#No Blade of Grass

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On October 26, 1971, No Blade of Grass debuted in Japan.

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Movie Review | No Blade of Grass (Wilde, 1970)

This is playing on the Criterion Channel as part of their series on post-apocalyptic movies, but one of the things that makes it novel is that it presents a more immediate view of the apocalypse in progress. The apocalypse here is induced by a disease that’s killing off certain forms of plant life, leading to famine and societal collapse. We start with a montage of pollution, overhear news reports of the direness of the situation in other parts of the world and drastic measures taken by other governments, and follow along with a family and a few stragglers as they try to navigate this rapidly deteriorating situation. The way this plays out brought me back to March 2020, where within the span of a few weeks, we went from a sense of ambient dread from bad news in other parts of the world, to being told to stay home, shortages of toilet paper and other household items. Kinda glad I didn’t watch this at the time, as it would have felt a little too close to home.

This is interested in the interpersonal dynamics that would transpire in such a situation. Much of the tension in the movie comes from a gun-loving psycho who’s taken up with the family and looking to assert himself in ways that take take advantage of the increasing lack of consequences for his behaviour. The wariness with which the movie treats this character and his love of guns probably distinguishes this from American post-apocalyptic movies. And then there’s the eventual showdown between loved ones forced by the scarcity of the situation, although I should note that the different arcs are not wrapped up with much elegance.

The environment in this movie hasn’t fully eroded to wasteland, so we do get plenty of green grass, although it obviously carries an ironic charge. There are other elements common in these movies: brutal violence, rape, a motorcycle gang with sick looking helmets, a hero with a sick looking eyepatch. As a director, Cornel Wilde favours ironic editing and juxtapositions: cutting between starving African children and a steak dinner, a Rolls Royce radio ad playing as we see a decrepit looking one in front of us, a character asking another to make her a woman while we flash forward to her eventual rape. The flash forwards are not unlike what you get in Nicolas Roeg’s movies from around the same time, although Wilde’s usage feels a bit more blunt. Between this, The Naked Prey and Beach Red, Wilde has had an interesting directorial career that I would very much like to explore further.

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Hector Garrido’s 1967 cover to No Blade of Grass, by John Christopher

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Remembering No Blade of Grass star Nigel Davenport on the anniversary of his death.

R.I.P. (1928 - 2013)

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No Blade of Grass, 1970 A cautionary tale about the destruction of our planet with pollutants. It’s too heavy-handed to be an enjoyable film. Many minutes are spent with shots of car exhaust, factory smokestacks billowing, dead crops and livestock, and on and on.  The message is good, but it doesn’t make for a great movie. “Watch out! Famine will cause even the noble British people to devolve into savagery!”

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Review: Death of Grass

Author: John Christopher Genre: apocalyptic sci-fi

Year: 1956

Notes: I have read the italian translation by Mario Galli. Also known in the US as No Blade of Grass. Read this review in italian here.

When the Chung-Li virus strikes first, it is very far away, in distant China. All rice plants start to rot and famine ensues. Foreign aid comes, yes, but never enough to save Asia. And as the virus migrates, it also mutates. John, his wife and kids live in England and discuss this ongoing tragedy over tea, sharing very different opinions with their friends. John’s brother, David, who is a farmer, has a bad feeling about the virus… and as the virus starts attacking grain as well it’s pretty clear that society as they know it is going to crumble. And so John tries to save his family, to reach David’s farm which is in a well-protected valley. Whether he reaches his goal or not, he will be a different man at the end, and his family will have changed too.

While it is indeed reminiscent of The Day of The Triffids and similar “cosy catastrophe” stories, there is very little cosiness in The Death of Grass. A lover of Wyndham’s stories will definitely like this novel, because again it features an English family trying to survive an apocalyptic event. John starts as your average Englishman of the time and becomes quite unpleasant. More than your average Wyndham character, that’s for sure. He is suspiciously cold in performing certain actions, to the point that a reader may be tempted to think he had been hiding all those primal instinct in his self all his life. Now that civilization has collapsed, and he has become the leader of that small group… who is going to stop him? He has his reasons to behave in certain ways, and we see others who are way worse, but did he really have to do these things? The readers constantly asks themselves how they would have acted in his place, and it makes The Death of Grass a very effective apocalyptic novel. The secondary characters, some of which constantly walk on the thin line between hero and monster, end up stealing the scene more than once. This isn't a bad thing per se, in fact, the group of people around John wouldn't look out of place in a modern tv series.

Despite being an old novel – and it shows mostly in tech and sexism levels – it is still relevant and enjoyable today, because famines don’t look like they’re about to go out of fashion. They’re happening today somewhere, and we are used to hear and see of distant catastrophes just like John and his family at the beginning at the novel. We feel sorry for those people, we even send help, but we are constantly sheltered by that feeling that it can’t happen here. Except that it can, and it probably will. Maybe it will not be a virus, but a consequence of global warming. When/If it happens, what kind of people will we be? Will we be the stone-cold planners like Pirrie, the leaders like John, or the defenders like David? Or someone else entirely?

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No blade of grass  1970

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A rare promo image for No Blade of Grass (1970) that I found on HBO Max.

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No Blade of Grass (UK/USA, 1970 dir: Cornel Wilde).

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NO BLADE OF GRASS // 1970 Design // Jules Centeno Date // 14th August 2017 Screening // 42

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“No Blade of Grass” (1970), one of the more brutal and apocalyptic of the 1970s’ grim end of the world/turtleneck movies.