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A disaster film is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject and primary plot device. Such disasters include natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes or asteroid collisions, accidents such as shipwrecks or airplane crashes, or calamities like worldwide disease pandemics. The films usually feature some degree of build-up, the disaster itself and sometimes the aftermath, usually from the point of view of specific individual characters or their families. These films often feature large casts of actors and multiple plotlines, focusing on the characters' attempts to avert, escape or cope with the disaster and its aftermath. The genre came to particular prominence during the 1970s with the release of high-profile films such as ''Airport'' (1970), followed in quick succession by ''The Poseidon Adventure'' (1972), ''Earthquake'' (1974) and ''The Towering Inferno'' (1974).〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=bookrags.com )〕 The casts were generally made up of familiar character actors. Once the disaster begins in the film, the characters are usually confronted with human weaknesses, often falling in love and almost always finding a villain to blame. The genre experienced a renewal in the 1990s boosted by computer-generated imagery (CGI) and large studio budgets which allowed for more focus on the destruction, and less on the human drama, as seen in films like 1998's ''Armageddon'' and ''Deep Impact''.〔http://www.allrovi.com/movies/subgenre/disaster-film-d512〕 Nevertheless, the films usually feature a persevering hero or heroine (Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen, etc.) called upon to lead the struggle against the threat. In many cases, the "evil" or "selfish" individuals are the first to succumb to the conflagration.〔http://www.filmsite.org/disasterfilms.html〕 ==Origins== Disaster themes are almost as old as the film medium itself. One of the earliest was ''Fire!'' (1901) made by James Williamson of England. The silent film portrayed a burning house and the firemen who arrive to quench the flames and rescue the inhabitants.〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=imdb.com )〕 Origins of the genre can also be found in ''In Nacht und Eis'' (1912), about the sinking of the ''Titanic''; ''Atlantis'' (1913), also about the ''Titanic''; ''Noah's Ark'' (1928), the Biblical story from Genesis about the great flood; ''Deluge'' (1933), about tidal waves devastating New York City; ''King Kong'' (1933), with a gigantic gorilla rampaging through New York City; and ''The Last Days of Pompeii'' (1935), dealing with the Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption in 79 AD.〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=filmsite.org )〕 John Ford's ''The Hurricane'' (1937) concluded with the striking sequence of a tropical cyclone ripping through a fictional South Pacific island. The drama ''San Francisco'' (1936) depicted the historic 1906 San Francisco earthquake, while ''In Old Chicago'' (1937) recreated The Great Chicago Fire which burned through the city in 1871.〔 Carol Reed's 1939 film, ''The Stars Look Down'', examines a catastrophe at a coal mine in North-East England. Inspired by the end of World War II and the beginning of the Atomic Age, science fiction films of the 1950s, including ''When Worlds Collide'' (1953), ''The War of the Worlds'' (1953) and ''Godzilla, King of the Monsters!'' (1956), routinely used world disasters as plot elements. This trend would continue with ''The Deadly Mantis'' (1957), ''The Day the Earth Caught Fire'' (1961) and ''Crack in the World'' (1965). Volcanic disasters would also feature in films such as ''The Devil at 4 O'Clock'' (1961) starring Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra, and the 1969 epic ''Krakatoa, East of Java'' starring Maximilian Schell.〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=filmsite.org )〕 As in the silent film era, the sinking of the ''Titanic'' would continue to be a popular disaster with filmmakers and audiences alike. Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck starred in the 1953 20th Century Fox production ''Titanic'', followed by the highly regarded British film ''A Night to Remember'' in 1958. The British action-adventure film ''The Last Voyage'' (1960), while not about the Titanic disaster but a predecessor to ''The Poseidon Adventure'', starred Robert Stack as a man desperately attempting to save his wife (Dorothy Malone) and child trapped in a sinking ocean liner. The film, concluding with the dramatic sinking of the ship, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=imdb.com )〕 Additional precursors to the popular disaster films of the 1970s include ''The High and the Mighty'' (1954), starring John Wayne and Robert Stack as pilots of a crippled airplane attempting to cross the ocean; ''Zero Hour!'' (1957), written by Arthur Hailey (who also penned the 1968 novel ''Airport'') about an airplane crew that succumbs to food poisoning; ''Jet Storm'' and ''Jet Over the Atlantic'', two 1959 films both featuring attempts to blow up an airplane in mid-flight; ''The Crowded Sky'' (1960) which depicts a mid-air collision; and ''The Doomsday Flight'' (1966), written by Rod Serling and starring Edmond O'Brien as a disgruntled aerospace engineer who plants a barometric pressure bomb on an airliner built by his former employer set to explode when the airliner descends for landing.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=cultmovies.info )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=imdb.com )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Disaster film」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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