THE DAY THE FISH CAME OUT

UK, Greece, 1967, 107 minutes. Colour.
Tom Courtenay, Sam Wanamaker, Colin Blakely, Candace Bergen, Ian Ogilvy.
Directed by Michael Cacoyannis.

The Day the Fish Came Out is a science-fiction comedy in the spirit of Dr Strangelove. However, its wit is not as sharp and it plays for laughs with some broad satire and an indulging in Cacoyannis' affection for the Greek people, his camera bringing to life even the barren island where the film is set and the expressive peasant faces of the inhabitants of the island.

The story is based on the accident at Palomares in the middle 60s when the U.S. lost a bomb which fell into the sea near Spain. The film takes up from there with a humorous flamenco song on the subject and then transfers to the Aegean where the next bomb is to be lost. The two pilots (Colin Blakely and Tom Courtenay) spend the film trying to get to a telephone to ring up H.Q. about the news; in the meantime, the U.S. army has invaded the island to look for the bomb - but they are in the guise of gaudily-dressed hotel entrepreneurs.

The third strand of narrative which is worked into the interplay of the other two concerns, the goat-herd and his wife who are trying to break open the steel box to find treasure. The ending is a bit sudden, but the film makes its point. The dead fish come out of the sea while the fashionable tourists madly dance out the night.

1. How serious was the point behind this satire? Against which country was it directed? Why?

2. How did the comments (and the castanet echoes) at the opening and the song about Spain and the bomb set the mood of the film? Did the film sustain this mood?

3. What kind of men were the two pilots? Who was the wore intelligent? How do you know?

4. Who was being satirised in the pilots and their efforts to get to a phone without clothes or money and wanting secrecy?

5. Were the inhabitants of Karos presented as sympathetic people - e.g. the dentist, the goat-herd and his wife, the young fisherman, the police?

6. Comment on the satire in the presentation of the discovery that the plane was lost and official military reactions.

7. What was being spoofed in making the military personnel look like caricatures of American tourists?

8. How were the Greeks satirised in their luring of the tourists?

9. Was there some point in making the tourists all so colourfully dressed and flamboyant in their behaviour and so intense and continuous in their dancing? Is it too fanciful to see them representing the typical world that would soon be affected by radiation?

10. Has there any point in the introduction of the incidents with Electra Brown or was she just fashion, romance and box-office?

11. How well did Cacoyannis keep interest and balance out the four threads of his story - the pilots, the searchers, the islanders and the goat-herd and his wife? Here the attempts at keeping the audience laughing at the comedy situations and smiling at the ironies successful?

12. what was so ironical about the bungling attempts to keep the disaster secret and the pilots and the searchers always calculating the opposite to what was happening?

13. Was the ending successful - Tom Courtenay gobbling food and laughing, the world of tourists dancing and curious and all the dead fish with the threat of radiation?

14.How effective is satire at teaching people a lesson? Do they laugh and then laugh it off?