leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (06/09/85)
LADYBUG, LADYBUG
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Actually, I am a little surprised that this 1963 film has been so
totally forgotten, even if it isn't the best ani-nuclear war film ever made.
The story if of a school that gets a Conelrad alarm telling it that the U.S.
is about to be attacked by nuclear weapons. The story follows the
children's reactions to the news that a nuclear war is coming. While--as we
are told in the credits--the story is based on an actual incident (so much
for suspense as to whether the alarm is real or not), the children clearly
are meant to be in an allegorical sense everybody living under the threat of
the Bomb. The children clearly mouth adult lines rather than talk about
nuclear war the way children would.
The film does rather effectively show how people looked at nuclear war
in the Sixties. Various groups of children react differently. Some panic,
some protectively take care of loved ones, some become ruthless
survivalists. The problem with the story is that too much of the film is
spent showing the principal of the school (Williams Daniels) deciding to
send the children to their homes and then showing a school teacher marching
the students to their homes. These scenes are dull on the literal level and
do not advance the allegorical meanings of the film. LORD OF THE FLIES,
made that same year, does a much better job of integrating its literal and
allegorical meanings. All too often the film tries to make overly
sentimental statements by having characters wallow in self-pity. THREADS
effectively demonstrates that nuclear war is bad without ever appearing
self-indulgent, as LADYBUG, LADYBUG often does.
LADYBUG, LADYBUG probably went unnoticed in 1963 because it did not
have the star-power that ON THE BEACH had, and it is not seen now because
most of its points have been made better elsewhere. Still, placed in an
historical perspective, it deserves to be seen just to illustrate public
sentiment toward the Bomb in the Sixties. It might make an interesting
double feature with ATOMIC CAFE.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper