THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL: Blu-ray (MGM, 1959) Warner Archive

I wonder if Twilight Zone creator, Rod Serling derived at least a whiff of inspiration for the 1961 episode ‘Two’ – costarring Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery from director, Randall MacDougall’s The World, The Flesh and The Devil (1959), at 95 minutes, a somewhat prolonged, and, not altogether successful attempt to illustrate the survival of the human race after a nuclear holocaust has decimated the earth’s population – down from approximately 3 billion, the year this movie was made, to only three after an invisible terror has struck. The triumvirate of survivors is distilled to a coal mine inspector, Ralph Burton (Harry Belafonte – giving the most credible performance herein), token estrogen - Sarah Crandall (Inger Stevens as the forthright ingenue, possessing vague shadings of a Shirley Jones or Kim Novak, albeit, with none of Jones’ or Novak’s talent and personality) and a scruffy sea captain, Benson Thacker (the multi-talented Mel Ferrer – alas, given precious little to do). Sol C. Siegel’s production is so anchored in its 'teachable moment' about intolerance, the entire enterprise all but sinks under the weight of its racially-charged message. Basing his screenplay on two apocalypse-themed novels - M.P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud, and, Ferdinand Reyher’s End of the World, Randall’s reincarnation is a gumbo of mixed meanings and even further mangled emotions that result in a rudderless exercise at best, further pressed under the anvil of melodrama by Miklós Rózsa’s overwrought score. Rózsa, a master composer whose music had – and would continue to - embellish many a great film, herein, is resting on his laurels, or rather – borrowing heavily from scores already committed to Ivanhoe (1952) and Ben-Hur (1959); two monumental flowerings set in antiquity; these plush orchestral strains, decidedly out of fashion with the contemporary strain of this picture.

The World, The Flesh and The Devil was a real dud for MGM, barely making back $585,000 domestically, and another $500,000 in foreign rentals on a $1,659,000 budget, resulting in a net loss of $1,442,000 for the studio, and this, at a time when Metro could scarcely afford such costly gambles. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time: Harry Belafonte’s participation, in particular, lending stature and box office cache. Belefonte, whose meteoric rise to fame, celebrated as a pop-balladeer of calypso (a vocation he entered into to pay for his acting classes) made him an instantly recognizable recording artist, inadvertently, to launch him in such high-profile movies as Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954, but for which his singing voice was dubbed) and Zanuck’s personally supervised production of Island in the Sun (1957).  Alas, Belafonte’s role in The World, The Flesh and The Devil is grotesquely limited – the deus ex machina to draw audiences into this post-apocalypse-devastated Manhattan. Incidentally, the scenes depicting the vast and cavernous streets of New York, void of any signs of life, were shot at the steel-gray crack of dawn – the only time, producers could be guaranteed the populace of the city that never sleeps could – ostensibly – be managed to comply with their edict to remain indoors. For the rest, skillful matte paintings extended the mass devastation with some truly impressive aerial shots of the uncannily silent city; a few overturned automobiles and an endless proliferation of errant newspapers, casually blowing up and down abandoned streets, going a long way to suggest an entire metropolis had been wiped clean of its inhabitants.   

Realistically, The World, The Flesh and The Devil is absurd - radioactive isotopes unleash an all-encompassing lethal dust cloud that spreads its toxic poison during a 5-day gestation. On route to the city, Belafonte’s Burton encounters a juggernaut of abandoned cars blocking the George Washington Bridge and Holland Tunnel, without even a hint of the decimated humanity once seated behind the wheel. At the very least, New York ought to have been a gruesome morgue of decaying bodies. But The World, The Flesh and The Devil is more interested in establishing a weird isolationism; Burton, left to his own accord, first, to a series of deserted discoveries, then, to momentarily weep over the epic loss, and finally, applying an almost MacGyver-esque resourcefulness to reestablish regimented normalcy as, ostensibly, the last man on earth. Burton’s circumstances are, of course, complicated by the discovery of at least one other person – Inger Stevens’ Sarah Crandall. The World, The Flesh and The Devil might have had something relevant to say about race relations in America had it stuck exclusively to the burgeoning romance between Sarah and Ralph. Indeed, the entire middle act here plays with unsettling flirtation; real love, or, an affair of convenience and/or desperation - repeatedly staved off by Ralph’s determination to make Sarah see him, first and foremost, as a black man, to whom she would not have given the time of day when the world was populated by all those prejudicial impediments, now artificially removed. But no – writer/director, Randall cannot resist the urge to cast the proverbial fly in this ointment.  So, Sarah and Ralph are introduced to Benson Thacker; again, miraculously, to have escaped certain annihilation, only to almost expire from malnutrition before being nursed back to health. Ralph - who possesses inexplicably extensive medical knowledge, but cannot figure out his apartment has running water from a surplus stored in rooftop tanks, presumably impervious to contamination from the radioactive cloud, now begins to harbor a deep-seeded resentment for the white man whose life he saved.

Ben’s restoration to good health results in a mild shift in Sarah’s affections from Ralph to Ben, bitterly acknowledged by Ralph, who steps away from their burgeoning friendship to allow Sarah time to make her own decision. Retreating to a local radio station, where earlier he learned of the world’s fate by listening to taped transcripts of its final moments as the death cloud enveloped the earth, Ralph now continues to send messages on the wireless; stunned, when several foreign voices return his call, suggesting a handful of survivors exist in Europe too. In his absence, Ben courts Sarah – the two, indulging in a picnic where Ben lays all of his cards on the table.  Things reach a critical mass when Ben, having tired of Sarah’s reluctance to be with him, forewarns Ralph the next time he sees him he will try to kill him with a rifle. Forced to defend himself, Ralph takes up arms as well. The bitter rivals hunt each other through the empty streets.  Eventually, Ralph turns up at the United Nations, climbing the steps to Ralph Bunche Park where he takes heed of its inscription from the Book of Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war anymore.” Casting his own rifle aside, Ralph faces Ben unarmed. Unable to kill a defenseless man, Ben surrenders and walks away. Sarah suddenly appears, taking Ralph by one hand, Ben, by the other. Together, the trio begins to walk in silence toward a decidedly very uncertain future, the words, ‘the beginning’ ominously advancing on the screen.

The World, The Flesh and The Devil is a movie Dore Schary would have cherished; Schary, the purveyor of darkly purposed low-budget ‘message pictures’ at RKO, and, L.B. Mayer’s successor at MGM, having bungled the studio’s mantle of quality, and, by 1956, also ousted from power for producing a spate of movies to steadily push the once resilient Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer precariously into the red.  Indeed, this picture has Schary’s markings all over it, though, ironically, none of the finesse the studio was capable of in its prime. The real problem with The World, The Flesh and The Devil is it all takes place in a post-apocalypse world. Thus, the suspense to be found in impending doom is diffused, and, the resultant discovery of a silent metropolis coming off – not so much as a shock to the system – but a minor, if unnerving afterthought. The other hurdle here is the one-person melodrama, expressly exaggerated by the vast expanses of Cinemascope. Suffering a cave-in at the start of the picture, Belafonte’s Burton spends a good fifteen minutes of run time talking to himself. Boooooring. He then speeds along the vast and empty concourses of a silent Manhattan, accompanied only by Rosza’s bombastic orchestral underscore.  Art directors, Paul Groesse and William A. Horning clutter the elongated proscenium with a lot of bric-a-brac during scenes shot back in the comfort of the studio as Burton talks to himself some more, this time, with a pair of mannequins stolen from a local shop, to whom he has ascribed names and identities as a shallow means to keep him company.  If only the audience were as amused by these prolonged monologues.

At this juncture, we are introduced to Inger Stevens’ dulcet doe. In this, only her fourth movie, Stevens, better known for her reoccurring cameo work on television than as a star of a handful of feature films, the Swedish-born beauty, tragically to die of an overdose in 1970, neither distinguishes herself as either a presence or actress. One sincerely wonders what the role of Sarah Crandall would have been with a Shirley Jones or Eva Marie-Saint in her stead. The greatest emotional startle we get from Stevens is the moment when she lets out a blood-curdling scream, after erroneously assuming a dummy falling to the ground is Ralph, having jumped from his balcony in abject despair. Otherwise, Stevens performance is monotone at best, and unprepossessing at its absolute worst. The biggest mystery here is Mel Ferrer. Noted for enigmatic performances on the stage and screen, Ferrer’s readings are as flat and faulty as Stevens’. Benson’s utter lack of gratitude to Ralph for having saved his life just comes off as despicable behavior; ditto, for his attempt to woo the girl.  The showdown between Benson and Ralph is meant to heighten the tension between black and white until the nobler black man casts down his weapon first as its own act of defiance. And although the picture ends with a faux ‘happily ever after’ of sorts, there is too much melodrama and cheaply erotic chaos in The World, The Flesh and The Devil’s second and third acts, as bereft of something intelligent – even, something emotionally satisfying to offer the audience. In the final analysis, the picture is unevenly paced and rather tragically undernourished in its ‘message’; hampered by performances that never quite hold our attention one way or the other.   

The World, The Flesh and The Devil arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) in a 1080p transfer, marginally below their usual high standards. While portions of this presentation are ‘grain-rich’, and, infinitely brighter than the ‘remastered’ DVD equivalent (also released via WAC), grain toggles from intense (leaning to a digitized, rather than natural appearance) to, an almost complete absence.  Harold J. Marzorati’s cinematography is aiming for gritty realism, occasionally at odds with MGM’s verve for gloss. But when grain is thick, background details adopt a slight shimmer with distracting - if minute - traces of edge enhancement. Even the studio’s famed Leo The Lion logo is not without image instability issues. Inconsistency is the biggest drawback. From shot to shot, grain, gray scale density and even contrast widely fluctuate. Intermittently, fine detail is wanting. At other moments, we get an exceptionally crisp, clean and gorgeous image. Go figure. The 2.0 DTS mono audio adequately represents vintage Westrex with no hiss or pop.  According to several sources consulted in the writing of this review, The World, The Flesh and The Devil was given limited engagements in 4-track Cinemascope stereo. No stereo track is included herein.  Production notes also suggest that, while Cinemascope was the photographic process employed, Panavision lenses were used to shoot it. Extras are limited to a theatrical trailer. Bottom line: The World, The Flesh and The Devil is a middling fable about the end of mankind as we know it. The hopeful slant to conclude our story is tacked on and misguided at best. WAC’s Blu-ray is a slightly above average effort but never rises to its own high standards in hi-def authoring. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

0