THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE
(1962; d. Val Guest, w. VG + Wolf Mankowitz)

Has-been journalist Peter Stenning (downcast consciousness in sleep, alcoholism the inebriated mental faculty) stumbles thru vacated city (mind at remove from populous world) in red-tinted b&w (emotional obsession; color of heat + blood, his cynicism block against rage over divorce doing slowburn on him) to newsroom (common ground btwn un/consciousness, where dispatches from former reach latter), where he narrates to switchboard operator Jeannie Craig (anima man’s conduit to emotions + unconsc; "JC" à la closing shot of cross, she also facilitating his rebirth) history of disaster engendering heat (interior monologue personal Armageddon, events taking place in narrator’s mind).

Twin H-bombs (splitting o/t nuclear family) accidentally detonated simultaneously at N+S Poles by Americans + Russians (adversarial Dad + Mom Stenning, England-setting child caught in middle) upsets axis of earth (emotional stability) + sends it out of orbit (planet proton/electron around solar nucleus: the astronomical is the atomic, the cosmic is the personal), closer to sun (burning core of issue); Pete + mentor Bill Maguire (higher faculty) team to cover story (analyze complex), former unable to reach insulated knowitall Dr Holroyd (Self) who fathoms magnitude of situation (unreachable God-keeper of occult knowledge), striking acquaintance instead w/ JC (similar interlocutor btwn heaven + earth and feminine redeemer of self-destructive man in absence of masculine one, alky having lost reputation [relationship w/ higher self] starting again at bottom).

Meets son Michael at amusement park (anarchic unconscious mtg-ground) on Sundays (day of restoration: getting back in touch w/ purer [puer] nature) where brought by nanny (not-the-mother intercessor à la JC, Peter out of touch also w/ own higher "fem" sensibilities), Mike wanting "to live" in funhouse (father’s attraction to own alky dementia + adaptive child getting right w/ ambiguity + scary new world, raucous ride destabilized orbit); again runs into JC (unable to avoid specter of retribution + redemption) just as immense fog rolls in (denseness of psychic + emotional ambiguity, not to mention sexual: thanatoxic male certainty blurring on mtg erotic fem fluidity, as condensation on hot air mtg cool earth).

At her apartment (entering new, feminine consciousness), girl looking to use toilet (relation of fem + water, as when JC tells Pete she must return to [labor] pool, she also later emerging from shower + rescued from tub), Pete installed in JC’s bathroom (cleansing regenerative womb) while fog burns off, he renouncing drink as she shwrs (anima cleansing Self, lifting fog own alcoholic haze; scene surprising for its frankness redemptive pwr of eros); eventually convinces her to spy for him (employing anima in addressing repercussions of unbridled animus), finally breaking news of thwarted orbit (own emotional instability + man’s rational; cf JOURNAL OF PSYCHOHISTORY [Vol. 20 No.1] on 15-yr latency period btwn crisis + confrontation, end of WWII when news of man’s irrational [splitting atom as of psyche] trajectory irrevocably leaked).

Packs son off to country (returning pure self to fertile, safe ground in order to begin afresh), mtg not nan but ex-wife (own fem self atomically split off from at decisive, archaic moment: birth, she One That Got Away mom 2B reconciled w/ before maturity possible) + her new guy (not-the-self occupying life since then, he not-the-father w/ whom boy identifies in creation of own mature self-img); diverted back to city/unconscious, where JC threatened by "beatnik" rowdies (unconscious at full throttle in anarchic revelry/reverie, they embodiment of irrational "corrective" bombs scheduled to go off) + rescued in tub (rebirth of the anima), after which Pete takes to streets (cleansed + restored man released from film’s heart into societal "arteries," dispatch the New Man reaching the greater Brain).

Inconclusive ending possibly answered by release 2 yrs later of Earth Dies Screaming, Crack in World yr after that + Island o/t Burning Doomed in ’67 (all Brit productions; cf also American Panic in Yr Zero same yr), perpetual cinematic Armageddon (begun, possibly, w/ ’51 When Worlds Collide) lasting to present day suggesting society only masturbating issue yet to take legitimate seed, the way we’re learning to live w/ global warming.