, who died prematurely in her thirties gave a very acceptable performance for a young starlet, who keeps reporter Pete Stenning (Judd) at bay, then feeds him the critical information that blows open the story. I have two copies - One I taped from TV in the 80's, and another that I bought new. My sci-fi collection wouldn't be complete without it.