Atomic War Bride (1960)

Pretty lame, even for a B movie. It seemed that the people lived under totalitarian rule. The themes in the film seemed very pessimistic and stark. They seemed to have been living in the Soviet Union, but the USSR would never allow a film to be made that showed heroic citizens protesting government policy. It was made in Yugoslavia, an eastern European country that was not trapped in the iron curtain. The paranoia people had during the cold war was very real. I recall as a school boy in San Francisco, we had air raid drills during the 50's and early 60's. We students had to hide under our desks until the all clear. Also, every day at noon,the air raid siren went off for about a minute. People now wouldn't believe it, but it's true. The acting in the film was decent, the main character charismatic - kind of like a Yugoslavian James Dean. The actress who played his wife was good and she looked like Kim Novak.

I watched this film without knowing what it was going to be about. It's thrown together with an American B movie 'This Is Not A Test' in a collection that I picked up at the local library for killing some time. The two films both deal with the horrors of the atomic weapon era. The story has been pointed out by others here so I won't summarize that, but it was quite an interesting contrast to see the two back to back. Atomic War Bride is made with many implicit and explicit allusions to the European intellectual and literary traditions, while addressing the new issue of atomic weapons of mass destruction, that was going to soon become one of the earliest strong signs of globalization. I don't mean to get into 'This Is Not A Test' here, but the point is that those traces of intellectual thought make a serious difference between these two films. While the American one is not much more than a basic and crude take on the questions of authority and irony, this one covers a wide range of issues about the relationship between the individual and the society, the relationship between the individual and the state, questions of violence and love, absurdity, freedom and group psychology, and more. All in all, I guess, this is a nice little film that makes you think again and again, without necessarily claiming to be an intellectual film. It is, after all, an absurd comedy about war and the question of optimism against the harsh realities of the human nature. I found it well worth the watch.

For anyone who grew up in the 60's and faced the Cuban Missle crisis, this movie brings back the thoughts and feelings of the time. The world of two young people in love on their wedding day, are thrown into a Candide-Like whirlwind of change, challenges and the unknown. Our world today has forgotten the fear of every school child of that time, who ducked under a school desk, covering their heads with a schoolbook to stop the atomic radiation. This dark and honest look into their lives is a clear reflection of what we will face if we cannot overcome the same obstacles to peace that they faced in the movie. Funny and downright silly slapstick comedy in many scenes of the film is artfully juxtaposed with the harsh realities of the evil forces at work in this world. Everone must see this film so that they can understand the true nature of war, and what we can do to try to change the ultimate outcome of any war caused by the unreasonable pursuit of power for the sake of power, by those using the justifications provided by the cloak of government compartmentalization and self justification based on the supposed wishes of the masses. God bless John Johnson and Maria!

Quite the dismal little film. It concerns a couple, who are blonde hair and blue eyed like everyone else in this Scandinavian future, who decide to get hitched just as the unnamed country they live in goes to war with another no-name country. The man of the couple, John Johnson (Anton Vrdoljak) gets shoved around and beaten down just about as much as any man can in a film, and yet still maintains his iron will and sunny disposition. I won't spoil the end, but it's pretty nihilistic. Watch it ONLY if you're in a good mood.