LIFE

When worlds collide

Life, Plalai Faifa, Published on 17/02/2012

» A few years ago I happened on a series of releases on DVD of an ancient US science-fiction television programme called Tales of Tomorrow. It was broadcast during 1951-2, when memories of World War II and the horrific revelations of its final years were still quite fresh. They gave rise to a widely felt pessimism about human nature that was apparent in the movies of the post-war years _ shadowy American film noir culminating in Robert Aldrich's apocalyptic, still-terrifying Kiss Me Deadly, French existentialist parables like Wages of Fear, and many of the Japanese classics made during the period.