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The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

orzel-w wrote:
Whew! I'm glad that's settled! (It is, isn't it?)

Absolutely!

But it just occurred to me that I wasn't completely wrong to suggest that Harry had a strong emotional reaction to the doll and the Robby toy. I just made the mistake of thinking it was a negative reaction!

It wasn't. It was a positive reaction! Very Happy

Harry decided to keep the two toys and add them to his collection of "good things from the past" when he rescued artwork from New York museums and galleries!



He also demonstrated his love for children's toys when he set up the train set.



So, Harry's strong emotional reaction to the doll and the Robby toy wasn't negative as I suggested . . . it was positive!

And that's even more consistent with the character Harry portrays than my description of him becoming upset when he saw the toys and wanted to destroy them!

By the way, I've been just itchin' to watch my DVD-R from TCM during this discussion, but I decided to wait until this debate was finally resolved.

However, the poor quality of my screen shots convinced me that I should order the DVD from Amazon. Heck, it's only $13.90 (chump change for a true film buff like me), so I ordered it today, and I'll be watching this movie next Monday when it arrives! Very Happy

If poor Tim Edwards was still with us, I'd mail him my DVD-R so he and I could watch it together. (Gee, I really miss that guy. Sad)



But Gord Green and I watch movies together occasionally, so maybe he'd like to have it! Cool

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 4:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________________

I received my DVD from Amazon today, and I immediately watched it! Cool

This fine movie does a great job of explaining why we see only three people who survived the radioactive poison gas that depopulated the world. The fact that the major cities were said to have been evacuated serves to explain why we don’t see millions of rotting corpses throughout the city.

Granted this was done mostly to keep the movie from being gross and unpleasant to watch.

But of course the movie never explains why the city's residence thought that going somewhere else would save them, nor does it mention where the people actually went!

The “atomic poison gas” is said to have a half-life of 53 hours, so despite the fact that a major portion of Earth's ecosystem would be destroyed, it seems plausible that portions of the Earth would be spared because the prevailing winds wouldn’t carry the gas to a few areas in just 2.2 days.

Add to this the fact that subterranean life forms (like worms and insect larvae) might have survived, and a major portion of Earth’s marine life would be spared as well. However, marine mammals would die because they’d come to the surface to breath. But the true fish and other marine life would be spared.

Unhatched birds’ eggs might have been protected from the gas — which would explain why we see pigeons in the movie’s last scene when Mel Ferrer, Harry Belafonte, and Inger Stevens walk off into the distance hand-in-hand.

All in all, this movie gives us a great deal of fine thinking to praise, along with quite of lot of additional ideas to contemplate, analyze, and discuss.

This is definitely my kind of movie! Very Happy

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Krel
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 5:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If they had warning, then there are a lot of people still around. The government would have put as many people in shelters as they could. There would be a lot of military personnel, that would have been put in bunkers. Also those in submarines, missile command centers, other bunkers and labs, and any ships that were out of the path of the gas. Aircraft too, if they could find a safe place to land.

I imagine that New York would soon be getting a lot of visitors, as they go for the corporate, and financial records.

My Brother was a U.S. Marine in the early 70s, and he told me that quite a few times, they were put into bunkers because there might be a war. Fortunately they were all false alarms, but it is pretty frighting where they wake you up in the middle of the night then they have you pack up your gear and get on a truck.

Bud, I haven't seen this movie since i was a kid. Was this a war between the U.S., and the Soviets, or was the gas from a war between the Soviets and China that drifted our way?

Come to think of it, if the gas drifed to the U.S., then there are probably untouched areas, due to the wind currents.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The movie is careful not to tell us which country launched the gas or which country was supposed to be the target.

I think the idea was meant to be the generic "domino effect" of nuclear proliferation, but with the clever twist that a weapon was used which wiped out billions of people without damaging the surface of the earth, and which gave the entire populations of most cities time to make vain attempts to flee to what they hoped would be safer areas.

Early in the film, Harry hears a recording of a news broadcast which states that the gas was released into the upper atmosphere, and it was circulating all around the world.

In the middle of the movie there are scenes in which the characters talk about certain types of plants being affected (flowers and trees that bloom), but later on they discover that many of these are beginning to recover.

Also, there are several scenes in which Harry hears radio chatter from other countries (he speculates they're in Europe and South America). So, there are definitely a significant number of survivors around the world, undoubtedly because of the reasons you named above. Very Happy

As for the original puzzle about why Harry took the rag doll and the Robby toy from the counter, I got a definitive answer at the end of the movie.

Near the end of the film we see Harry storing away more paintings, along with books he's recovered from other apartments and from the public library. He tells Inger and Mel that the library's roof is leaking and the books are getting wet.

And at the very end of the movie, when Inger asks him what he'll do if he leaves her and Mel, he says, "I've got work to do. I'll save things . . . whatever I can. That's why I'm alive."

So, Harry's mission to preserve elements of human civilization first began with the rag doll and the Robby toy." Cool

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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 02, 2018 7:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Near the end of the film we see Harry storing away more paintings, along with books he's recovered from other apartments and from the public library. He tells Inger and Mel that the library's roof is leaking and the books are getting wet.

So if the three are surviving, that means the radiation has decayed to a safe level. Why aren't the residents of the city returning from whatever ginormous fallout shelter they were evacuated to and finding their apartments looted? And why aren't there any bodies of looters that stayed behind during the evac? You know there are going to be those kind in every crowd.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 10:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

All good points, Wayne. The film is admirably dramatic, but it has to be forgiven in some ways for not being very realistic. They sort of "cleaned up" the messy situation instead of presenting a truer version of a post-apocalyptic world.

As you said, enough time had passed by the end of the movie to allow the survivors who stayed in fallout shelters to return to New York, not to mention the people who were just lucky, like Harry and Inger. Oddly enough, the movie never mentions how Mel survived. Not a single word. An IMDB trivia item even mentions that.

As for looters, even if there had been a few hundred who foolishly stayed and were killed by the gas, most of them would have sickened and died indoors, which means the three main characters wouldn't be likely to run across them in a city that size.

I'm sure the filmmakers stylized the situation to simplify the story and focus on the main point: racial attitudes that survived, even when 99% of mankind did not! Sad

I guess the idea was to create a world in which Harry, Inger, and Mel didn't even have to work hard to survive, but they did have deal with the problems caused by society's racial attitudes. However, I admire the filmmakers for reversing the situation by having Inger be perfectly willing to accept Harry as a fellow human being and not a "black man". Inger never shows an trace of racial prejudice — in fact, quite the reverse!

It's actually Harry who resists the idea that he and Inger can have a romantic relationship. Even Mel accepts the idea that Inger can choose either of the men, so his problem is just that he wants to be the one chosen!

With a lovely lady like Inger, who can blame him? She was one hell of "last woman on Earth". Very Happy

This movie is not so much a science fiction story as it is a true morality play, creating a situation that forces choices on the characters which reveals their true nature.

A damn good movie. Highly recommended.

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Krel
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

People hadn't returned because the government wouldn't let them. With a depopulated country, the government was going to try and keep those left at a location, or locations where they could be protected and controlled. The government would be questioning people to figure out what skills they had that would be needed. The government would also be looking for any areas that wind currents might have spared from the gas.

Even releasing the gas in the upper atmosphere, some areas are going to be spared due to wind currents. Also the density of the gas is going to factor in to the dispersal. But any populations that survived would probably be small enough to control.

Also with the fallout shelters, assuming the filters could filter out the gas, there just aren't going to be that many people left.

Don't, or didn't New York City have fallout shelters? Part of a fallout shelter is air filtration. There should have been more people in the city.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 5:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

David, that is brilliant! Absolutely everything you said is irrefutable! And I'm mad at myself for not thinking of a single thing you described. Sad

I'll start by addressing that last question you asked, because I Googled this — "When were the first fallout shelters built?" — and got this answer.


Fallout Shelters - United States American History wrote:
The first was in 1961 when the Soviets built the Berlin Wall and the second was the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later. President Kennedy, believing the lives of families not directly hit in a nuclear attack could still be saved if they could take shelter, endorsed the construction of fallout shelters.

So, one of the more realistic aspects of this powerful morality play was the fact that it was made a year before the first backyard fallout shelters were constructed, and probably several yeas before any large fallout shelters would have existed in major cities.

Therefore, the complete evacuation of New York makes perfect sense, even though we still have no idea where all those millions of people were directed to go!

But your savvy comments about the importance of wind currents might give us a clue.

Although the movie didn't take the time to go into that subject, perhaps the government made some hard choices by directing the populations of various cities to "safer" areas out away from each city . . . knowing full well that most of those areas would NOT be safe.

The purpose would be to simply spread out the population so that our cities would not be polluted by millions of dead bodies in every building and home, making the cities virtually uninhabitable when (and if) there were survivors who could return.

However, as you suggested, there would be certain areas in the United States that might be spared the lethal effects of the gas because of the prevailing winds during the 53 hours the gas was lethal (as stated in the movie).

Those would be the areas the government would direct a reasonable number of people to head for, based on the time remaining and the distance the people would have to travel. Obviously if too many people went to those areas and a large, concentrated number of them survived, the government would be overtaxed in their efforts to care for the survivors.

In the aftermath of the 2.2 day period of the gas' effectiveness, our country would consist of small pockets of survivors and vast regions populated only by the corpses of people and animals. According to the movie, most animals and many plant species were affected by the gas, so providing food for the survivors would be difficult.

I should point out that Harry, Inger, and Mel were living high off the hog . . . but they had all the canned and dry goods in the city of New York to pick from!

However, a few scattered communities of survivors around the country (numbering several thousand people each) would be restricted to the same types of foods, since all the livestock and most of the crops were destroyed by the gas.

And if other survivors from outlying areas began to drift in, these "survivor communities" might become overtaxed.

I might be getting a bit carried away with all this because I like your concepts so much, David. After all, we should remember that several months went by, and during that time Harry was only able to pick up a few sporadic radio broadcast from distant places like Europe and South America.

So, the movie strongly suggests that there were very few survivors in America.

However, your intriguing ideas make me wonder if perhaps a few carefully managed communities of survivors in the U.S. might have become Top Secret installations which were being controlled in the manner your suggested!

If that was true, they government would be very cautious NOT to reveal themselves to the world by making random radio broadcasts like the ones Harry received. They would be risking the danger of being overrun by starving survivors . . . or worse, attacked by hostile groups who were armed with scavenged weapons from the world's abandoned arsenals! Shocked

Sir, your sane and logical plan for the surviving government and the remaining population is a gold mine of ideas for what could have been a remarkable sequel to this unique movie! Very Happy

David, if your address is still the one you provided me with a few years ago on Marie Drive, I'm going to mail you the fine DVD-R I recently replaced with the new DVD I just bought, if you don't already have the movie.

Interested? Very Happy

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Krel
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks Bud, my address is still the same, and I would appreciate the DVD.

Food wouldn't be a problem for a while, they could raid cities, towns and storehouses for what they need. If they worked fast, even the food in cold storage warehouses could be saved. The Military should would have all the vehicles they would need for distribution. The government would be busy for weeks, or months trying to get control of the situation.

Mental health would be a problem. There would be suicides, and murders by people who have flipped out.

Presumably, the soil was not contaminated, so new crops could be grown from seed stores. With a drastically reduced population, feeding everyone probably wouldn't be a problem, although meat might. Unfortunately, I don't know how long it takes for crops to reach maturity, so that could be a problem. If the gas killed insects, then pollination would be a problem, crops would have to be manually pollinated.

Any domestic animals that survive wouldn't be used for food, but for breeding stock until the population is back up. They would need to be guarded. What a job that would be. So son, what do you do in the army? I guard chickens. Laughing

Any pests not killed by the gas are going to undergo a population boom, and become a problem...FAST! The same with any domestic animals that survive, they will go feral fast, and become a problem just as fast. Domestic cows can be aggressive, mean and dangerous, feral cows would be shoot first dangerous.

You know, tired as I am of apocalyptic and dystopian stories, I would watch this if it were a TV show. But then the networks would probably 90210 it. Laughing

I have to admit that I am shocked that the first fallout shelter was in 1961. The Soviets exploded their first Atom Bomb in 1949, so I would have thought that the first government fallout shelters would have been built in the early 1950s, with private ones coming not long after.

David.
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 06, 2019 8:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
___________________

______ The World, The Flesh and The Devil trailer


__________


The world ends — civilization, to be precise — and we don't see it happen.

The main character (Harry Belafonte) is working in a deep mine when it happens. There's a cave-in and he's trapped below. After a while, he begins to wonder why no one is coming down to rescue him, so he determines to exit the mine on his own.

At this point, the film takes on a slightly surrealistic bent. The survivor never finds any bodies, it's all just empty of people. I guess everyone was evacuated to somewhere . . . but, where?

The film avoids the grisliness of mass death and concentrates on the desolation of such a scenario. It also (later) addresses race relations of those times. The female survivor (Inger Stevens) doesn't seem to mind the skin color difference, but there is tension between the two, acknowledging the baggage left over from the old world.



I have The World, the Flesh and the Devil on Laserdisc, having purchased it a dozen years ago, which was about the last time I watched it up until the showing on TCM a couple of years ago.

What sticks in my memory is the character played by Mel Ferrer, who shows up late, after Belafonte & Inger Stevens have been on screen for awhile. His character comes off as rather creepy and ambivalent — I guess he was played that way on purpose to add tension. On the one hand he seems to be a civilized gentleman, but on the other he seems to be waiting to stick a knife in Belafonte's back at the right moment.

The last half-hour is rather vague and a bit bizarre. Belafonte and Ferrer are now running around the empty city canyons with rifles after having some civil discussions. Then the 3 characters are walking off together in peace. The message, it seems to me, is that mankind is essentially insane. Just 3 people may work out (justbarely!), but add a 4th and 5th and pretty soon the paranoia gains strength, the senseless killing starts.

Now, putting aside philosophy and social commentary, there's a point to be made on the pragmatic side. What many people who have seen this film do not recall is that the world is not left with just these 3 survivors. I'm fairly certain on this — at one point Inger and Harry finds out that there ARE survivors in other cities.

The problem, of course, is connecting with them to restart civilization, which will take some time. Well, I think they would need all the ones they can find. I'm not a scientist, but I'm also fairly certain that we would need a minimum amount of people for genetic variation to restart the population growth — something like 1,000 people, I would think.

This kind of goes back to the Adam and Eve myth. When I got into my early teens, I started asking questions of the adults about this. There was Cain and Abel, then another son, but how did all the rest of the people come about?

"Well, they were from . . . other places" was usually the vague answer.

_______________

In the end, I prefer The Quiet Earth (1985) — a virtual remake — over this one. The Quiet Earth has the same basic framework of 3 survivors — a white man, a white woman and a black man — with the only difference the order of introductions (the white man is introduced first in The Quiet Earth).

The entire presentation of the latter film, with the first survivor going through different stages of insanity as this new empty world is impressed upon him, is much more interesting than the older film, where-in the characters are simply depressed, submerging their insanity. Their pretense lent another layer of boredom to an already fairly dull narrative (except for some of those shots of the empty NYC). It's grimly realistic, but just so slow.

I guess I could say this was already done to better effect in the earlier Five (1951).

BoG's Score: 5.5 out of 10



BoG
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 12:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Bogmeister and I have very different opinions of this movie. I didn't find it dull and slow, I was impressed by the characters and the drama.

And even though I have a great deal of respect for Five, it's a different kind of film (with similarities, naturally), so I wouldn't say "this was already done to better effect in the earlier Five (1951)."

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