ATOMIC WAR BRIDE (1960)

On what looks like a pleasant spring day in an Eastern European country, young John Johnson (an everyman figure, ya think?) is chatting with a friend about how wonderful life is, and one reason is that he is about to marry young Maria. But suddenly, war is declared and civil defense workers are passing out radiation suits (basically hooded ponchos) for people to wear in case of fallout. John's suit is defective (as, of course, all of them would be against radiation), and when planes come roaring overhead, everyone in the town square drops to the ground, but the planes turn out to be friendly. We soon meet Maria and her family, including her cousin Jack who is very sensitive and faints at talk of bombs falling. John assures everyone that even if there is war, atomic weapons won't be used, and the wedding begins, but bombs start falling all around them. Maria, understandably upset, says, "Everything has changed! The world is horrible! We might die!" to which her level-headed new husband says, "We're in love—it's impossible to die!" The next thing we know, John and Jack are pulled off the streets and conscripted into the army. They are given useless training—lots of finger exercises for firing guns, which the drill instructor says that even a "serious moron" can do—and soon the sensitive Jack drops dead. During an air raid, John winds up in the same shelter as Maria and her family. The army announces that they are going to use atomic weapons against the enemy; John gets involved in an anti-war group, and gets arrested and charged with treason. Suddenly, peace is declared but John is still not off the hook, though he and Maria manage to escape. In the last moments of the film, we discover that the enemy has launched their atomic weapons, so it’s only a matter of time for our loving couple, dirty and tattered and hiding in the ruins.

This Yugoslavian social message film (its original title is "Rat," which means "war") is interesting, if never quite fully involving. There's a bit of a tone problem. At times, it reminded me of the gloomy 80s nuclear war movies like The Day After or Testament, but it has a comically satirical edge that those films didn't, such as the ludicrously extended scene of people practicing pulling their parka hoods on and off and on and off, or the military gun finger exercises, or the fainting cousin, or the hapless optimism of John throughout. The result is that all the expressed emotions feel artificial and we are kept at a distance from the characters, which robs the film's potentially devastating ending of some of its power. But it’s worth seeing as a document of the times. Pictured are Ewa Krzyzewska as Maria and Antun Vrdoljak as John. [YouTube]