The Day After

original title:
The Day After
other titles:
(Der Tag danach)
country / year of production:
USA / 1983
original length:
126 min. , color
premiere:
20 November 1983
genre:
melodrama
based on:
director:
Nicholas Meyer
film script:
Edward Hume
producer:
Robert A. Papazian Jr.
cinematographer:
Gayne Roscher
editor:
William Paul Dornisch , Robert Florio
composer:
David Raksin , Virgil Thomson
cast (role):
Jason Robards (Dr. Russel Oakes) , JaBeth Williams (Nacy Bauer) , Steve Guttenberg (Stephen Klein) , John Cullum (I) (Jim Dahlberg) , John Lithgow (Joe Huxley) , Jason Robards , JaBeth Williams , Steve Guttenberg , John Cullum (I) , John Lithgow
more:
plot synopsis:
The earth is devastated by a total global thermonuclear war. The small town of Lawrence, Kansas, in the Middlewest, is conletely destroyed, too. Picking through rubble, the survivors form lawless clans stay alive before the radiation sickness kills them or the sheer misery of it all drives them insane.
keywords:
atomic bomb , made-for-TV film , civilians , bunker
war:
Third World War
literature:
James W. Harper. „Images of Armageddon: Nuclear War in three mass audience films“. In: Ulrich Goebel/ Otto Nelson (Eds.). War and Peace: Perspectives in the nuclear age. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 1988 (Studies in Canadien Literature 18), 25-35.
remarks:
During a period of heightened Reagan-era Cold War paranoia, ABC aired this lightning rod of controversy and media attention, whose graphic depiction of nuclear holocaust engendered discussions about whether parents should allow their children to view the nightmarish images.

Lawrence, Kansas, this midwestern idyll, on the one hand served as a microcosmos representing a doomed mankind, on the other side it made clear to the American TV audience that the beloved "heartland" of the U.S. can be destroyed any minute.
availability:
VHS, DVD