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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-film"> <h1 class="entryTitle">When Worlds Collide </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 23 February 2017. Tagged: Film.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=when_worlds_collide'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=when_worlds_collide'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=when_worlds_collide'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> </div> <p>Film (<i>1951</i>). Paramount. Directed by Rudolph Maté. Written by Sydney Boehm, based on <i>When Worlds Collide</i> (September 1932-February 1933 <a href="/entry/blue_book_magazine_the">Blue Book</a>; <b>1933</b>) and <i>After Worlds Collide</i> (<b>1934</b>) by Philip <a href="/entry/wylie_philip">Wylie</a> and Edwin <a href="/entry/balmer_edwin">Balmer</a>. Cast includes Richard Derr, Peter Hanson, John Hoyt, Larry Keating, Hayden Rorke and Barbara Rush. 83 minutes. Colour.</p> <p><i>When Worlds Collide</i>, which helped spark the 1950s sf-movie boom, was George <a href="/entry/pal_george">Pal</a>'s second sf production, made after his <a href="/entry/destination_moon">Destination Moon</a>. South African astronomer Emery Bronson (Rorke) detects two wandering planets, which he names Bellus and Zyra, and calculates their courses; Zyra will miss us, though the near miss will cause planet-wide <a href="/entry/disaster">Disasters</a> including tidal waves and earthquakes, but Bellus will make a direct hit, causing the <a href="/entry/end_of_the_world">End of the World</a>. American <a href="/entry/scientists">Scientists</a> confirm Bronson's findings (though they are mocked at a special session of the United Nations in soon-to-be-destroyed <a href="/entry/new_york">New York</a>). The governments of the world refuse to take action, but prescient millionaires, dominated by the wheelchair-bound Sidney Stanton (Hoyt), finance the building of a new Noah's Ark in the form of a <a href="/entry/spaceships">Spaceship</a> capable of carrying a handful of survivors to safe haven on Zyra, which boasts vegetation. The ark, launched on an upwards slanting railway line, duly carries forty representative human beings to safety. A routine love interest, and melodrama about who gets on the ark and who does not, may have diverted the film's intended audience from noticing that all forty representatives of our species are white (see <a href="/entry/race_in_sf">Race in SF</a>). Even for later viewers, however, the single-minded thrust of the film remains relatively undamaged; it continues to grip.</p> <p><a href="/entry/scientific_errors">Scientific Errors</a> do, all the same, proliferate (the paths of the two planets in particular are described with profound contempt for elementary <a href="/entry/astronomy">Astronomy</a>). A low budget meant that the near-miss of Zyra was montaged largely (and effectively) from stock shots – though the image of the <a href="/entry/statue_of_liberty">Statue of Liberty</a> about to be submerged by a great tidal wave, and the famous shot of ocean liners afloat in the streets of <a href="/entry/new_york">New York</a>, are new. Earth's actual death from the impact with Bellus is over in an eye-blink, and the new planet – all too obviously represented by a bright green painting (by Chesley <a href="/entry/bonestell_chesley">Bonestell</a>) – proves livable. The religious subtext – Earth wiped out for its sins, and new Adams and Eves (see <a href="/entry/adam_and_eve">Adam and Eve</a>) in a new Eden – is presented with no great moral conviction. [PN/JC]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/holocaust">Holocaust</a>; <a href="/entry/post-holocaust">Post-Holocaust</a>.</p> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044207/">Internet Movie Database</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/when_worlds_collide' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; float: left;'> </ul> <p align=center style="float:right; padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;">ISSN 3049-7612<br /> <a href="/facts.php?id=logo"> <img src="/images/VitMan.gif" width=150 height=150 title="Click for larger version of this SFE logo"></a><br /> <b><a href="/donate.php"><img src="/images/Paypal-Donate.gif" WIDTH="92" HEIGHT="26" BORDER="0" /></a><br /><a href="/">Home/Welcome page</a></b></p><div style="margin-bottom:10px;"></div></div> </aside><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2><i>SFE</i> Special Features<span></span></h2><p style="margin-top: 10px;"><input type="button" value="What’s New" style="width: 150px !important;" class="button primary" onclick="window.location.href='/whatsnew.php'">  Latest entries; 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