Five

Enjoyed viewing this black and white film from 1951 dealing with a few people who were able to survive a nuclear war which killed millions of Americans. William Phipps, (Michael) lived in New York City and witnessed the entire city's population killed and he traveled to the West and was able to find a town where he could obtain food and shelter. As the film develops he meets up with a young woman named Roseanne Rogers, (Susan Douglas Rubes) who is pregnant and Michael takes her under his wing and tries to comfort her and he begins to fall in love with her. However, Roseanne wants to find her husband in the city and keeps her distance. There is three men and one woman who remain alive in this film and all these people begin to get on each other's nerves and this story takes on some very mysterious twists and turns.

i first saw five on the late show when i was in highschool in the mid-60's and i never forgot it, images from it stayed with me--i saw it again in the late 70's or so and then, the last time, in the early 90's on tnt (and taped it and loaned it to someone and never saw it again)--the last time i watched it i was astonished at how visually perfect it is, in many ways too perfectly staged--often the light is coming directly from the horizon like a maxfield parrish painting and i've often wondered if the actors and crew had day jobs and the whole thing was done early in the morning or late in the evening--leonard maltin likes it and comments negatively on its "purple prose", which is true, but i'm a noir fan and it's fun--i can't believe this isn't available on tape or dvd--obler's frank lloyd wright house is a treat too.

Post-nuclear-war dramas centering on a small group of survivors now constitute an entire genre in science-fiction films. All of them, in some way or another, can be traced back to this seminal film from 1951 in which five people deal with the possibility they are the only human beings left alive on the planet.

While most of the later movies exploited this possibility for B-movie thrills, "Five" adopts a quiet, contemplative tone which some may find dull but which thoughtful viewers are more likely to find, for want of a better word, haunting. There is something about this movie which gets under the skin and which lurks in the corners of the mind long after it's over.

Especially memorable is the trip to the city made by two of the survivors. The images of skeletons sitting in cars and buses still have an impact with their silent, disturbing, even horrifying beauty.

Some of the musical score now seems obtrusive and the dialog tends, at times, toward the pretentious -- perhaps a lingering effect from Arch Oboler's radio background -- but this low-budget, no-name, black-and-white production remains a landmark film which richly deserves to be rediscovered and honored.

In authoritative books about science fiction in the movies, Five is generally dismissed as crude and simplistic. There is justification for this, but somehow I found the picture interesting anyway. The fact that it was shot on a shoestring may even have helped. Being forced to use only five actors and a single ready-made set--his own Frank Llloyd Wright house in the California hills--director Arch Oboler created an intimate self-contained world.

This narrow focus increases the intensity of the drama, which, as an end-of-the-world story, has its own inherent interest.

The plot doesn't bear much looking into. The way these five people--out of the entire world population--came to be together amounts to wild coincidence. There is a certain amount of sermonizing of the why-can't-we-all-get-along variety. And so on--it's hardly a great movie.

But it's interesting nonetheless and worth looking into.

A bit overwrought and florid, but very enjoyable. Several reviewers pick on it because they seem to think that the characters are walking around in a totally depressed state throughout the movie. I don't see this at all. In fact, I perceive them as incredibly upbeat and positive about their situation, all things considered. One of the aspects of this film that I enjoy the most is the pure villainy of the bad guy. It's rare nowadays to see such an uncompromising and ungrateful jerk written into a script. He's human and believable, but he has no redeeming qualities at all. Also, he accomplishes this without the aid of technology, secret weapons, or even any sort of clever scheming or evil plans.

The cinematography is pretty good, with some startling shots and quite a bit of hand-held camera.

Finally, and I simply can't pass on this, the title is numerically correct for the majority of the movie. A couple other reviewers have stated that it is incorrect and I'm not sure if they're numerically challenged or what.