Rating: C
Dir: Michael Curtiz.
Star: George O’Brien, Dolores Costello, Noah Beery, Louise Fazenda.
This is interesting, in that it manages to be both a Bible story, and a disaster movie. It begins with the return to land of Noah’s Ark, and draws a direct line from there, through the Tower of Babel and the Fatted Calf, to contemporary greed. Thereafter, it moves back and forth between action centred around World War I and Biblical times, with the story of Noah. The lead actors play different roles in the two halves: for example, O’Brien is both a soldier in the trenches, and Noah’s son, Japheth. Costello is the woman he loves and has to protect in both eras: German actress Marie, and Miriam, a handmaiden of Noah chosen for sacrifice to a pagan deity. [Future star Myrna Loy also pulls double duty, in minor roles]
Curtiz, who would go on to fame by directing Casablanca, had already mined the Bible – public domain, of course! – back in his native Germany, with films like Sodom and Gomorrah. But it ended up having to be hastily converted into at least a part-talkie, focusing this element on the scenes in the modern era – though even here, it’s intermittent. However, the movie is particularly notorious for the climax depicting the flood, which involved the use of half a million gallons of water. When suddenly released, the resulting torrent reportedly drowned three people, injured so many that 35 ambulances were needed to transport the wounded, and led to stricter controls on set safety. John Wayne was supposedly among the extras used in the sequence.
You will therefore understand why I was making hurry-up gestures at the screen throughout all the World War I stuff, which is a combination of generic patriotism, heroism and loss (Travis accidentally killing his friend Al), with unconvincing romance across the lines. An evil Russian (Beery) tries to have Marie shot as a spy. Travis, who is part of the firing squad, recognizes her, but they get trapped beneath a collapsed building. Which gets us, after almost an hour, to the Biblical side of affairs. Things perk up, at least from the point of view of sheer spectacle. At a cost of over $1 million, this was the most expensive Warner Bros. movie to that point, and it shows. Big sets! Thousands of extras! Wrath of God!
I do wonder if Curtiz was mixing up his stories: I thought the burning bush and the stone tablets were Moses, not Noah? But it’s impressive stuff: the ark genuinely looks like it is big enough to hold two of every animal, and the palace of evil King Nephilim (also Beery) is no less grandiose. The lack of dialogue doesn’t get in the way of the carnage. The flood still hits like a tidal-wave – the “35 ambulances” thing seems quite credible. I would be thoroughly down for an entire feature of nothing but Biblical disaster porn, depicting large-scale smiting, sundering and great wroth. Shame the first sixty minutes here are as tepid as a tea-party, and it makes sense why it was quickly cut down from an original running time of 135 minutes.