Watch The World, the Flesh and the Devil For Free

Such a frustrating disappointment

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

Its most basic flaws are its awkward, clumsy attempts to make a social statements - about race and humanity - which are unearned by the depth of its exploration. However, given the fact that the movie was released years before the Civil Rights Act was signed by President Johnson in 1964, we should probably cut the film-makers some slack for their early effort. It is a shame though that such a tantalizing subject - being the last person(s) on the planet, and the root causes of such a predicament - is so muddled.Though it was clearly intended, the story doesn't quite succeed in communicating its forewarning message(s) to/about mankind because it's too narrowly and inadequately (per the censors and/or fears of audience reaction?) focused on racism.The film's strengths are its depictions of a post apocalyptic world and some of its character's actions that follow, but the producers' (Harry Belafonte among them) tunnel vision caused them to give short shrift to the other 'big picture' issues.This movie has to have been one of the first 'last man on earth' sci-fi dramas. It precedes the three movies based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, and was obviously a model for them since many of the scenes and props are so similar. Mannequins as companions and the use of a short wave radio to contact other survivors are among the staples not previously listed.After being trapped underground for nearly a week, a miner (Belafonte) emerges to find that he's seemingly the only person left alive on the planet. From Pennsylvania, he makes his way to Manhattan where he finds deserted streets, except for the exit routes - which are clogged with empty automobiles - on the edges of the city. No bodies are to be found anywhere. He enters a radio station which is still running on backup power and learns about the fate of civilization via an audiotape recording: nuclear isotopes were released in the atmosphere, the resulting clouds circled the globe killing everyone within five days but then disappeared without leaving any residual radioactive danger. After expressing some grief and anger, this 'last man' busies himself by outfitting a penthouse apartment with various amenities including generator electricity while he rescues various cultural valuables from deteriorating libraries and museums.Enter a woman (Inger Stevens). She has been watching him without revealing herself until he, frustrated by his loneliness, throws an ever smiling mannequin out of his apartment's window and she screams, assuming that he's just committed suicide. Hearing her shriek, he rushes to meet her and they have a rather unbelievable conversation. Initially, she is credibly frightened of him, but then both are rather standoffish given their situation. Over the passage of some time during which he provides her apartment with electricity and installs a telephone between them, they become platonic friends.Then it is her - not him - that mentions the possibility of a closer (e.g. sexual) relationship, but it's him - not her - that declines, citing their differences in race. In a role similar to those that were or would be played by Sidney Poitier, Belafonte plays the noble chaste black man; it is he that enforces the separation between himself and the white woman. This conflict causes their separation. Weeks pass until their reconciliation - a birthday celebration for her - but it's filled with contradictions: he gives her a gigantic diamond, creates a romantic candle-lit dinner environment complete with a custom record he'd made that includes his singing a love song but then, despite her invitation, he refuses to join her and instead insists on assuming a stereotypical waiter role.The third act in the drama involves the discovery of another male survivor (Mel Ferrer), who'd been boating for six months presumably in search of others; it's never explained how he managed to survive the holocaust. The boatman collapses from exhaustion, so Ralph (Belafonte) and Sarah (Stevens) work together to nurse him back to health.Once on his feet, Ben (Ferrer) is direct and unapologetic about his sexual desire for Sarah; he also senses her love for Ralph. But even though Ralph intentionally stays out of the way, doing his best to facilitate the other two's relationship, Ben comes to view the presence of the all too perfect handyman as a threat.Viewing Ralph as an 'opponent' that needs to go away, Ben tries to force a showdown. From here, the drama gets even sillier: a chase that beckons The Most Dangerous Game (1932) etc. is on - with Ben claiming the high ground, shooting his rifle from atop the skyscrapers, while a reluctant (though now armed) Ralph runs below among the streets. An aimless Ralph comes to the United Nations where he reads this inscribed passage: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 ANY MOREHe then throws down his weapon and confronts Ben, telling him to drop his weapon and saying that "it's all over". After a brief scuffle, Ben asks why Ralph won't fight and prepares to shoot him at point blank range but can't saying "if you were afraid, I could do it" before walking away. Seeing this, Sarah approaches Ralph and finally gets him to take her hand. She then calls to Ben "wait for us" and, after the camera angle changes to a birds-eye view, the (Miklos Rozsa) score's volume rises as the words THE BEGINNING appear on screen.

Just saw this for the 1st time last night, and while I must admit it was very well acted, I grew very frustrated making allowances for the "racial issues" because it was made in the late '50's. Frankly, if I had been thrown together with someone who may very well be the last other person on earth, and that person was good, kind, helpful, etc., I wouldn't give 2 jacks about the man's skin color, although, again, this being the 50's, there is all kinds of hemming and hawing on the issue. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Harry Belafonte is the most gorgeous, beautiful, and yet masculine man You can possibly imagine. One look at him, and I would be propagating the species with him before he could ask. Usually I'm much more patient with "timeframes", but again 1. Maybe last man on earth, 2. He's a young Harry Belafonte - that's it - no time to waste - let's mate! WHEW! It's hot in here!

When I was a LOT younger I remember seeing this film and being fascinated by it. As time passed and I grew older, I forgot the details until all I could remember was an apocalypse movie with some singer in it that my mother had liked. As the years passed I forgot it completely and it was only recently that I came across it again and had the pleasure of watching it as an adult.To watch it now only highlights how far we've come as a society. Sometimes we forget, immersed in our day-to-day troubles, just how much better times are now. We have evolved, as a society, but to those of us who are part of that evolution, the changes happen so slowly we don't notice them. At least, not until something like this movie is revisited to see how things WERE.The story follows the fortunes of a young black engineer after a mysterious apocalyptic event destroys all trace of humanity from the Earth. Man's works are left behind, but of man himself there is, for the early part of the film, only Belafonte's character.With typical stoicism born of the post-war era, Belafonte first digs himself free of a collapsed mine, then sets about making a home for himself in the empty city. Bereft of companionship, his future looks a lonely one as he slowly pieces together what has happened to the world.Of course, he soon discovers a white female survivor and this is where the film really starts to shine. The interplay between the two is electric and both Belafonte and Stevens give dynamic performances as they struggle to come to terms with their growing attraction to one another. Belafonte is particularly adept at getting across how the mindset of non-whites led them to believe they were inferior.Given the time the film was made this in itself would be enough to make a fantastic film, but it's not enough for this movie. After a period where Belafonte and Steven's characters seem to have come to some sort of "truce" between themselves, they discover a third survivor - a white male.Needless to say, the character dynamic undergoes a dramatic change, with Ferrer's white character trying to dominate the trio and taking an interest in Steven's female character.All the usual love-triangle difficulties arise, made all the more intense because of the inter-racial aspect. As tensions mount, the two males eventually come to blows over the female regardless of her wishes in the matter.So, what we have are inter-racials tensions along with (for the time) typical male misogyny.The film is essentially this dynamic played out to an extreme. However, it is in fact the final scenes of the movie that really set it apart as something phenomenal.Having fought and nearly killed each other, it seems set that the men will go their separate ways and the woman must choose one of them. However, with a truly unique twist, she chooses them both and the final scene is the three of them walking off into the distance, hand in hand whilst over the top of the scene appear the words "The beginning.." It may not sound like much, but for 1959 this was a truly epic scene to put on celluloid. The notion that a white woman might have relations with a black man let alone (as hinted strongly here) that there might be a threesome going on, was something that just wasn't done.For those who didn't grow up with any of that racial or sexist nonsense, it might seem bizarre or unrealistic that such things were a big deal. And for you, the best equivalent I could cite in today's world as a similar taboo might involve a brother/sister incest relationship. It really was that big a deal back then.Films like this are often forgotten, or ignored on channel playlists because of their age or content. This is a massive shame, because there are some truly magnificent films out there that are fading almost into myth because of a lack of exposure.It is films like this that show us just how far we've come in fifty odd years. But it is also films like this that show us that, even back then, there were those who hoped for change and expressed that hope and desire through the medium of film.If you like a good, tense character drama, then you'll not find many better than this one.

The end of the world as we know it and only three people remain. With an intriguing title, THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL is a mostly forgotten film directed by Ranald MacDougall, screenwriter for some of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's vehicles from the late 1940s. It tries to flesh out a grim apocalyptic story about what would happen if the world and civilization as we know it came to an abrupt end, and all that was left, at least so far, was a smattering of humans, each of them believing that they were the only ones left.Post-apocalyptic stories have been around for ages -- since the Bible's own last chapter, "Revelations". When it wasn't an alien race deciding to take over our planet for their own purposes of blind conquer in H. G. Wells "War of the Worlds" it was the world turned upside down by the sudden mutation of humankind into vampires, as in Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend." Until the reality of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the mega-powers of the world experimenting with nuclear energy harnessed as the means of mass annihilation took force in the 1940s, science-fiction was little more than tales about Moon colonies, Martian cities, space adventures in other worlds and time travel. Robert A. Heinlein, one of the front-runners of social science fiction, was already writing stories around 1940 based on the potential for human extinction through nuclear warfare. His short story "The Year of the Jackpot" which appeared in 1952 and was part of an anthology called "The Menace from Earth" tackled the destruction of the Earth by nuclear warheads and is one of the most gripping stories of mankind's need for survival even when the odds are against it. The last paragraphs, where the man and the woman await their final end as the Sun sets, is haunting.THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL might as well have been a sequel to "The Year of the Jackpot" told by the points of view of the survivors of this horrific nuclear attack that has destroyed the Earth on a global level. The first half hour is an extended silent film where images of a desolate land prevail as the main character, Ralph (played by Harry Belafonte), emerges from the mine where he's been trapped and finds an overpowering, endless sea of a world where time has frozen and no one is to be found. His slow approach to the truth of the matter is gut-wrenching in its vapid horror -- seeing even little things, like an abandoned umbrella or an empty house. It recalls a much later movie about a different, but equally lethal situation in 28 DAYS LATER... as Cillian Murphy walks among the wreck of a deserted London, unaware he's not alone.But Ralph thinks he is alone. Arriving at New York in a progressive sequence of images is a knot of foreboding, quiet menace. It seems, at times, he must have fallen through a worm-hole and into a mirror image of the city. Enclosed in darkness, it looms at him so menacingly there is the feeling he would be better off doing an about-face and going elsewhere. The camera tracks his progress, making sure we know just how small he is in a sea of skyscrapers with not a single human in them. Once he discovers the truth, Belafonte's face is completely revealing in its anguish that can only express itself through his luminous face, haunted eyes, and single tear rolling down the side of his face. It's here he decides he must make do as the Last Man on Earth, trying not to lose his sanity when apparently, being sane is now as frightening as being alone.For a moment, then, the story becomes an exercise in a surreal dream. Belafonte will still be alone on camera for another stretch of time and he acts as if he still has people around him -- all the more unsettling. He has dinner with mannequins, he sings to no one in particular, and plays with his own shadow as if he were trying to make that shadow another person -- an extension of himself. When someone finally does appear, the story takes off into some different territory and loses some of its punch. When we see her, Inger Stevens is appropriately dressed in black and looks like she's just about lost her mind. She could well be in a state of extended mourning. Seeing another human should cause relief, but the movie has other melodramatic intentions, and from here on, it begins to fail. In most stories about people finding each other after a global catastrophe there's a sense of madness just underneath a facade of happy anxiety. After all, when you think you're the only person left alive and you see someone else, you're wary but equally overjoyed. MacDougall is good in focusing on this aspect -- he at first makes us see Stevens' feet as she follows Belafonte (though their appearance is too quick to make me believe Belafonte did not hear her behind him). It's when they begin interacting and she chooses to dress in suburban white and act as if nothing had happened that I felt the seams of credibility burst. Adding another male character -- Mel Ferrer's -- is good, but bad, because now it creates the basis of a possible conflict. The fact that Stevens and race is the source of conflict is practically unbelievable considering what they've gone through, but race was an issue in 1959. This of course is the problem: old patterns of conflict have to emerge in order to maintain a sense of familiarity, as in Stephen King's "The Stand." It's why these types of movies are good in concept, but fail in execution. THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL would have fit as an episode of "The Twilight Zone", but not as a 90 minute feature-length film.