Seven Days to Noon (1950) - film review

The Prime Minister of Great Britain receives a letter from a government scientist, Professor Willingdon, setting out the terms of an ultimatum.  Willingdon was the man leading the development of an atomic bomb, the UR-12, and has suddenly and inexplicably absconded with one of these devastating weapons.  Unless the British government calls a halt to the production of these weapons, Willingdon will detonate his bomb in central London, destroying the seat of government and flattening most of the capital.   Whilst Superintendent Folland leads a hunt to locate the professor, the military make hasty preparations for a mass evacuation...

Having scored an early notable success with Brighton Rock (1947), the Boulting brothers (John and Ray) immediately consolidated their reputation as two of Britain’s leading film directors with this tense apocalyptic thriller.  The arms race was in its infancy when the film was made but the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction had already permeated the public consciousness and was one of the most hotly debated topics of the day.  The film was highly relevant at the time of its release and - sadly – remains so until this day.  To borrow one memorable line, we are still sleepwalking towards nuclear obliteration, and probably at a faster pace than ever before.

The distinctive noir feel of Brighton Rock carries over into this film, and there are some striking similarities (in the scenes where Willingdon is hiding out in London) with another classic Britnoir thriller, The Third Man (1949).  Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor  appears to have been heavily influenced by German expressionism and American film noir.   His work achieves a darkly oppressive mood which lasts the entire duration of the film and helps sustain the tension.  Taylor is near the start of his career here and would later work on some of the most important British films of the next three decades.  His credits include Kubrick’s similarly themed Dr. Strangelove (1966), The Omen (1976) and Star Wars (1977), as well as Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-sac (1966) and the first Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night (1964).   He also worked on eight episodes of the hit TV series The Avengers, no doubt to prove his versatility.

Seven Days to Noon also benefits from an extremely well-crafted screenplay which makes the moral arguments against WMD cogently without labouring the point; it won an Oscar for screenwriters James Bernard and Paul Dehn.  There are no big name actors in the cast but, instead, a magnificent ensemble of character actors whose performances contribute enormously to the hard-edged realism of the piece.  Special mention should go to Barry Jones, who, as the man with a bomb in his Gladstone bag, presents the moral dilemma faced by scientists the world over with a desperately tragic mix of fanaticism and humanity.  There are some notable contributions from the likes of Olive Sloane and Joan Hickson, who bring a smattering of humour into the proceedings to relieve the tension from time to time (otherwise the film would be unbearably grim).

As the film rolls towards its intense climax, we get to witness some of the most chilling sequences of any British film.  The mass evacuation of London is the nightmare vision that we have had to live with throughout the duration of the Cold War and seeing it here, played out for real (as it were), can never fail to send a shiver down the spine.  Equally unsettling are the shots of the capital completely deserted – utterly unreal and quite terrifying to anyone who has ever lived in the metropolis.  These images have been replayed many times since in subsequent films (often with a sci-fi flavour) but somehow they never quite manage to achieve the sense of impending Armageddon that Seven Days to Noon offers us.  This truly is a vision from Hell.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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