On first seeing this movie in the late 50's, one bomb in a guy's suitcase seemed mild since millions like me were facing full-scale nuclear war from the skies at any moment. At least this anguished soul (Jones) gives a week's warning. Now, of course, the baggage-check bomb looks suddenly prophetic and much scarier. One question to ponder is the logic behind the professor's threat. It's strictly utilitarian—better to lose a few million people than a few billion! After all, that same utilitarian calculus is typically used in wartime without controversy. Just how crazy, then, is this guy. Note that the screenplay avoids mention of this sort of irony or the question of its rationality.
It's a tense film, but a curiously unemotional one, considering what's at stake. Perhaps it's the British tradition of stiff upper lip, or maybe the movie functions as an entertaining training film on how people should act during evacuation. But whatever the reason, no one gets very excited despite the apocalyptic threat. I suspect a Hollywood version would behave quite differently. At the same time, as someone who's never been to London, I enjoyed seeing the sights. And since many appear to be landmarks, likely the decades haven't changed much. Anyway, this has to be one of the few films on record to actually gain topicality after a 60- year passage and is well worth catching up with.
(In passing— The 49th Man (1953) is the only Hollywood period film I know of dealing with the threat of a suitcase bomb. There, it's foreign agents smuggling A-bomb parts into US for later use. It might be helpful to point out that Soviet aviation was still a year away from a long-range delivery system.)
It's a tense film, but a curiously unemotional one, considering what's at stake. Perhaps it's the British tradition of stiff upper lip, or maybe the movie functions as an entertaining training film on how people should act during evacuation. But whatever the reason, no one gets very excited despite the apocalyptic threat. I suspect a Hollywood version would behave quite differently. At the same time, as someone who's never been to London, I enjoyed seeing the sights. And since many appear to be landmarks, likely the decades haven't changed much. Anyway, this has to be one of the few films on record to actually gain topicality after a 60- year passage and is well worth catching up with.
(In passing— The 49th Man (1953) is the only Hollywood period film I know of dealing with the threat of a suitcase bomb. There, it's foreign agents smuggling A-bomb parts into US for later use. It might be helpful to point out that Soviet aviation was still a year away from a long-range delivery system.)