When Worlds Collide (Rudolph Maté, 1951)

Richard Derr and Barbara Rush in When Worlds Collide

Cast: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hansen, John Hoyt, Larry Keating, Rachel Ames, Stephen Chase, Frank Cady, Hayden Rorke, Sandro Giglio. Screenplay: Sidney Boehm, based on a novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie. Cinematography: W. Howard Greene, John F. Seitz. Art direction: Albert Nozaki, Hal Pereira. Film editing: Arthur P. Schmidt. Music: Leith Stevens.

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but with a bunch of white folks rocketing off to another planet that looks like it was painted by Chesley Bonestell. Well, that's the way it ended in 1951. Today, one hopes that the survivors would be a good deal more diverse and the preparations for their flight a good deal better organized. (Actually, today it looks like it will end with a lot of coughing and political posturing.) When Worlds Collide is very much of its era, sacrificing plausibility for sentiment (small boys and puppies) and romance (tinged with much self-sacrifice). It's a movie that can't be taken seriously for a minute, which is part of its enduring charm for many people. I find that, after many years of serious science fiction, the charm has worn thin. I hunger for some serious treatment of science and for some semblance of actual human behavior. Even though I was 11 years old in 1951, I can't believe that we were dumb enough to swallow what the movie gives us.