The End

The End is a remarkable apocalyptic post-war saga of impending doom, which follows the last day on earth for six of our friends living in the shadow of the A-bomb. Composed of six discreet episodes, the film builds an atmosphere of doom, infused with what seems now to be dark, ironic humour . Maclaines virtuoso, past-tense narration is a bewildering and incoherent rant against the impending holocaust, directly addressing the viewer, who is forced to become and active participant in the story. His fractured montage works against narrative logic, a self-destructive trait that mirrors the grand suicide of the human race.
The End is partly acted, with additional observational footage. These fleeting glimpses of the world around show normal lives continuing oblivious to the nuclear threat. Disjointed cutting, subverted narratives and cryptic camerawork fuse banality with purpose. This is a truly poetic use of cinema in the way it is able to transmit unspoken thoughts through an apparently random successions of images.
Dating from 1953, this may in fact be the first genuine beat film, profoundly inventive and advanced for its time. Maclaines outlook is bleak and his techniques are crude, creating a film which is deliciously inept, but glorious. One of cinemas starkest evocations of the Cold War period and its effect on creative thought, situated in the beat milieu of 1950s San Francisco but speaking in direct terms to generations of lost souls. – Mark Webber
Christopher MacLaines The End (1953) terminated the highly productive period of film-making in San Francisco that had begun with The Potted Psalm… The film itself burst with the rhetoric of finality; it is a deliberately conclusive work. Jordan Belson , who reluctantly photographed the film under MacLaines direction, provides one link to the immediate cinematic past. The film leaves no room for the future. It forecasts the destruction of the world by atomic holocaust as the direct sequel to its projection. – P. Adams Sitney.

This is an Anthology Film Archives preservation print.