"The World and the Flesh" (1932) is a George Bancroft starrer when he was in full stride of stardom. Co-starring with all the fervor she possessed, Miriam Hopkins far out acts Bancroft and everybody else in the film except Alan Mowbray, who steals every second of time he's on screen from everybody, period. This is one of so very many Russian revolution films made between 1918-1940 by nearly every studio in Hollywood. The list of films is very long indeed. This one pits the white Russian aristocrats against the Reds. It begins, too, Hopkins versus Bancroft. As a relationship evidently legitimately develops, the tenor of the film changes slightly. It's absolutely hokey. The two actors can't overcome the implausibility of the plot the way it's written. Still, compared to so many other of these Russian revolution films, I found this one quite watchable nevertheless. It was actually fun watching Mowbray's attitude during the film. His behavior might even be said to be a series of antics. Hopkins tries to have the same kind of aura about her, but she's not up to the height of the task as Mowbray, probably because of the way the part's written. Lots and lots of character actors and actresses appear who one might know from a host of late 20s and early and middle 30s films, from Edwin Maxwell (uncredited) and Bob Kortman (uncredited) to Oscar Apfel, George E. Stone, and Ferike Boros. Watchable, but, frankly, forgettable. A real potboiler, from the writing and plot to the title.
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boblipton31 January 2021White Russians are fleeing the triumphant Bolesheviks, heading to Sevastopol. Unfortunately for them, Commissar George Bancroft is on their trail, and overtakes them. One of their number is ballerina Miriam Hopkins, whom Bancroft wants. The others persuade her to go to him, while they continue their flight.
In other words, it's an uncredited variation on Guy de Maupassant's 'Boule de Suif.' Everyone talks in the stilted manner that seems to have been fashionable, save for Alan Mowbray as an aristocrat; Bancroft refers to himself in the third person. Director John Cromwell tries to get some good out of this programmer by hiring Russians to play the extras for some color. It only got the regular extras mad at him.
Bancroft was Paramount's answer to Wallace Beery at the end of the silent era, and he gave some muscular performances for von Sternberg. By this time, however, his career was on the downslide, with advancing age and changes in taste. His starring career ended in 1934 with the rise of the Production Code, which I think no coincidence. He remained a capable character actor through 1942, then retired to become a rancher. He died in 1946, aged 74. -
...set during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
The film opens with a train freight car filled with aristocrats in ragged disguises fleeing to Sebastopol, one of the few White Army strongholds left, as "Red hordes" savage the countryside. Among those fleeing are Miriam Hopkins, as a former commoner-ballerina who had become accepted as a part of the luxurious upper class, and Alan Mowbray as a proud aristocrat.
Arriving in a town, they temporarily set up quarters in a hotel only to have it soon captured by some Red sailors, headed by lumbering, macho strutting George Bancroft. He sets his eyes upon Hopkins, with one thing largely on his mind but she, ugh, is most definitely not interested.
The print of the film I saw was often quite dark, but that didn't stop me from seeing that this was still a film of considerable production values as far as sets and photography (Karl Struss behind the camera) were concerned. The story sets up tension by having the White Army suddenly take the Reds prisoner (now it's Bancroft and his sailors forced to shovel coal on a ship headed for a White-held city where they will be executed) only to have them stage a daring mutiny. But there will be still more plot turns ahead as to who will and will not be the prisoner and facing a firing squad.
One of the more interesting aspects of the film is when, as a ruse, Hopkins offers herself to Bancroft (his sweaty dream come true) as part of an escape plot by the aristocrats on board a ship. The next morning, though, she's in love with the big lug and wants to save his life now that, she thinks, the tables have been turned, and he and his men will once again be prisoners.
The story will have both Bancroft and Hopkins ready to sacrifice themselves for the other and it becomes ridiculously over the top in the manner of so many studio productions. Besides, just looking at burly, towering roughneck Bancroft and petite, svelte, refined Hopkins, there's not much credibility they could ever be a couple.
Nevertheless, despite a story that becomes increasingly silly towards the end the first portion of the film still has considerable tension, the production values are solid and they make the film worth a look. And, for those familiar with 1933's Story of Temple Drake, seeing the similarities in Hopkins' reactions to a night of sex (assault in the case of Temple Drake) with a brute brings another aspect of interest to this film. -
westernone28 June 2012This strange film was either made by moral morons, or for moral morons. Bancroft is a communist mass murderer, cloaked in the classic socialist dispensation of doing any unspeakable atrocity in the name of "The People". The defenseless individuals he and his mob have given themselves righteous privilege to hunt down like animals are called "aristocrats". We see or hear of no crimes they have committed. they include old men,cripples and women with babies. All eventually will be murdered by the heroic Bolsheviks that Bancroft belongs to, all save for Miriam, who has fallen in love with the man who kills her friends, a lover, (Mowbray), and everything she's ever lived for. In the finale, they are joyously together, sailing off with a ship full of victorious reds, having massacred the whites in the city that might have been a refuge for all the other refugees we started the film with. Oh, there was a scene where some whites killed a peasant that wouldn't follow curfew orders. Maybe that's supposed to be some moral-relativism to offset the red terrors in the film. Pretty far stretch, especially if you have any working knowledge of Russian history of the previous fifteen years. If you ever thought you'd want to see what a Stalin-era soviet propaganda piece might look if a Hollywood studio made it, here it is.
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perfectpawn5 January 2010The twisted world of Pre-Code cinema, where anything went Here's an obscure Miriam Hopkins film which has been neglected and forgotten. A sterling example of the "anything goes" attitude of early talkies, The World and the Flesh focuses on the Russian Revolution, lending the bloody proceedings a healthy dose of Paramount Glamour.
Miriam plays Maria, a member of the fading aristocratic set, on the run from the increasingly powerful communists. The film opens with the aristocrats hiding out on a freight train, smuggling themselves into one of the few remaining strongholds of the old empire. The communists are everywhere and will kill these aristocrats with pleasure; nerves are frayed and tension runs high. We soon learn that Maria has only recently come into this life of luxury; she was a famous dancer who started out from poverty, acquiring high-society patrons along the way. Now she's one of "them," a fertile prospect for the poverty-class-championing communists who instead associates herself with the rich.
The aristocrats find a safe haven and promptly resume their luxurious lifestyle, dining in high class, bejeweled, attended by servants. Enter Kylenko (George Bancroft) and his communist mini-navy. They storm the palace, smash up things, take everyone prisoner. Maria shows her stuff by refusing to acknowledge them; while the commies wreck the party, Maria insists that the aristocrats keep dancing as if nothing's amiss – and when they won't, she forces her partner to dance with her! One thing I love about classic cinema is how characters are defined in such economical ways – and Miriam Hopkins of course excels as a fiery, strong-willed type. You want to dance with her, despite the armed commies about.
The film continues on as a sort of tables-turned, then turned-again affair: first Maria and her aristocratic pals are the prisoners, then Kylenko and his commies are the prisoners, and etc. This allows director Cromwell to work up the suspense and also enables a lot of tension-filled, character-driven material. But this is also where trouble sets in. For Kylenko is the one who reveals that Maria was once part of the working class, that in truth she should be on the side of the communists and that if she would give herself to him, he would set her free. So we have Maria trying to capitalize on this for the benefit of her fellow prisoners, going up to Kylenko's cabin to spend the night, under the pretense of suddenly being in love with him. And guess what happens?
Really, this movie's a sort of Bolshevik Rape Fantasy. Much like the Myrna Loy/Raymond Novarro Pre-Coder "The Barbarian," a movie in which "barbarian" Novarro abducted innocent white girl Myrna Loy, turning her into his own private sex toy and she liked it. It's the same sort of thing here – for after a night of good lovin' Miriam's character falls head-over-heels for her erstwhile rapist. Indeed she's ready to cast aside her aristocratic life for him this murdering, obnoxious, commie rapist. Truly, they don't make 'em like THIS anymore.
The late-developing romance sours the entire film. Miriam and Bancroft make for an unseemly pair, the bearlike Bancroft towering over the posh Miriam. This of course reinforces the image of Bancroft's Kylenko as a rough sailor sort, but it only serves to make the romantic stuff all the more ridiculous. And the ending Maria carried off on Kylenko's stout arms, all smiles and tears of joy are we supposed to NOT ask what happened to her aristocratic friends, with whom we saw her in every preceding sequence? Aristocratic friends which included women and children, all of whom had been placed on death row by the communists?
Production values are strong. Paramount's my favorite of the old studios and here they deliver their patented Continental charm. Russian cities are rebuilt in glorious artificiality; in the opening scenes we get a lot of tracking shots through city streets. John Cromwell directs with finesse, playing up the suspense and action. In fact this is a rare Pre-Code with genuine action scenes: lots of shootouts and fistfights. The soundtrack's not as silent as most early talkies, with a bit of a score playing at times. All in all, despite the bad taste the romantic angle leaves, this film deserves to be resuscitated – it would make a good candidate for the next "Pre-Code Hollywood" DVD collection. -
The moment you see George Bancroft in this film, laughing maniacally at every nasty comment he makes towards the now broke Russian nobility, there is absolutely no desire for his character other than to see him get his Just desserts. He is creepy. He is unattractive in every way, yet for some reason only known to the screenwriter, dancer turned aristocrat Miriam Hopkins finds him alluring, or possibly allows him to seduce her to save the lives of innocent nobles and their servants, and maybe just herself. Of course at the beginning, it appears that she is involved with nobleman Alan Mowbray, passively chastising Bancroft for putting on his boots which ironically are the same size. It is obvious that the nobleman are going to be facing a firing squad at some point, and it is rather touching when an older woman breaks down and begs Miriam to save them. But this isn't "A Tale of Two Cities" with a French noblewoman in the Bastille asking God to forgive the peasants even though the peasants couldn't forgive the nobles.
If I had a nickel for every time that Bancroft said "comrade", I'd probably have enough money to buy a meal for every homeless person in New York in one day. It becomes exasperating, and the characters just seem to get uglier inside as they appear to be on the outside. In fact, some of them are made up to look like monsters of some kind, yet the writing never expresses a point of view of what they are trying to convey. All this does is show the danger of revolution and the madness that takes over the embittered lower class as they gain some power. Bancroft completely overacts, and while he certainly does not have a demure demeanor in any way, he has played gentler characters in many other films and many of them were very likable. There is absolutely nothing likable about him in this film, and when he picks up Hopkins and carries her off into a private room like a sack of potatoes, it becomes too much to even think about. Certainly this is under the category of pre-code, and it really takes advantage of the fact that it could get away with as much as it did.
The vindictive Bolsheviks are out to get what they want, stealing shoes and jewelry without guilt, basically saying to the victims, "It belongs to the people now!" One nobleman gets medals ripped off him and tossed on the floor as if to say, "I certainly don't want it, but I don't want you to have it!" Being made at Paramount during the time that Marlena Dietrich was making exotic films under the direction of Josef von Sternberg, it has much of the art deco look of "Shanghai Express" and "The Devil is a Woman", but lacks the subtlety that made those films stand the test of time. The only other film I can compare it to is a disasterous 1930 Warner Brothers film, "Son of the Gods", where Constance Bennett faced ridicule for becoming involved with a mixed race Asian man. Even "The Cheat" with Tallulah Bankhead which had a shocking plot twist involving a brand knew where to draw the line. this film certainly would have gotten a bomb from me had there not been some interesting artistic qualities that kept my attention in spite of being repulsed. -
The working title for this Paramount production, "Red Harvest", was discarded before its release due to popularity of Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name published three years before the motion picture was completed (its replacement title signifies, of course, nothing). Although an excellent work, it was largely ignored because of its charitable depiction of Russian aristocrats during the 1919 Revolution, a latter day event in the experience of most contemporary critics in Depression devastated United States who viewed it as portal to a bold and promising proletarian adventure. John Cromwell, always a capable craftsman and noted for his close rapport with actors, has to deal here with two of the most temperamental: George Bancroft and Miriam Hopkins, the former's overweening ego and the insistence by the difficult Hopkins upon achievement of visual perfection for each of her scenes defeating most directors. Nonetheless, Cromwell, as is his custom, responds to a good script, as does any effectual talespinner, and as this example by Oliver Garrett, freely adapted from an original play of Philip Zeska and Ernst Spitz, is a very fine one indeed, he sagely permits Hopkins to create her own performance that consequently is only strengthened, while the director concentrates upon the overall achitectonics, including masterful use of montage. The scenario tells of grim resistance to captivity by members of the Tsarist aristocracy fleeing from a Red Russian brigade that is intent upon bringing about their execution before they can reach Sevastopol, White Russian stronghold along the Crimean coast. The film is interestingly cast, with Alan Mowbray excelling as a patrician refusing to accept hegemony by Communists, and the storyline evolves in engrossing fashion, as twists and turns abound to the very closing moments. True auteur of the film is its cinematographer, Karl Struss, a celebrated still photographer whose work today is frequently exhibited and very collectable. A creative technician of the first order, ever inspired to seek an appropriate aesthetic for each film, Struss here fashions images that are among the most memorable in cinema, his camera's eye a vicarious observer during artistically lighted scenes wherein effects upon tangential characters describe action in this splendid motion picture that has been wrongly relegated into The Memory Hole