Word: shuting
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...Hollywood vision of the end of the world. It is trumpeted as "the biggest story . . . The single most important film of our time." Last week it had a "Global Premiere," i.e., a simultaneous opening in 17 cities from Melbourne to Moscow. Alas, the version of the Nevil Shute chiller (TIME, Aug. 19, 1957) that Stanley (The Defiant Ones) Kramer has produced and directed turns out to be a sentimental sort of radiation romance, in which the customers are considerately spared any scenes of realistic horror, and are asked instead to accept the movie notion of what is really horrible about...
...Hara (5) 4. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (4) 5. Around the World with Auntie Maine, Dennis (3) 6. Exodus, Uris (7) 7. Victorine, Keyes (8) 8. Women and Thomas Harrow, Marquand (6) 9. The Best of Everything, Jaffe (10) 10. The Rainbow and the Rose, Shute...
...Author Shute, 59, who was an aeronautical engineer and military pilot, this time returns to his first love, flying. His Canadian-born hero, Johnny Pascoe, has been barnstorming the world since 1915 and, now in his 60s, operates a small airfield at back-country Buxton in Tasmania. Flying a mercy mission to rescue a child stricken with appendicitis, Pascoe crashes on a barren stretch of the Tasmanian coast. His skull is fractured, and he is tended only by the child's distraught mother, but his friends rally round. Chief of these is Ronnie Clarke, who volunteers...
Clarke's first attempt fails (nothing comes easy to a Shute hero), and he returns exhausted to Pascoe's house in Buxton, broods over Pascoe's mementos, stumbles to Pascoe's bed in Pascoe's pajamas. He dreams and, through a not-too-convincing display of Shute magic, becomes transformed into the Johnny Pascoe of World War I: an ace in the air, a hellion on the ground, the lover and husband of Dancer Judy Lester. Clarke's next dream carries him, as Johnny Pascoe, through the years between the wars, disillusionment and divorce...
With the dreams out of the way, Ronnie Clark can get on with his rescue mission. Question, not answered till the final pages: Will he arrive in time? As always, Shute writes in plain, unadorned prose, packs his book with pluck and poignancy, and handles his flashbacks as easily as he would a basic trainer...