Lumsdal
Good , But It Is Overrated By Some
Casey Duggan
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Robert J. Maxwell
It resembles closely the pilot episode of "The Twilight Zone," called "Where Is Everybody?", only this time it's not a dream. Harry Belafonte is trapped in a caved-in mine and survives an attack of radioactive something or other, the kind that kills everybody without leaving any untidy corpses around.Belafonte digs his way out, discovers what happened, and makes his way to Manhattan, where he finds nothing but emptiness. He fixes up a block of New York with a generator and lights but is despondent and lonely -- until blond, sexy Inger Stevens shows up. They're both delighted. He fixes her a flat in the same building as his and they get to know one another, well enough so that Belfonte, a black man, confesses that he loves her but, what with his race, they live in two different worlds. She says nothing about love but, just as he's good with things, she's practical about relationships. "We're the only two people left alive." Not quite true. Mel Ferrer stumbles into their little nest. They nurse him back to health and it complicates the tentative arrangement. He's not a bad guy, but as Stevens describes it, Belafonte can't make up his mind about what he wants, while Ferrer knows exactly what he wants and will stop at almost nothing to get it.It's all believable enough. There are three people left alive on earth. The woman worries about which man she should marry, and the two men plan to murder each other.Belafonte, although confused and embittered, is clearly the more noble of the two. He puts an end to the shooting match by throwing away his rifle and announcing that he's leaving for parts unknown. Stevens talks him out of it and her pale white hand takes his strong dark hand. Then they hurry to catch up with Ferrer and he takes Stevens' other hand.What -- asks the discerning viewer -- is going to happen next? Don't ask. Why SHOULD you ask? The writers certainly didn't. Maybe polyandry.It's an interesting movie until the appearance of Mel Ferrer, who is a nuisance. Inger Stevens is visibly horny and at one point, when Ferrer forces her into a dark niche in the row of skyscrapers, she says, "Do you want to kiss me? Make love to me? Go ahead." Until then we've seen nothing but her growing affection for Belafonte.It must have been a shocker in 1959. The South still had "white" and "colored" drinking fountains and johns. If you wanted a hamburger you didn't sit at the counter; you waited at the take-out window. This was considered normal.There are some effective scenes, such as Belafonte first wandering the deserted streets of the city and shouting up at the stone cliffs that hover over him, the thousand windows like dead eyes, and Belafonte screaming, "I know you're there! I can feel you watching me!" And again, when Stevens gaily asks Belafonte to cut her wavy blond hair. He doesn't look forward to the intimacy of the act and begins cutting carelessly, increasingly angry, blowing the fluffs of severed golden hair from the back of his hand. She finally tells him he's hurting her and he throws the scissors down and walks off.But the musical score is by Miklos Rozsa and practically duplicates all his other scores. His work was dramatic but dull. The performances are alright. Belafonte is handsome and convincing, and Ferrer is an effective catalyst. Inger Stevens does fine in the role of a woman whose part is full of blanks. It's the script that's the problem. I understood what Belafonte was about, and I had a general idea of what Ferrer was up to, but Stevens was impossible to figure out, aside from her terrifying thought that she might never be married. (Is that from the 1950s or what?) The climax is a cop out. Nothing is resolved. All such endings -- in which the writers have entirely run out of ideas except "let's not offend anyone who might buy a ticket to the movie" -- should be abjured, banished from the screen, sent to the lesser moons of Jupiter.
rdunek99-1
I love this movie, with all its flaws! Yes, its a bit hokey, yes its a bit overly dramatic. But the story is irresistible! Who can resist thinking of being one of the last few humans alive on the planet? The Caucasian/Negro aspect of the film is fascinating! Terrific acting,especially by Harry B. The starkness of the background is intriguing. What would NYC look like deserted? The whole city is yours to have, but no one to share it with. The sexual tension between the three is great, you could cut the tension with a knife! The whole premise just makes me want to ask more questions: What happened to the bodies? What happened to the animals? Fascinating!
fedor8
I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world films, hence I was quite willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of the nonsense that goes on here. Nevertheless, I'll be damned if I don't point it out in some detail.It's a pity that such a fun premise was sufficiently abused by the writer(s) into becoming just another race-driven message movie. The racial conflict is forced rather than realistic. Plot-devices are used in such a way as to force the three humans to jump into arguments, fights (even a fairly stupid gun-fight at the end) at the drop of a hat.Firstly, Inger Stevens hiding from Belafonte; that was just plain dumb. Only a retarded or mentally disturbed (and I mean BEFORE the cataclysm) person would not rush into the arms of the first human that they see after weeks of total solitude. Her later behaviour shows that Stevens is a normal woman (i.e. no paranoid schizophrenia or something of that nature) hence her initial hiding made absolutely zero sense from a psychological standpoint. The rationale, that she "wasn't sure" (or whatever she said) doesn't wash. Belafonte may have been confused/upset that she hid for so long, but the amount of anger he displays toward her - and so quickly - is totally exaggerated when taking into consideration how frantically and persistently he had searched for any other survivors beforehand. He is far too unforgiving for a man in his position.Many, further, strangely illogical scenes, for example Belafonte getting extremely upset while cutting her hair. He is supposed to be upset by the racial remark, but his reaction is over-the-top. To cut a long story short, the two constantly bicker, there is constant tension there, as if they had lived together for decades. This simply doesn't work, given the fact they're the only people in New York! That's a typical example of writers trying to introduce "drama" and "conflict" into a movie, at any price, even at the expense of logic.What happens next is Ferrer's arrival. Again, Ferrer, instead of being thrilled to find more people, only thinks about having sex with Inger, IMMEDIATELY throwing a hateful eye at Belafonte. The truth is that, in this hypothetical apocalyptic scenario, two men and a woman would probably get along terrifically - and would share the woman sexually. After all, in such a totally new world, so many of society's conventions would get thrown overboard.TWTFATD has its highlights in the first half-hour, with great shots of deserted streets. Inger Stevens is beautiful, which certainly helps, and Belafonte is sufficiently charismatic to hold the movie together.For a more intelligent psychological approach to Armageddon, watch "The Quiet Earth".
johnvirginia881
This fine movie is available through "dvd-r" sellers but it definitely deserves a studio release that takes full advantage of the outstanding score, quality acting, and superb, almost breathtaking shots of an abandoned New York City. I disagree with those who claim that ending is some kind of cop-out. Instead, for 1959, it was quite provocative and dramatic. It seems clear that the black man has been "chosen" by the white woman. That the "loser" was asked to and did go off with the two hand in hand doesn't change that. The treatment of the race issue is ironic in that after Inger Steven's suicide it was revealed that she had been married to a black man. Apparently some theater owners in the South refused to show the film. The movie is important both as an excellent example of "end of the world" fare as well as a thought-provoking and for its time quite controversial examination of race and its seemingly perpetual role in personal and societal identity. As apparently Warner holds the copyright readers should contact them and request that this title be released on DVD.
