Seven Days to Noon
(1950)
The dangers inherent in the atomic age have not diminished
over time (ask anyone attempting to clean up Fukushima*). We’ve just become more
passive about their imminence, particularly when our demise is far less likely
to be the detonation of warheads released by opposing power blocs than
unquenchable streams radioactive waste leaching into our oceans. Best not to
think about it then, eh? Back when the Seven
Days to Noon was made, a mere half-decade had passed since Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. But it was more than enough time to have formulated the narrative’s debate
over whether all this destructive capability is really such a good idea.
Barry Jones' disillusioned scientist, Professor Willingdon, goes
AWOL from his Wallingford research base with an atomic bomb in his brief case
(a UR-12, we are told, and clearly quite a dinky new model). He has sent a
letter to the Prime Minister, informing him the device will be triggered in
London a week hence unless the government publicly announces the abandonment of
the manufacture of all such weapons.
The best Bernard Quatermass, André Morell, leads the manhunt as
one of Scotland Yard’s finest. But it's Jones' story that is most involving;
the Boultons keep him off screen for the first fifteen minutes, leading us to
speculate what sort of person could plan something so monsrous. And then we
meet him and he’s a complete surprise; distracted and tortured, but perfectly
affable. Jones is outstanding in the role; he bears a passing resemblance to a
follically challenged Kenneth Connor, but the deep disturbance in his mind is
etched on his face and in his eyes.
Terrorist plots to lay waste major cities are ten-a-penny
today but, despite the familiarity, this is a highly distinctive Boulting
Brothers picture (best known for their comedies, this was their directorial
follow up to Brighton Rock). In part
this is down to the post-war milieu, with ration books still in use (as
effective as an ID card in preventing a wanted figure from keeping a low
profile) and ever present bombed-out surroundings. But it's also because of the
sympathy reserved for Jones; his methods may be unthinkable, but his stricken
conscience is entirely relatable (Thomas Harris attempted something of this ilk
with Black Sunday, but his lead
floundered as a nutter with a just a dash of cod-psychology underpinning him).
Indeed, you can’t imagine something like this being produced
in the US at that time. Although, the picture did win the Oscar for Best Story; it went to Paul Dehn, the scribe
responsible for the Planet of the Apes
sequels, and regular Hammer composer James Bernard. It was also BAFTA nominated
for Best Picture, losing to Dixon of Dock
Green precursor The Blue Lamp.
It’s perhaps surprising that the picture goes as far as it does, since there
was government assistance in its production (the extensive London filming, the
military presence). Maybe the foreknowledge of a non-controversial ending
convinced the powers-that-be it was a worthwhile project (“Don’t you worry, the
atom bomb is perfectly safe in Blighty”). After all, it promoted the idea of
government openness to telling it like it is to the proles and suggested that a major evacuation could run like clockwork.
There’s really nothing to worry
about, you see.
They should have realised that just letting the mind loose on
such matters is fuel to the debate; it doesn’t really matter if the bomb goes
off or not. Fear is triggered, and not irrational fear. The movie concerns
itself with the essentially immorality of the creation, rather than dwelling on
its physical effects. No one describes the horrors of what happened in Japan,
but it’s not as if the public had no idea, even then. And even Kubrick, over a
decade later, didn’t spend his time telling us just how we were all going to
die; the joke was that it would happen for absurd reasons. I have to admit my
preference would have been to depict something as uncomforting as The Day the Earth Caught Fire a decade
later, but in its own subdued way Seven
Days to Noon retains its own sense of apocalyptic dread. The power comes
from the unreality of the threat to such a familiar environment.
It may now seem that the Willingdon’s burden manifests as a
slightly deranged religious fervour. Yet the idea of being confronted by
overwhelming contradictions between one’s core beliefs and one’s work doesn’t need
to be such an enormous leap. Not all scientists then were required to be
Dawkins-esque atheistic zealots. His crisis is expressed in Christian terms; he
scrawls repeated phrases from the Bible and Milton on pages found in his study,
and finishes up kneeling in a church. His devotion to science derived from a
desire to serve God and his fellow men, but he realised he was pursuing a goal
of destruction. The Boultings make no attempt to suggest that Willingdon’s
scruples are wrong, or that the church would take a different stance to him
(well, leaving aside the nuking of half a city, obviously).
Fundamentally, his yardstick is moral rather than religious;
ethically he discovers he has backed into a blind alley. Under such
circumstances it is not such a great surprise that he should turn to the church
as compass (since science has offered no such sustenance). As he tells a pub
carouser who wishes Britain would load all its bombs into planes and blast the
cities of its enemies to hell, he’s missing the point; such an action would
mean the total destruction of mankind. The reality of Armageddon looms large in
his mind, and we cannot blame him. The Boultings are clearly telegraphing this
point in the scene where the professor is standing in the Natural History
Museum, a dinosaur skeleton displayed in the foreground; soon we will all be just
as extinct.
It’s only Willingdon’s drastic action that identifies him as
out of his mind. Not that such extreme methods haven’t been adopted by those in positions of power to justify terrible actions;
his behaviour is predicated on a kind of warped utilitarian thinking. We also
see him adopt strategies that will become common parlance; like modern
terrorists, Willingdon refuses to negotiate. And, like modern leaders confronted
by terrorists, the PM refuses to capitulate. Ronald Adam’s premier doesn’t make
much impression, although he delivers a speech in which he explains that Britain’s
nuclear policy is in place because making weakness provides irresistible
temptation to the tyrant, the dictator. Post-WWII it’s an cunningly manipulative
argument, and accordingly the notional imminent threat remains an ever-popular
propaganda tool of the leader demanding everything from increased defence
spending to infringement of civil liberties.
There’s a tinge of a The
Man in the White Suit vibe to the broader conversation; it’s the boffins
and politicians who make great claims for progress, but what of the (literal)
fall out for the common man? Alec Guinness’ ever-clean suit raised some
pertinent concerns about the reflex on the manufacturing industry (i.e. a
capitalist society could not countenance such a development). Here, Goldie
(Olive Sloane) passes judgement on Willingdon with a rebuke that could have
come straight from the Ealing comedy; “You
and your sort, inventing things” (of course, all she wants is a good man;
when Willingdon stays the night at her flat, she suggestively tells him of the
couch, “It’s quite comfortable – if
that’s what you want”).
The professor is dismissive of such a Luddite mentality, but
in his (relative) rural paradise he doesn’t encounter the daily reminders of
what “progress” brings (the post-blitz London). With both Willingdon and
Guinness’ Sidney Stratton there is a head-in-the-clouds aspect to scientific
progress-for-the-sake-of-progress that requires a rude awakening. It’s hard to gauge how progressive the
Boultings thought process is here. It may just be a case of picking their
issues. The following year they produced High
Treason, in which a plot to attack Britain by some damn Commies needed
foiling. J Edgar was surely proud in that instance.
If the Willingdon invites sympathy up to a point, he resists
our affection. The Boultings reserve this for their salty Londoners. It’s this
aspect that betrays the identity of the duo that would go on to make Private’s Progress, I’m All Right Jack, Brothers
in Law and Heavens Above! Joan
Hickson’s cat-laden, chain-smoking landlady, the first port of call for
Willingdon, has her suspicion piqued not by his true identity but a newspaper
report warning, “Landlady Killer at Large”.
Could this man, pacing his room at all hours, be intending to murder her? The
Boultings jet black sense of humour also serves as a reminder that aberrant
behaviour is no modern phenomenon (the rose-tinted spectacles brigade would
tell us so, but this was the period when Christie was still up to his grizzly
crimes).
A lad in a pub is revealed to be playing a pinball machine
called “Atomic Racer”.
A doom mongering placard wearer who will not leave his
signage behind is repeatedly turned away from evacuation points; eventually we
see his abandoned board (“The wages of
sin is death”). When Willingdon’s colleague Stephen (Hugh Cross) races to a
payphone, to warn the police of the sighting of the professor, the barged
occupant exclaims, “What’s, the world
coming to an end or something?”
The soldiers we encounter are generally a derelict bunch, missing
no opportunity for laziness, thievery (stealing a pair of knickers from a house
being searched) or boozing. Indeed, the amount of work required of them causes
one pair to opine that it would have been better to join the navy. And it’s one
particularly trigger-happy squaddie (a metaphor for the military-industrial
complex as a whole?), played by Victor Maddern, who nervously brings the
proceedings to a decisive close.
Crucially, it’s the heart-on-her-sleeve comedy involving
Olive, the fading could-have-been starlet, which ring out the picture. Her
refrain of “What about my car to
Aldershot?” rings throughout the third act as she attempts to flee the
doomed capital, and she gets the final moments (with her King Charles spaniel Trixie).
It’s a slightly clumsy lurch back into levity, but it somehow seems consistent
with the indomitable British spirit the Boultings are gently taking the rise
out of.
Some of the plot developments feel like a bit of a stretch.
It’s immensely fortunate that, no sooner have Stephen and Willingdon’s rather
wet daughter Ann (Sheila Manahan) arrived in the Capital, they see her dad
entering a Tube station. And I can't see a government announcing a threat like
this to the Nation, even back in the purportedly more open 1950s. (I thought
the newspaper shown at one point gave the year as 1952, but I may have been
mistaken; it’s certainly not a sweltering August whatever year it is, since
Willingdon is most express in buying a replacement overcoat.)
But this development does mean that we're treated to the eeriest
scenes of a deserted London this side of The
Avengers/Doctor Who/28 Days Later. And certainly the most
evocatively filmed ones. The long shot where Willingdon runs down a deserted
street away from an encroaching searchlight could be lifted from an HG Wells
adaptation. There's a documentary feel to the evacuation scenes (it even
answers questions such as “What will happen to all the animals?), which may be
consciously echoing those wartime public information films where everyone maintains
a cheery grit (on the other hand, the army shoots looters so neither are they
pulling their punches). It’s possibly a fair criticism that the movie has
nowhere much to go once it sets up its store in the Capital; indeed, it relies
almost wholly on Willingdon’s lack of pre-planning (fair enough, he’s not in
the best of mental health) to sustain tension. But this lends the proceedings
an air of spontaneity; the professor’s encounters develop naturally for the
most part (the odd chase aside). That slight sense of verité is
maintained by some of the devices employed; the use of titles to introduce us
to each new dawn in the countdown not only ups the ante but also invites
association with the form of a documentary retelling actual events.
I wonder if it’s coincidental that two decades later Dehn
would go to the place that Seven Days
dared not with Beneath the Planet of the
Apes. It may have been at Chuck Heston’s instigation, but this time he set
off that damn dirty nuke. Seven Days didn’t
need to go that far, though. It still impresses just for bring up the
conversation. And, while I suspect that the profile of the movie would be
significantly higher if it had
scorched London back then, there’s still a tension at the climax; you’re not
completely sure which way they’re going to play it. It’s a testament to what a
versatile pair the Boulting Brothers were.
****
* Providing, of course, you buy into what they tell you about the threat to end all threats...