Daily Archives: October 21, 2016

The World, the Flesh and the Devil
Directed by Ranald MacDougall
Written by Ranald MacDougall from a story by Ferdinand Reyher and a novel by M.P. Shiel
1959/USA
Harbel Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Benson Thacker: I have nothing against negroes, Ralph.

Ralph Burton: That’s white of you.[/box]

I was loving the post-apocolyptic part.  Then it turned into a more ordinary but still OK love triangle.

Ralph Burton (Harry Belafonte) is a miner who is waiting to be dug out following a mine collapse.  After a couple of days he stops hearing any digging and can’t get anyone on his radio.  Eventually, he frees himself.  When he reaches daylight he can’t find anyone around – anywhere.  He makes it from Pennsylvania to New York City, which is absolutely deserted.  Gradually, he learns that an unknown country let loose a killer radioactive gas into the upper atmosphere, the big cities were evacuated, and he may be the only person left alive.

There is at least one other person, though.  She is Sarah Crandall (Inger Stevens).  She watches him long before he sees her.  Finally, they meet and become friends.  They are clearly attracted to one another but neither breaches the racial divide.  Then suddenly Benson Thacker (Mel Ferrer) arrives from South America.  He is not shy about what he wants and what he will do to get it.

The clever us of the atomic poison, which wipes out people but not things, allowed the filmmakers to create a convincing post-apocolyptic world on a small budget.  Belafonte is very good, especially in the early sequences when he is all alone.  The scenes with Inger Stevens are also kind of endearing.  Then Mel Ferrer shows up.  The love triangle is much less effective, though there is a racial prejudice/tolerance angle to it that is an interesting glimpse into the times.  Give it a try if the plot appeals.

Trailer

Letter Never Sent (Neotpravlennoe pismo)
Directed by Mikhail Kalatazov
Written by Valeri Osipov, Grigori Koltunov, and Viktor Rozov
1950/USSR
Mosfilm
First viewing/Hulu

[box] “More than kisses, letters mingle souls.” ― John Donne[/box]

Director Kolotozov and cinematographer Sergey Urusevskiy created a series of some of the most breathtakingly beautiful images ever made.  Unfortunately the love triangle turned disaster flick doesn’t take off.

Each summer a group of geologists goes to the Siberian wilderness to search for diamonds, so far without success.  The story is framed by a long letter the lead geologist is writing to his wife back home.  Since there is no way to send it, it is more or less a diary. The other people on the team are a bespectacled nerd-type and his beautiful girlfriend, Tanya, and a lusty young man named Sergei.  Sergei is in love with Tanya (Tatyana Samoylova) and there is much unspoken tension as to whether Sergei will shoot the boyfriend or rape Tanya.

Before that issue can be resolved, however, the team is caught in a raging forest fire with a broken radio.  Most of the film is devoted to their agonizing struggle to survive long enough to be rescued.

This movie is pure eye-candy and eye-candy is my favorite food.  However, I longed for a little more.  Both halves of the movie drag on and on.  The survival story goes from bad to worse with little action or suspense.  There’s a bit of propaganda thrown in to boot.  Too bad.

Note:  I watched this one out of sequence because IMDb changed the date of this film from 1959 to 1960 and I didn’t catch it.  There doesn’t seem any rhyme or reason to how their system works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSloFAFCqY4

Trailer