NO BLADE OF GRASS (1970; d. Cornel Wilde, w. Sean Forestal + Jefferson Pascal)

50s-style zeroing in on earth (revisionist sci-fi, alien menace man himself; "Behind Blue Eyes"-style regarding of similar cerulean orb, passing thru atmosphere as into mind of Western Man) as narrator (dir’s voice: eyes own) describes beyond-help 70s ecology (strapping 52-yr-old considering own health/mortality, as that of his tribe) over beautifully composed modernist montage of orderly civilized poison (parking lot, junkyard, smokestacks, traffic: illusion of structure quickly falling into chaos as film progresses, rest of framing haphazard + off, like primitive art) till A-bomb blast (w/o context: metaphoric disastrous split - of man from nature, which ironically reinforces self in brutality underlying order) brings film/civilization full circle (barely 5m in) to again zero in on brown planet (to guess from muddy print) – "Then one day the polluted earth cd take no more" (repeated trauma resulting in pathology).

RRRRING rouses architect John Custance (½ custard/½ substance builder of story, he dream-representative of unseen dreaming narrator [patched eye both pirate + opening Earth], wakeup-called into service): friend Roger Burnham invites him to join London evacuation (mind abandoning body on fall asleep, RB remote younger idealized self to connect w/ on reconstruction) + bring wife Ann (dir’s real-life American wife Jean Wallace, in + out of accent as btwn real + fantasy planes) + kids Mary (not-for-long virgin both rape of earth + loss of father’s eco-innocence; Ann biblical mother of Blessed Virgin) + David (away at boarding school [film dad’s education] similarly remote regenerated self as RB, + biblical slayer of Goliath); meet at restaurant (SE Asian starvation on TV while Londoners glut projected/"broadcast" famine w/i) w/ farmer at whom John scoffs (stuffy Brit out of touch w/ earthy nature) for slaughtering livestock + planting tubers (shirking physical + going "underground"/unconscious) as News reports windborne contagion (as his skeptical talk) killing off all grasses/grains (surface ornamentation for barebones filmmaker, + superficial layer of consciousness [as male-pattern baldness]), later ensuing rape, cholera + cannibalism (cf Night of the Living Dead, civilization/consc’ss at end of productivity), China nerve-bombing 300m of own people (1st victims innocent poor, malady [Western] progress itself for middle-ager saying goodbye to youth).

After navigating car thru riot (steering armored, stable Self thru incipient chaos o/t unconscious), John + Roger go to buy guns from paranoid George Coulouris (senior-aged purveyor of death rather’n life-promoting elder, deteriorating nature reflecting own waning fecundity), taking hotshot clerk Andy Pirrie + Clara (randy youth + his buxom missus xcghd for withered age) when former shoots boss dead (elimination of John’s own senior-img, A+C à la own kids David + Mary) in order to join J’s troupe (intro of elder imgs D+M’s sudden maturation) on way to older brother’s farm (fecund maturity), Andy next shooting cop (2nd authority figure, as mind crosses over into chaos) at roadblock (taboo + 1st mental Rubicon); collect David + friend Spooks (kid’s brainy shadow-side to complement father’s not-so-smart libidinous other Pirrie), who race Pirries w/ Roger (boys’ intuition of competition w/ libido essential to maturation) while rest of family ambushed by bikers (consequences of unrestrained id, fr’s KO loss of governing moral reasoning permitting mayhem), taking car + wmn into hills (Clockwork Orange-style assault yr before Kubrick, No Blade virtual prequel) till broken up by Andy et al (end/destination of masculine competition rape + aftermath), Ann(dy) finishing off her attacker herself (earth mother/Mother Earth’s retribution for rapacious Man's treatment).

BBC overtaken by Citizens’ Emergency Committee (remote ego-consciousness – organ o/t State – invaded à la wmn’s rapes: minds awa bodies violated), who report nation is about to bomb population centers (areas of consc’ss blacking out as mind descends into sleep, genocide statewide cannibalism), Ann grousing their predicament due to "building that had 2B built" (John’s reason for procrastinating: male libido/pride vs fem need for balance; desire to rise above earth [trumping wife’s desires], when earth enough) just before old-timers’ ambush (middle-agers J+A caught btwn 2 [she OK w/ neutral zone: wanted to move to Canada]) strips them of all but luggage (age taking all but memories) – but for pistols Pirrie packed away (indomitable phallus + John’s reserves of potency); J disavows cars (mind’s separation from heavy body) + moves in on farm (return to nature on abandoning civilization), where he shoots proprietor’s wife (fight for survival "like in the Westerns," sez son: conquering frontiers what got world in mess to begin w/), shortwave radio (alternative to corrupted BBC: now relying on voice of unconscious) informing of anarchy thru’out Europe, Asia + Africa (mind’s inventory of own descent into oblivion; USA apparently unscathed dir Wilde’s core Self intact).

Making camp at abandoned factory (husk of formerly productive facility aka the body, drama also of disease-ravaged corpus yielding to death + making way to afterlife), Clara puts moves on John (ego inflating self + fantasy-acting own incestuous impulses on seeing Andy eye daughter) till interrupted by hubby proclaiming new Law o/t Group (hippie-commune sensibility presaging Robert Bly’s Sibling Society, old law, apparently, that o/t Father) + shooting her dead (same as the old boss); Pirrie seduces Mary (rise o/t Bad Roger – to whom she’d offered her honor – entropy even in the New) w/ tales of his wayward youth (current chaos operatic explosion of his past, he budding/nascent destruction encoded in all systems) + troupe bands w/ rival group (whose hothead leader he blasts: killing not-the-father [psychological cipher standing in for real one to help in oedipal transference] minutes after J pulls rank on him/not-the-son; majority accepting violence mind dissolving into anarchic unconscious), one of whom gives stillbirth that night (flashbacks to Mary-birth death of her innocence in siding w/ brute Pirrie + mockery of Nativity).

Come upon Army battling self over barracks (further breakdown of intellectual order; struggle w/i, as well, for preeminence of opposing instinctual factions – Eros/Thanatos), then earlier Viking biker-rapists (nomadic id to cf entrenched Army-superego: free-floating aggression returning to vex Self) come back to learn lesson (battle scene duplicating previous, decimating Vikings as own warrior tendency), after which troupe reaches brother’s farm (abundant payoff for facing down internal enemy); reunites w/ bro David (same name as son: all characters w/i, boy recreation of uncle’s earth-tending discipline in next generation) behind fortress walls (cherished, protected part of self) to learn farm can’t support whole company (overpopulation in microcosm + personality in need of further pruning), John + Pirrie returning at night (negative element trying to undermine Self) across river (moat: fortress castle, society reduced to feudalism; Rubicon + Styx, also, troupe body 2B left behind on achieving heaven), where P takes David out (still montage further nod to NotLD, indicating final breakdown of narrative/order on similar elimination of dream-brother) before killed, himself (sinking into water last death of killer in bloodstream, he à la grass-killing virus).

Custance Corps gives up + buries dead (fecund + violent opposites neutralized to resolve in healthy middle), procession solarizing (apotheosis; rendered art after filmlong primitive realism) on John’s "If Pirrie hadn’t killed David, what wd I have done?" (asking question sufficient, considering possibilities shd he/man not have had such violent/animal impulses); closing narrator’s "This motion picture is not a documentary. But it cd be" easier to believe post-Katrina.