Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Don't judge a book by it's cover, right? Wrong, at least in this case. I picked it up recently with no cover, just a homemade sticker with this weird title, probably one of the best titles ever. I had no idea what this movie was about, the guy at the checkout looked at the title and then me with some disdain. I thought it was going to be a movie about religion, which in some ways i guess it was. The movie concerns the interaction between three people who survive a nuke-attack and end up in NY of all places. So it was kind of a nice surprise, and a premise that doesn't get looked at very much. Sure people and zombies can survive a nuke, but this movie is just THREE people, one of them being Harry Belafonte. This is an old flick, a bit talky, the title might be the only memorable thing about it. Blargen.

In the '50s the nuclear holocaust was never far from the popular imagination. This picture is one of many fictional efforts to show what might have happened. By being trapped in a Pennsylvania mine, Belafonte is one of the very few people on earth (as far as we know from the film, only three) to escape annihilation. He manages to get out of the mine on his own (the first of many plot contrivances), goes to New York City and finds it depopulated, except for Inger Stevens, who eventually comes out of hiding. It's mostly a picture about loneliness. As much as we may resent the jostling masses in our midst, what if they were gone?Actually, it spurs a fantasy, too. Imagine that you had the pickings of all of New York to yourself, and imagine that you were a handyman who could rig up generators and the like, and imagine that you found a comely woman to keep you company. Could be worse.But we are asked to ignore too much in the picture, the fact that only one person in all of the city survived, the fact that not a single rotting body is shown on the streets, the fact that the shortwave transmissions Belafonte regularly monitors show that the rest of the world is empty, too (except, eventually, for Mel Ferrer, who was sailing during the nuclear blasts)-- all a bit too much. The film tries too hard to be an allegory when it should have been good, logical science fantasy.Nevertheless, TWTF&TD is well worth a watch.

This fine movie is available through "dvd-r" sellers but it definitely deserves a studio release that takes full advantage of the outstanding score, quality acting, and superb, almost breathtaking shots of an abandoned New York City. I disagree with those who claim that ending is some kind of cop-out. Instead, for 1959, it was quite provocative and dramatic. It seems clear that the black man has been "chosen" by the white woman. That the "loser" was asked to and did go off with the two hand in hand doesn't change that. The treatment of the race issue is ironic in that after Inger Steven's suicide it was revealed that she had been married to a black man. Apparently some theater owners in the South refused to show the film. The movie is important both as an excellent example of "end of the world" fare as well as a thought-provoking and for its time quite controversial examination of race and its seemingly perpetual role in personal and societal identity. As apparently Warner holds the copyright readers should contact them and request that this title be released on DVD.

I first saw this picture, at a drive-in theater with my whole family. This was in Southern California. It was shown on a sultry summer night. I was a child/woman of 14... I did not tell my parents, because I did not know how or whether to describe the experience. It was my first recognition of a hormonal experience. Before seeing this movie I did not know I had hormones. My world, my being, was never the same. Belafonte will forever be my hero, my... I struggle with the chronology. This film predates American legislation on civil rights. I want to find this film again to begin a chronology. That will be my own personal history since 1959.