MOVIE of the MONTH, March 2016: The World, The Flesh and The Devil

Thanks for watching the movie, Cricket You've watched all of these MoM, I can't wait to see what movie you pick when it's your turn to host

Good call, I didn't notice that myself but I don't doubt it. I think some actors have a hard time acting 'into thin air' and need another actor to play off, so that's probably the reason it seemed odd. The film noir, Lady in the Lake (1947) is filmed in first person and the lead character Robert Montgomery is literally the camera's eye and we only see his hands. So why do I mention this? Montgomery had to record his dialogue after the filming was done and at times it sounds odd, like you described.

IMO that's what the movie is really about...how a black American man who had been 'freed' from bigotry and discrimination, reacts to being in a 'new world'. That's why he gets really upset with the woman and says something like 'he's not allowed to set down!'

That's part of the movie I was appreciating more in retrospect.

I've seen this movie at least five times now - the first time when I was a kid. I'm just going to discuss some of what others mentioned and a few nice touches here and there. There are three edits between when Ralph starts to dig himself out until he actually gets out, so the amount of time it took is unknown. Some eerie moments include: when he comes out, one of the first things he sees is an umbrella blowing across the ground to him; later when the wind comes up in NYC, a baby carriage rolls down the street; when he rings the church bell, the statues of the lions at the public library appear to wake up; he tosses a coin to decide which way to go, and the woman shows up for the first time. Later, when the two men argue about her, she suggests they toss a coin to decide who gets her. The mannequins Ralph brings home foreshadow his eventual situation. He hears another survivor speaking French. Later some others are broadcasting too. Sarah brings him blossoms from a tree and says life is coming back, just as Ralph said it would. Therefore it's no surprise the pigeons turn up as more and more life is found in NYC and on the Earth. The actual end (or "The Beginning" as the credits say) can be interpreted multiple ways depending on how fast more people show up, but all should be considered positive.

As a side note, Inger Stevens, whom I was in love with as a boy, had an apparent compulsion to have affairs with her co-stars and Harry Belafonte was no exception. After this movie she married in secret African-American Ike Jones. You may ask yourself why, but even Sammy Davis Jr. was forced by Harry Cohn to stop seeing Kim Novak by threats from the Mob! Davis later married May Britt and her career dried up. So, this might give something of a back story to the character of Ralph and his not being free to relate "normally" to a white woman. And if anyone thinks the lovers should be punished in something like Brief Encounter, Inger Stevens apparently agreed and ended her often unhappy life by drug overdose at age 35.

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That was an excellent write up, Mark. Very informed and you put the various events in context, which helps alot. I hadn't noticed that there were three edits in the cave scene. I'm glad you mentioned that, as like you say, much time might have past in the cave. Interesting about the blowing umbrella and baby carts. Thanks for writing that.

But this seems out of context:
What does mine (or anyone's) opinion of the adulterous couple in Brief Encounter have to do with Inger Stevens suicide? Come on now Mark, that was really a unprofessionally thing to say.

As I said earlier, Inger Stevens had numerous affairs with her many co-stars which left her unhappy. I thought I tied everything together quite well.

No, that's not what you said, you said this:

That is an off handed comment meant for someone who criticized the lovers in Brief Encounter and thought they should be punished. I was that person who just criticized the couple in Brief Encounter.

From my review of Brief Encounter in the 9th Hof I was talking about a fictional movie and a fictional character. Your comparison to those who thinks the lovers in Brief Encounter should be punished to the tragic suicide of Inger Stevens, is inappropriate.

I think all that Mark was trying to say is that an adulterous life leads to no good, and that Inger Steven's case is just one of many cases.

If that was all that he meant to say, he would not have included this very specific comment in his post: Throwing Inger Stevens suicide in my face because I said I thought the fictional woman in Brief Encounter needed to suffer more for her adulteries actions, is a rude comment. He knows what he's doing, and his comment wasn't a typo or a carelessly constructed sentence. It was meant for me, for what I said about Brief Encounter.

Did you two previously have a conversation about this Brief Encounter movie where you discussed that particular topic? Because I'm not sure why you feel so signaled out in that sentence.

I had a conversation about Brief Encounter, the other day, I posted a link to it earlier on this thread.

I have never seen this movie but I look forward to see it, you sold it well !

yes, a very good "end of the world " movie, Belafonte especially , although it suggests that the population may not be dead but deserted the cities. There was a lot of movies like that at the time, the best, I think , being "On the beach".... Now that really WAS the end of the world.

I'm plan in on watching this in a few days as research for my 50s list.

Glad to hear it Nope Please post back here with your thoughts. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, I just like to read people's impression of the film.

Scheduling for the podcast has been tough, because this has been an awfully busy month for me, but we're going to take a stab at recording one Sunday.

Gah, scheduling proved impossible this month (mostly because of me). Sorry guys! We'll take another crack at it next time.

Thanks for trying Yoda I know it must take a lot of your guys time to do a podcast and so it's totally cool that it just didn't work this time.

I'll do a write-up of my thoughts within the next couple days since the podcast didn't come together.

Slappy cool, I look forward to your write up. I hope you find something to like in the film, but if not, it's totally cool as I'm not the director. So feel free to critique it.

Overall points:

Felt like a long twilight zone episode; using science fiction to hold other variables constant (or remove them entirely) to see how other variables react. The central theme seemed to be wondering how some socially ingrained ideas would react to a world without society. Most clearly racial hierarchies, but I also enjoyed the take on the love triangle.

I enjoy this sort of classic sci-fi take, a thought experiment trying to discern what’s caused by society’s presence, and what’s caused by its imprint.

This lead to my favorite scene, a line of dialogue by Ralph:
“Why should the world fall down to prove what I am, and to prove that there’s nothing wrong with what I am?”

This line presses against the 4th wall a bit, it seems like this line way spoken more by Bellafonte than Ralph, asking the audience why do we need to bend over backwards and create these hypothetical situations to allow for his human dignity? Why is this the argument that takes all the effort, and the other is so easy to come by?

The film’s setting lends itself to other interesting thoughts. Ralph muses about the start of a new World War as the tension between he and Benson comes to a head. Which brings to mind the murder of Abel; where if you grant total accuracy to the source, possibly the most destructive conflict in history (in terms of % population wiped out).

While trying to find a screenplay to look over (I was unsuccessful in that effort) I learned more about the source of the film, namely a story published right at the turn of the 20th century called The Purple Cloud. It’s novel length, but I did want to get a flavor of the text so I searched around for excerpts. I won’t summarize it here (there are probably many summaries that would do a better job), but the character of this book did influence my thoughts on the movie.

Part of the Purple Cloud follows a “last man alive” sort who burns down major cities, and it’s a bit more clearly theological. It’s much more of a “the great flood” type scenario (or a recursion back to the garden of Eden). The World is a bit more of a mix, seemingly a bit more aimed at reforming society, though with its roots in a pacifist Christian doctrine. Put crudely, The Purple Cloud is a bit more Old Testament, The World is a bit more New Testament.

The turning point for Ralph comes at viewing the biblical excerpt where the idiom “swords to plowshares” comes from (turning weapons into peaceful tools). The film seems to imply that Ralph then goes on to convince Benson to live peacefully with Sarah and him. I believe this is drawing a line to many of our own dilemmas when trying to act in a way that more accurately reflects our own guiding principles.

When one thinks about the ways in which they want to change the world, such as to make it more peaceful and harmonious, the immediate difficulty is trying to gain cooperation. If it benefits the other parties to defect from peaceful accords, there will be a cascading effect that will cause parties to defect all the way down to the ones who are even slightly apprehensive about the process; leaving the only ones left working in the vein of that harmonious agreement the ones who have a powerful and specific internal drive.
Ralph seems to have only one person he has to convince, but it still seems like an incredible obstacle. But in doing so, he may be able to form the bonds of a new society where this harmony is the norm and the institution.

There’s also the title, which I’ve only barely learned about before (so take all this analysis with quite a bit of salt). But essentially they are descriptions of three paths to sin; following society to sin (the world), following hedonism (the flesh), and the devil (…the devil). It’s naturally tempting to say each character is a representation of these paths as there are three of each; but I think the movie either didn’t intend for that or didn’t execute. Obviously “the world” stands out as the most significant, but there wasn’t that much sin of “the flesh” (other than the allusions to rape as an alternative to Benson’s failures of courtship), and no obvious interferences by “the devil” though you could pretty much read “the devil” into any film.

I’m starting to ramble a bit (this is one of the advantages of the podcast, it keeps me succinct). I think the best way to sum up my feelings about the film are the way I started this review; it’s like a long Twilight Zone episode (though the sets were MUCH more impressive than TZ sets; which show off their Potemkin quality too often). That could mean a lot of different things to different people, but I’ll say that it means the moral was a little on the nose.


(high for a film as old as this, which are more difficult for me to like)


Misc points:

Assuming a bomb was what caused the cave-in, and that it seemed like there were others trying to get to him: Why did his coworkers bother to try to dig him out? If an atomic bomb went off in a city, it seems like an awful lot of effort to try to save one person when there are likely thousands who would be much easier to help.

It’s interesting seeing an older take on the lone-survivor in a post-apocalyptic world theme (clearly a trope by now, unsure if it was a trope at the time; possibly it was in literature).

It gets to the cause rather quickly. A lot of characters that roam around in the rubble have to take some time figuring out what happened, but he just finds a newspaper that pretty much instantly brings him up to speed.

No bodies in the streets (or anywhere) is a consistently distracting plot-hole, as mentioned elsewhere.

I was reminded of I Am Legend in the way he set up the mannequins.

Ralph and Sarah take turns being childish about their hurt feelings, but it’s clear they care about each other. It’s odd to be in a situation where you’ve lost everything you’ve ever known, but you don’t deserve pity more than the other person left.

I groaned a bit when the final words “The Beginning” came up at the end of the movie, but it was probably less cheesy of a maneuver at the time.