io9
A French flick from 1931 called La Fin du Monde was a special effects blockbuster for its time, featuring a giant comet about to smash into the Earth, and amazing chases up and down the Eiffel Tower. So of course, an American film distributor got hold of it and decided to do the old "Raymond Burr Godzilla" hatchet job on the poor movie, editing out most of the characters and adding in a bunch of random English subtitles to "explain" the action. Plus, the Americans added a long, strange speech at the beginning from a real astronomer explaining that comets could hit the Earth, and in fact many already had. Thus the Americanized, 1934 version of "The End of the World" was born - the one you see here. This is the most action-packed part, and it's amazing how closely it resembles today's "danger from space" action sequences in movies like Deep Impact or Armageddon.
A French flick from 1931 called La Fin du Monde was a special effects blockbuster for its time, featuring a giant comet about to smash into the Earth, and amazing chases up and down the Eiffel Tower. So of course, an American film distributor got hold of it and decided to do the old "Raymond Burr Godzilla" hatchet job on the poor movie, editing out most of the characters and adding in a bunch of random English subtitles to "explain" the action. Plus, the Americans added a long, strange speech at the beginning from a real astronomer explaining that comets could hit the Earth, and in fact many already had. Thus the Americanized, 1934 version of "The End of the World" was born - the one you see here. This is the most action-packed part, and it's amazing how closely it resembles today's "danger from space" action sequences in movies like Deep Impact or Armageddon.Here's our checklist for what a "danger from space" sequence always contains, and you'll notice that it's all here, back in the early 1930s, in this clip:
Race against time!
Awesome, giant landmark under seige!
Martial law!
Cool shiny thing zooming through the sky!
Fire!
Yelling into a telephone!
Elevator crash!
Crowds yelling!
Birds are afraid!
More insanely bright shit in the sky!
See how the more things change, the more science fiction about comets crashing into the Earth stays the same?
Comments
You know it's fiction because the French didn't immediately surrender to the comet.
@B: Hi B
@checklist: check^10
@Annalee: Why clip a no-show here on my computing display box?
@ Annalee: You misspelled Armageddon, girl.
@MarsFlyer: Fixed.
@Annalee Newitz: Hi, why clip a no-show here on my monitor?
Wow, that was more accurate than either Armageddon or Deep Impact, but they were both crapfests, science-wise.
Can't beat Armageddon for entertainment value, though....
@Gopherit: Which part did you think was most accurate? The crashing elevator or the blinkenlights?
@Annalee Newitz: The elevator was darn realistic and suspenseful.
Didn't appear to be any total crap "science" in this film.
Is the whole movie available on-line, either version?
That montage towards the end of the lift (?) going down/crashing was pretty neat. And the birds, and the tree. I like big scifi effects fests, but I think we lose a lot when we neglect the lofi techniques entirely.
But, maybe that's what youtube's for.
href="#c4867193">Annalee Newitz: For one? No one looked through a telescope eyepiece in a well lit telescope dome to see the comet. That big bastard was right up there in the sky near the Sun, exactly like you'd expect to see. Was that real footage of a comet, by the way?
@Evil Tortie's Mom: I don't know if it's online. I got a DVD of the American version from Sinister Cinema. [www.sinistercinema.com]
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