The World, the Flesh and the Devil

A very thought provoking movie that was not accepted at the time, but in retrospect, way way ahead of its time. In a racially charged world it put forth the premise that race, in the final analysis, is superficial and meaningless. Once you strip away the layers of conditioning and socialization, you find, at the core, good and evil and the age old struggle as to which will prevail. A simple story, told directly and honestly. On a scale of 1 to 10, its an 11.

A 32 year old Harry Belafonte is Ralph Burton, survivor of a nuclear holocaust, where humanity has been wiped out. we watch the inter-racial relations in a post-apocalypse world with one woman and two men left alive. Co-stars Mel Ferrer and Inger Stevens. For a long time, Burton runs around New York, trying to find other survivors. We experience the echoes and loneliness that he feels. So many empty streets, papers blowing around. It's forty minutes in before Ralph and Sarah even meet up. Stevens would die real young at 35, by suicide. Theoretically, after several initial attempts. Ferrer had been married to Audrey Hepburn at one point. Directed by Ranald MacDougall, who had directed and written screenplays for some AMAZING films... mildred pierce, we're no angels, but sadly, MacDougall died quite young at 58, of a heart attack, according to wikipedia. He had been president of the Writers Guild. Story by Matthew Phipps Shiel. Pretty good stuff. Race relations were still a pretty big deal in the 1950s, and in some places, they still are a pretty big deal. In so many areas, we take one step forward and two steps back. Film is good! end of the world story, with some racial lessons thrown in.

Harry Belafonte is a coal miner trapped in a cave-in. He hears the drilling of the rescue crew which abruptly stops. Belafonte claws his own way to the surface and finds everything abandoned. I mean really abandoned. An Armageddon has occurred when some nation decided to forego the bomb and all that destruction and just use the radioactive byproducts. It gets out of control and wipes out everybody.

Well, almost everybody. Harry hot wires a car and travels to New York City in search of life in the largest population center. After a while he finds it in Inger Stevens. It looks like another Adam and Eve ready to begin again when Mel Ferrer also shows up. By that time Belafonte has established some kind of contact with some unknown foreign survivors somewhere in the post apocalypse world?

Of course with two men, two races, and only one woman, things start to look like business as usual for mankind. I was reminded of Neil Patrick Harris's line from Starship Troopers about how we're in it for the species. Will all three of them and anyone else they contact decide we're in it for the species in The World, the Flesh and the Devil?

Director Ranald McDougall got three good performances out of his small cast. The World, The Flesh And The Devil does ask some thought provoking questions as to whether man is capable of screwing up once again. What kind of culture will they establish and will a Supreme Creator/Deity need to intervene?

When I was in the 3rd grade I stayed home from school one day sick with the flu and watched this on a local TV station and some scenes from it have stuck with me ever since; I will never forget the sight of Harry Belafonte eating dinner with Inger Stevens and then cleaning up by casually throwing the entire contents of the dinner table out the high rise apartment window and calculating that it would be YEARS before the pile of smashed crockery reached his window; who can explain the eerie fascination of empty cities? This film is one of the first to successfully pull off the effect, setting the standard for what followed: The Omega Man, The Day of The Triffids, 28 Days later and especially The Quiet Earth.

Isn't it interesting that it's often science fiction that presents groundbreaking topics so relevant to the real world? What starts as a dystopian film, where Harry Belafonte's character finds himself alone in a world destroyed by WWIII while he was buried in a mine shaft, quickly introduces racial themes when he finds a white woman played by Inger Stevens. The two of them turn in strong performances, both beautiful and expressive, with great scenes including her returning from a 'shopping trip' (quipping "the service was terrible, but I got a few bargains"), him cutting her hair at her insistence (though she grows concern with each hack he takes), and him setting up service for her on her birthday at a supper club. The racial undertones start with Belafonte concerned about the two of them living together because "people will talk" (what people?!), and then Stevens exclaiming "I'm free, white, and 21, and I'll do what I please" while flustered, that ultimate assertion of white privilege at that time. I love how Belafonte calls her on it later, saying that while it's just an expression to her, "to me it's an arrow in my guts!" You know then that the film is actually saying something. Things get even more complicated when Mel Ferrer shows up, and immediately, even with only three people in the world, we feel the basis for so much of mankind's problems – sexual jealousy, and racial divisions – captured in a nutshell.

Stevens is more attracted to Belafonte, who is charming, sings, takes interest in preserving books and paintings, fixes things like the electricity, phones, and radio, and who loves her too – but he's black. Ferrer, on the other hand, is a chauvinist who literally says "Me man, you girl, how about it?" The film tried to toe the line with what would be acceptable in 1959, and doesn't include an interracial kiss (despite the cast's wish that it would have), because producers deemed that America was not ready for that – and indeed it wasn't, given the reaction to the film in the South. There are fantastic scenes of the two men hunting each other in the deserted New York, including a scene at Ralph Bunche Park with the phrase from Isaiah ("They shall beat their swords into plowshares…") on the wall in the background. I loved the ending ("The Beginning") as well, campy as it might have been.

If you watch and find the beginning dragging a bit, give it a chance. I think one of the main problems is we've seen this "last man on the earth" type scenery copied so many times in films over the years. Belafonte was a huge star at the time, but I personally could have done without his songs, not because they're bad or anything, but because I think they defocus things. Inger Stevens, who others know as the "Farmer's Daughter", but who I remember fondly from the 1967 movie "A Guide for the Married Man" with Walter Matthau, is a good match for him. Overall, the film seems to capture so many elements of the 1950's – the fear of nuclear war, a little bit of the 'B movie' camp (I mean, check out that title), and the racial unease, with a hint of the progress that would follow. It may feel a bit like an extended Twilight Zone episode with a bigger budget, and it's very well done.