I Watch Films: Five

 

Five (1951)

There’s been a nuclear war*, and the cities are intact but deserted. Roseanne goes out to her aunt’s country home to discover Michael living there. Unwell, she fends off his attempted sexual assault by saying she’s pregnant (and married).

Charles and Barnstaple arrive and it turns out they were all protected in some way; Roseanne in an x-ray chamber, Michael in a lift, the new two in a bank vault. Barnstaple is ill and delusional; when he seems to get better they go to the beach and discover and rescue Eric from the water.

Eric thinks they survived because they’re immune to radiation and so there must be more of them; also he’s racist and fights with Charles. Eventually, having almost torn the group apart, he takes their car to go into town, taking Roseanne with him as she wants to find out what happened to her husband, and we get to see some of the true horror of this empty world, and a conclusion.

Watch This: A very early post-atomic apocalypse film, with ideas from before the genre was codified
Don’t Watch This: There’s a lot of people sitting around contemplating the end of the world

* A newspaper suggests something about a new type of bomb, presciently suggesting the neutron bomb.