Gawd knows what planet some reviewers here are living on if they think this movie belongs to the sci-fi genre.
Of course it doesn't.
It's in a league of its own, a 'protest' movie made before CND was thought of and a film with a social conscience long before other UK film-makers had awakened to the realities of the new world (i.e., nuclear era).
There's nothing 'sci-fi' in 'Seven Days To Noon' other than the fact that the writers fictionalised the ease with which a nuclear device could be carried around the streets of a city back in 1950. The issues broached by the movie are all too real, and given the way that at this particular moment in history, when the populace at large was still woefully ignorant of nuclear war (remember, both the US and UK Governments consistently denied that anyone ever died of radiation at Hiroshima; it was the blast-effect wot did it, guv) the movie must rank as one of the bravest made by any British studio.
Obviously, it has dated. Obviously, the characterisation and dialogue is out of the Ark. But in 1950, we really weren't that long out of the Ark anyway, our collective simplicities pretty well mirrored in the Cockney stereotypes which people the film.
Verdict: a lost gem of British film-making -- but never, ever, an example of science fiction.
Of course it doesn't.
It's in a league of its own, a 'protest' movie made before CND was thought of and a film with a social conscience long before other UK film-makers had awakened to the realities of the new world (i.e., nuclear era).
There's nothing 'sci-fi' in 'Seven Days To Noon' other than the fact that the writers fictionalised the ease with which a nuclear device could be carried around the streets of a city back in 1950. The issues broached by the movie are all too real, and given the way that at this particular moment in history, when the populace at large was still woefully ignorant of nuclear war (remember, both the US and UK Governments consistently denied that anyone ever died of radiation at Hiroshima; it was the blast-effect wot did it, guv) the movie must rank as one of the bravest made by any British studio.
Obviously, it has dated. Obviously, the characterisation and dialogue is out of the Ark. But in 1950, we really weren't that long out of the Ark anyway, our collective simplicities pretty well mirrored in the Cockney stereotypes which people the film.
Verdict: a lost gem of British film-making -- but never, ever, an example of science fiction.