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The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 1:39 pm    Post subject: The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) Reply with quote

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A three-character morality play, set in a deserted Manhattan; World War III has depopulated America, apparently without destroying anything. A poison gas is mentioned, but no bodies are shown.

Harry Belafonte plays a mine worker who was insulated from the disaster because he was underground. Belafonte carries the story alone for the first part of the film, wandering the empty streets, trying to keep his sanity despite his conviction that he's the only person left alive.

Finally he meets a second survivor, lovely Inger Stevens. Because of the racially tense era in which the film was made, Harry (being black) and Inger (being very white) can't just live happily ever after.

Things get worse when a third survivor shows up, Mel Ferrer (who is very, very, white, and very proud of it). But the ending is optomistic and upbeat because the message is, of course, "We can make it work if we all try." It's a good message, and the world needs it right now as much as it needed it then.

Fine music by Miklos Rosza. The screenplay by director Ranald MacDougall is loosely based on M. P. Shiel's story "The Purple Cloud".

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2016 9:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This is a great movie, and the trailer does a fine job of putting you in the mood to watch it.


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 1:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

IMDB has two interesting items about this movie.
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To film the striking images of a deserted New York City, the cast and crew had to start filming at dawn in order to capture the city before the early morning rush. This gave them no more than an hour or two per day in which to film the sequence.

When Ralph marks his route to New York City on the map, he starts at a point in the center of Pennsylvania. There is no real town of Chatsburg in PA, but there is a town near his starting point called "Bellefonte" (the character Ralph Burton in the movie is played by Harry Belafonte)

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2018 4:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Just a comment on our changing attitudes towards racial equality.

Notice the way the poster makes both Harry Belafonte and Mel Ferrer look white. The point of the story is that . . . well, they AREN'T both white.



Go figure, eh?




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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

_____________________________

Butch posted a picture he found on the CHFB which showed a Robby toy on a counter in the living room of a deserted New York apartment which Harry Belafonte moved into, seeking shelter on a cold rainy day.

I made this screen grab of the same scene from my DVD.






But I noticed that just a few seconds later the Robby toy and a rag doll were both gone after Harry hastily gathered up papers and magazines to start a fire in the fireplace. And we actually see the rag doll mixed in with the wad of papers Harry has collected when he puts them in the fireplace.





The scene starts with Harry shivering and hugging himself when he first enters the apartment. The scene that shows him hastily gathering up material to make a fire and then placing the material in the fireplace might have been one continuous shot.

The editor cut to a brief shot of Inger Stevens hiding in a store front doorway in the rain-drenched street outside, and he might have left out part of Harry's complete scene, such as when he hurries around the living room snatching up magazines, newspapers, the rag doll, and the Robby toy to make a fire and get himself warm.

Although it doesn't seem logical for Harry to toss nonflammable items like the Robby toy into the fireplace, perhaps he was acting hastily because he was cold, and he grabbed a few things just on impulse.

Then again, I wonder if there was a deleted scene in which Harry looked at the doll and the Robby toy and thought something like, "Damn, a little boy and girl lived here. Now all the children are dead!". So,he threw both toys into the fireplace because they were painful reminders of the global tragedy.

If you've seen the movie you might remember that after Harry moved in, he had a department store mannequin in the apartment for several days, talking to it just to keep up his moral. But eventually he got frustrated with the immovable smiling face and threw the mannequin off the balcony!

Tossing the doll and the Robbie toy into the fireplace for emotional reasons is consistent with his emotional reaction to the mannequin.

If we could find the shooting script for this movie, it might confirm my theory. Very Happy

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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 1:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

(Repeated from The Invisible Boy thread...)

This seems to me a case of over-analysis. The Robby toy's actual material of construction was probably not expected to be known by an audience watching a movie like The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, or for that matter, even what it was supposed to be, other than some kid's toy. If they even gave it a passing thought, they might easily have assumed it to be made of a flammable material like wood, as so many toys and models were back in those days, and certainly on the basis of it being used for making a fire.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Well heck, you're absolutely right, Wayne.

However, there are several scenes with Harry talking to the mannequin because he's lonely and wants to maintain his sanity, and I still feel like they make a case a dramatic (deleted) scene with Harry looking at the toys in the abandoned apartment and suddenly wanting them out of his sight.

Deliberately grabbing the two toys and throwing them into the fireplace with the bundle of papers almost seems out of character for the normally upbeat and optimistic character. He couldn't have expected them to add much to fire, regardless of how well they burned.

I confess my main reason for defending the idea is because I just like the idea that I might have deduced the existence of a deleted scene from such meager evidence.

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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 4:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The attention of this thread was directed toward Harry's motivation for including a presumed nonflammable metal toy in his collection for the fireplace.

Bud Brewster wrote:
...he hurries around the living room snatching up magazines, newspapers, the rag doll, and the Robby toy to make a fire and get himself warm.

Although it doesn't seem logical for Harry to toss nonflammable items like the Robby toy into the fireplace, perhaps he was acting hastily because he was cold, and he grabbed a few things just on impulse.

I contend that this is an issue only amongst us "Robby experts" in retrospect, knowing that most Robby (and other robot) toys were made of metal around the time the movie was made. What I'm saying is that the demographic of the audiences who would be going out to see TWTFATD would not have even recognized this toy as Robby, much less been acquainted with what it was made of.

Your case for Harry including a presumably nonflammable item in his collection is certainly valid, in light of what we know about vintage Robby toys. I can't see it as being an intended plot issue, however, at least not until somebody turns up a shooting script detailing the scene to include some missing footage such as you describe.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 6:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Granted, Wayne.

However, I still maintain that what happened in the movie seems much more consistent with the idea that Harry was reacting emotionally to objects like department store mannequins and children' toys than the unlikely suggestion that Harry thought the fireplace would warm him up faster if a small toy robot was added to the material he put in the fireplace.

Seriously, even the addition of the rag doll to the fireplace fuel seems like a nasty thing to do for a kind man who goes through this whole movie demonstrating what a sensitive guy he is! Shocked

Throwing an obviously metal toy like Robby into the mix seems like a clear breech of the intelligence we see Harry demonstrate in all his other brilliant strategies to survive in this horrible post-apolitical world! He restores the power to the building he and Ingrid live in, he repairs the telephone lines between that building and a radio station, and he repairs the radio station so he can broadcast messages to the world!

In view of these accomplishments, the idea that Harry would add a metal children's toy to his fireplace fuel because he thought it would burn seems unlikely. And frankly, your defense of this idea based on the assertion that the audience didn't know what a toy robot was made of is . . . weak.

No, I'm sorry Wayne, but the best explanation for Harry's behavior is the one consistent with his emotional reaction to the mannequin he threw off the balcony when he could no longer accept the fact that he was alone in the world.

The two children's toys were painful reminders that the next generation of human beings had been annihilated . . . along with their parents.

That's the way good stories are constructed. And this movie is a perfect example of that.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Throwing an obviously metal toy like Robby into the mix...

Obviously metal to us, sure. We're Robby (toy) experts. Obvious to the original viewing audience? Remember, this was an adult-themed movie, unlike a movie with a title like Forbidden Planet. You seem to be focusing an awful lot of unwarranted attention on that toy, being an FP fan; a toy that the theater audience likely didn't even notice was missing from the countertop after the cutaway shot.

I await proof -- or even evidence -- that the audiences were aware of or cared about the toy's material.

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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 12:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Any of those audience members who had kids probably DID know. Forbidden Planet was heavily marketed and extremely popular, no matter what the box-office results were. Judging by toy sales records Robby was a HUGE hit!
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 12:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It could be that he knocked Robby off the shelf looking for things to burn, and that scene didn't make the cut.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
It could be that he knocked Robby off the shelf looking for things to burn, and that scene didn't make the cut.

Right. Or that he picked it up, saw that it was metal, and tossed it over his shoulder.

Robert (Butch) Day wrote:
Any of those audience members who had kids probably DID know.

True. Then again, how many other toys did their children likely have, that the parents would be keeping a running inventory of their materials of construction?

I just don't think they were as heavily fixated on that one toy, glimpsed briefly in a scene focused on Harry, as we are today with video frames that can be scrutinized for tiny details that are of special interest to us.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud wrote:
Throwing an obviously metal toy like Robby into the mix...

orzel-w wrote:
Obviously metal to us, sure. We're Robby (toy) experts. Obvious to the original viewing audience? You seem to be focusing an awful lot of unwarranted attention on that toy, being an FP fan; a toy that the theater audience likely didn't even notice was missing from the countertop after the cutaway shot.

Well, of course not, Wayne! Very Happy

Naturally the audience (nor any of us) noticed the vanishing toy's brief appearance, because we don't see Harry even pick it up. But he must have, because it's gone a few seconds later. The suggestion that Harry burned it was pure speculation by me.

However, after watching the scene again today, I'm forced to drastically revise my theory! Shocked

Harry did not have an emotional reaction and burn either of the two toys. He holds the doll in his right hand while he places the newspapers in the fireplace —



— then he tucks it under his right arm to free both hands so he can strike a match and light the papers.



But the remarkable thing I discovered today is that Harry lays the Robby toy down next to the papers before lighting them. He does not place it on top of the wood or the newspapers.





Therefore, I don't think he burned it!

The scene cuts a few seconds after he lights the newspapers, so we barely see them begin to burn. I now think that he picked up the Robby toy and saved both it and the doll.

Why? Because in a scene just a few minutes later we see that he's spent days (or weeks) collecting artwork from around the city and decorating his walls with it. He even has paintings stacked against the walls, so these definitely aren't leftover decorations from the previous tenants.



It seems likely that Harry saved things like the doll and the Robby toy and all the artwork as objects that cheered him up a bit and added beauty to his surroundings.

And we see, in this same scene, that Harry has set up an elaborate train set in the apartment, with the tracks running from his bedroom into the living room. Pieces of furniture and various chairs with stacks of books support the track and make it level throughout the multi-room route.

How does this relate to the doll and the Robby toy? It shows us that Harry is whimsical and has an appreciation for the things a kid would enjoy having.



Harry follows the train around the apartment while he sings "I've Laid Around and Played Around this Old Town too Long".





The scene ends with Harry giving a speech to the mannequin about how lonely he is, and then becoming frustrated by the fact that it can't talk back, so he throws it off the balcony.

So, I was wrong about there being a deleted scene in which Harry becomes upset when he sees the children's toys. Perhaps there was a deleted scene of Harry looking at the two toys and smiling as he decides to keep them.

However, a short while later he does become upset about being so lonely, and he throws his mannequin pal out the window.

A small conciliation for the death of my clever theory, but it does indicate that I was right about Harry's state of mind, if not his response to the two toys he seemed fond of and therefore saved. Very Happy
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 4:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whew! I'm glad that's settled! (It is, isn't it?)
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