The list of films dealing directly with what it might be like to experience a nuclear war at ground zero is shorter than you might think.
As powerful as Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Fail Safe (1962) are, they’re also highly stylized, and end before the effects of a nuclear war can begin. Likewise, excellent made for TV efforts like By Dawn’s Early Light (1990) and Special Bulletin, which aired April 29, 1984.
On The Beach (1959) is also lacking in any sort of immediate realistic depiction of postwar life, taking place in a submarine in a world where cobalt bombs (non-existent but theoretically possible) have created a lethal radiation cloud that is enveloping the world. We are spared overt sights of the pure devastation and suffering that would be part of any nuclear conflict in favor of watching characters make end of life decisions.
On The Beach is a great film but not a real look at nuclear conflict. For a look at what it might be like to actually experience an attack, there are five films which must be seen by fans of apocalyptic storytelling.
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Testament (1983), which was just released on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, is the quieter of the five but packs a serious dramatic punch. Taking place entirely in a suburban California town on the outskirts of areas destroyed by the bombing, the nuclear explosion is only seen in a brief flash of light through a living room window.
At first, little seems to change. The townspeople band together. But the new normal soon includes a loss of basic city services, as well as food shortages and radiation sickness. The power of Testament lies in its painfully realistic depiction of what survival might look like.
Instead of spectacular destruction sequences and gory depictions of radiation sickness, we see a dazed man weeks after the bombing carrying a dresser home to use as a coffin for his daughter. Despite critical raves ever since its release, Testament is a criminally under-seen, but poignant entry into the apocalyptic zeitgeist.
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The remarkable animated feature When the Wind Blows (1986) (also released by Severin) takes place entirely in the home of Jim and Hilda Boggs, a middle-class, middle-aged British couple living the kind of quiet, idyllic existence associated with small towns. When newspapers and radios signal the possibility, and then the likelihood, of nuclear war, Jim insists they take precautions immediately.
With romanticized memories of the blitz in mind, they both start preparing according to the steps laid out in the government civil defense pamphlet. George builds a makeshift shelter out of closet doors, water is collected into containers, and the couple is sure that British pluck and determination will see them thru.
Oh, it might be inconvenient for a couple of weeks. An amusing tiff arises when Jim tries to explain to Hilda the need of lavatory pan in their ultra tiny makeshift new digs, with Hilda insisting she will continue to use the toilet upstairs.
This is precisely what When the Wind Blows does so well. It takes the dangerous overly optimistic public mindset fostered by the 1980s British government towards the bomb, and shows what happens when it comes up against reality in the form of a nuclear war.
Jim and Hilda emerge from behind their shelter into desolation, their home in ruins, the outside nothing but scorched earth. Their stiff upper lip demands they imagine hope is on the horizon in the form of governmental aid, medical care and supplies.
They cannot even imagine the truth: no one is coming. Comforting fantasies of returning to normalcy cannot protect them from the inexorable creep of radiation sickness.
As Jim and Hilda get sicker, the film doesn’t spare us much in the way of discomfort. We watch as they lose their hair, vomit, and bleed into their bowels. They grow weaker and weaker, even as they attempt to care for one another. The truth is that they are already dead. Their stiff upper lips just don’t know it yet.
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The Day After (1983) is a American TV film that aired on network television without commercial interruption (a big deal at the time) on November 20, 1983. It had an audience of more than 100 million people.
The film takes an opposite approach to that of Testament, bringing large-scale devastation and special makeup effects to the fore. That isn’t to dismiss Nicholaus Meyer’s relentlessly watchable melodrama in any way. Though some have stressed, fairly, how the all-star cast made the movie less convincing, there are other important considerations in understanding its impact.
This is a cast of truly distinguished actors, including Jason Robards, John Lithgow and Amy Madigan. I argue this places the film in an even more realistic context, as it takes familiar figures and puts them through the same mill as everyone else. Everyone acquits themselves admirably here and, more importantly, seems part of the culture we are about to see destroyed.
The Day After starts with an idealized presentation of America. We see young love, farms, family conflicts, and people commuting, going about their jobs full of everyday concerns. Flags wave, footballs soar. But when the bombs hit, we experience an almost total erasure of that myth. It’s all gone. People huddle in the darkness, burned, blinded and desperately trying to survive.
It doesn’t matter how proud you are to be an American posit, or if you’re a movie star, there’s just nowhere to hide. There’s nowhere for the viewer to retreat for comfort. The grandfatherly physician played by Jason Robards isn’t going to offer sage advice and fix everything.
It is reliably reported that Ronald Reagan, after seeing The Day After, shifted position towards nuclear disarmament. Considering that many American officials were having serious conversation about what winning a nuclear war could look like, The Day After is impossible to dismiss as American propaganda. If it is a somewhat slick polemic, it is one rooted first and foremost in reality verses the national dream.
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If The Day After is fairly described as a melodrama then Threads (1984) stands as a potent soul-crushing horror, rendering clownish those who would speak of nuclear war as somehow winnable.
The setting is the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. As two working class families deal with an unexpected pregnancy and the young couple involved try to imagine a new life together, we see news reports about growing political and military tensions.
We see an understaffed, underfunded bureaucracy readying civil defense measures, protesters in the streets, the looting of a grocery store by a panicked crowd. In one poignant scene, a woman collapses into tears while renovating an apartment, overcome by the pointlessness of it.
All this is before the bombs hit.
About a third of the way into the film, Threads gives way to the sort of nightmarish extremes most often associated with exploitation cinema. A well dressed shopper wets herself as she sees the bomb detonate. A family burns to death in their makeshift shelter. A woman standing in the rubble stares hauntingly into the camera, holding her dead infant to her bosom. People desperate for food are shot in groups by government guards for the crime of looting. Rats are eaten. Pregnant women give birth alone in the wreckage.
Nuclear winter descends, bringing with it the chaos of rape, pillage and a slow degradation of the British intellect back towards a medievalist understanding of the world. Even when agriculture does finally become possible again, it brings backbreaking demands that seem designed to destroy hope rather than foster new life.
Threads embodies the famous observation that in nuclear conflict the survivors would envy the dead.This is that rarest of rarities in cinema: A film that retains all of its power, viewing after viewing.
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Lastly, the faux documentary The War Game (1965) attempts to show what immediately precedes and proceeds from a nuclear war for the residents and officials of a small English town. Clocking in at 48 minutes, The War Game was banned from BBC broadcast for decades due to its deeply discomforting imagery and for the way it confronted the official story on civil and institutional preparedness.
Using direct quotes from actual civil defense manuals to showcase their utter uselessness, director Peter Watkins was unknowingly laying the groundwork for the development of Threads decades earlier than that project. The imagery is arguably just as shocking, and the black and white format is a mercy. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to watch this in color.
Without a fictional narrative, Watkins is free to jump around, showcasing societal and governmental chaos and destruction. One of the most potent moments involves a group of refugee children who, months after the conflict, are asked what they want to be when they grow up. Some stare silently; one looks into the camera and says, “I don’t want to be nothing.” The War Game remains an unsettling, even enraging dissection of government lassitude and incompetence in the face of modern warfare.
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Important consideration must be paid to how difficult it was to bring The War Game, The Day After, and Threads to the small screen. Each of these films had their champions but they also all had their detractors. In the case of The War Game and Threads, this meant decades before they were allowed to air on British TV.
Severin has lavished care on both of these releases.Their are hours of new extras, and both are offered in 4K. Careerist political cowardice and uninformed prudery around concerns of the possible effects of violence have always dogged films of this type. It seems the more is at stake the less the powers that be want truth to be shouted in the public square.
But the public square is much larger than ever before, and Severin enlarges still further by making important, one might even say urgently required, films like these available in a context that helps viewers do more than stare at the horrors and despair.
Visit the official Severin Films site for more information and to purchase one or all of the titles under discussion.