"War Of The Worlds" (1953)
XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.hollywood, alt.politics.usa
XPost: alt.feminism
Gene Barry
Technicolor
This was a relatively high-budget update of
the classic H.G.Wells story. It was set in
the modern day (1953) though, and mostly in
California.
Barry plays a physicist with a fictional Cal
university (prob a disguised CalTech) who is
caught in the middle of the Martian invasion.
As usual, alien 'cylinders' land and each releases
three attack ships.
All measures, including a nuke, are tried - and fail.
Cities are being crushed. A genocide plan is obvious.
We saw another adaptation in the "Independence Day"
films.
Ann Robinson is the "love interest". Alas she's
played too early-50s ... smart-ish but not strong
or resilient, tends to fall to pieces. Post-war,
the western, esp USA, position was that women only
existed to pop out lots of new little soldiers.
Ignorance and dependence were womanly virtues.
Govt interference with mass media ? YEP !
Bet on it ! 30s/40s women were often quite
tough-asses in film and reality ... not 50s.
The Cold War paranoia ruled all. This film
was made kinda right before the H-Bomb became
a reality, and the paranoia would increase by
an order of magnitude.
The Martians are fairly well done - tripods, but
not particularly physically superior.
As per the original story it's earth bacteria that
eventually do them in.
The Wells story was apparently inspired during a
conversation with his brother. The subject was
the English colonial 'punitive' campaigns in its
colonies near the end of the 1800s. Someone, the
brother perhaps, wondered what it would be like
if someone/something of superior tech ability
landed in England and started smacking everyone
around - and how the 'moral equation' the 'might/
tech = right' equation, would read in that case.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)