THE END OF THE WORLD (1916): Apocalypse Then

THE END OF THE WORLD (1916)

aka Verdins Undergang and The Flaming Sword

Starring Olaf Fønss, Carl Lauritzen, Ebba Thomsen, Johanne Fritz-Petersen, Thorlief Lund, Alf Blütecher. Directed by August Blom. (77 min)

Essay by D.M. ANDERSON💀

My ongoing quest to see every disaster movie ever made has taken me to some interesting places. Other countries, other eras…including a film that was released back when Irwin Allen was still swimming around in his mom's womb.

Before Bruce Willis saved the world in Armageddon, before Roland Emmerich ushered in a new ice age in The Day After Tomorrow, even before George Pal revealed what happens When Worlds Collide, the tiny European country of Denmark wiped out nearly all of humankind in 1916 with The End of the World, a silent film about a comet that causes catastrophic global destruction. 

And here I thought the only cool things to come out of Denmark were pastries and Lars Ulrich.

 

Disaster was at its zenith in the 1970s with such classics as Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. These films popularized a reliable formula that was used time and time again: A huge cast, melodramatic subplots (with at least one sappy love story), ominous foreshadowing of the disaster to come, the expert nobody listens to until it’s too late, the greedy bad guy who denies anything is wrong (or fucks-over others in the time-honored tradition of self-preservation), and of course, those special effects money shots.

As with any popular genre, the formula was milked to death, to the point where films like The Concorde: Airport ‘79 and Meteor felt more like self-parody…a few years a before real parody (Airplane!) came along. 

While that formula was a cash cow throughout most of the decade, it didn’t start in the ‘70s. Traveling further back in time, classics like The High and the Mighty (1954), San Francisco (1936), In Old Chicago (1938) and no-less than four Titanic movies (including a German-made slab of Nazi propaganda) boast many of the same elements as Airport and The Poseidon Adventure. Older still are Deluge (1933) and the silent film, The Johnstown Flood (1926), the latter of which I initially assumed was the humble prototype for what would someday be my favorite genre.

But those crazy Danes beat everybody by ten years…

I suppose if you want to get nitpicky, The End of the World isn’t technically the “first” disaster film, either. England’s Fire!, about a family’s rescue from a burning house, was a five-minute short produced in 1901. In 1912, Germany’s In Nacht und Eis depicted the sinking of Titanic (released only four months after it sank!), but was only a 35-minute two-reeler (a pretty damn good one at that).

Something molten in the state of Denmark.

However, The End of the World is the first feature-length disaster film that contains many of the attributes associated with the genre. You’ve got your melodrama, with young Dina (Ebba Thomsen) running off to marry mining mogul Frank Stoll (Olaf Fønss), which not only alienates her entire family - eventually causing Dad to die of a heart attack - it infuriates local miner Flint (Thorlief Lund), who later seeks revenge on Frank for stealing his woman.

But don’t fear for ol’ Frank because he’s a complete bastard. In what would someday be a disaster movie tradition, he fucks over a lot of people for personal gain. Damn near everybody, in fact. For starters, the astronomer who discovered the approaching comet entrusts Frank with the grave news of impending disaster, hoping the man will use his clout to inform the press. But because he’s more concerned with selling his stock holdings, Frank demands the papers print stories assuring the public there’s nothing to worry about. 

Elsewhere, young lovers Reymers (Alf Blütecher) and Dina’s younger sister, Edith (Johanne Fritz-Petersen), miss each other terribly while he’s at sea. She spends most of the film moping around the house, lamenting her loneliness, while he’s repeatedly seen gazing sadly across the water…and occasionally up at the approaching comet. Meanwhile, Frank throws a party for his wealthy friends, with plans for he and Dina to take cover in his mine when disaster finally strikes. Fuck everybody else.

All this melodrama comprises the first two-acts, with periodic shots of the comet getting closer as people helplessly gawk upward. Frank is easily the film’s most entertaining character, mainly because he’s such a dick. Director August Blom must’ve though so, too, because Frank has the most screen time. Edith and Reymers are cute but dull, their plight dragged down by the audience’s utter certainty that these two will somehow end up back in each other’s arms. 

The comet itself causes worldwide catastrophe, though all the action centers on the mining town where everyone lives. Fire rains from the sky while buildings are wiped out by a tsunami. Those who don’t die from the disaster are killed by toxic gas or shot during a riot when oppressed miners attempt to spoil Frank’s party. For a 100+ year old film, The End of the World features pretty interesting special effects, including early examples of split-screen to show panic-stricken crowds and fiery destruction within the same shot. 

But overall, is it a good film? The story is kind of meandering and slows to a crawl whenever Frank isn’t engaged in douchebaggery, but the disaster itself is kind of fun. Later apocalyptic movies with the same premise would obviously be grander, but this one did it first. Therefore, The End of the World is an important historical milestone in the disaster genre. And it’s still better than Armageddon.