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Besides being directed by one of Hollywood's all-time great directors, June 1934's "The World Moves On" was noted for one monumental change in cinema that impacted movies for the next thirty years. The John Ford-directed film was the first Hollywood movie to receive the binding stamp of approval from the newly-established Production Code Administration (PCA) under its newly-appointed director, Joseph Breen. Front-ending the movie is a statement from the PCA that it and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America approved the picture, stamping it Certificate No. 1.

The Pre-Code era was over. From 1929 through the middle of 1934, the MPDDA, under the rather lax supervision of William Hays, was an organization set up by Hollywood studios to fend off federal, state and local attempts to censor their movies. State and local bureaus continued to exert some minor tweaking in their censoring. But it was up to the small, overworked staff at the Hays Office to largely suggest to the studios to adhere to a code that was wide in its scope but was flouted by the industry. The Office's rulings weren't binding, proving it wasn't able to prevent the release of questionable movies for the nation's studio-affiliated theater chains. As one trade publication reported, "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory."

The Catholic Legion of Decency and other religious organizations were upset with the slack enforcement of the Production Code and threatened to boycott movie theaters until Hollywood cleaned up its act. The studios became nervous facing the possibility of seeing their industry shrink. They collectively agreed to have staunch Catholic and supervisor for the MPDDA public relations department, Joseph Breen, be appointed as the president of the newly-established PCA. Breen came in with an iron clad series of strict enforcement policies that prohibited any movie from being shown in the nation's major theaters without the PCA stamp of approval. Hollywood readily accepted the new rules.

Breen's power in Hollywood lasted until the mid-1950s. Liberty Magazine described his tremendous scope as having, "More influence in standardizing world thinking than Mussolini, Hitler, or Stalin." His strength lay in a 1915 Supreme Court decision ruling movies did not enjoy any First Amendment rights, which restricted cinema's freedom of expression. Forty years later the Supreme Court reversed its 1915 ruling and gave cinema certain rights of free expression and speech. But it took several years more years as Hollywood tinkered around the edges before the mid-1960s, when the studios finally were given the freedom that even pre-code producers would envy.

"The World Moves On" didn't cause Breen and his newly-appointed lieutenants any problems. Wilfred Sheehan, Fox Films chief of productions, took special interest in this movie. He insisted the Reginald Berkeley script, similar to the Academy Awards' 1933 Best Picture "Cavalcade," be filmed to a "t." Director Ford hated the screenplay, and felt it needed tightening. In a later interview, Ford described how Sheehan was adamant on the importance of each scene, and the producer told the director in no uncertain terms to film exactly the way it was scripted. The director did, noting in later interviews the picture was "a bunch of crap."

"The World Moves On" begins in the early 1800s, examining two cotton trading families in America and in England. The picture then jumps to World War One and contains outstanding war sequences, some of the footage gleaned from a war documentary. Film critics at the time, such as The New York Times, noted it was "an ambitious undertaking, well composed and photographed, but it does seem as though the film would be all the better if it were shortened," while the Chicago Tribune wrote it had one fault: its "extreme length." Ford's instincts proved correct. No producer since has dared to demand as Sheehan had that the director follow a script to a 't.' Ford soon left Fox Films and went to Columbia Pictures, leaving the only studio he had ever worked at for over 17 years.

Most notable for being the very first movie passed by the Hays Office at the birth of the Motion Picture Production Code, receiving Certificate #1 from the board, John Ford's The World Moves On is worthwhile for more than just that historical footnote. A family saga akin to Anthony Mann's The Furies, it tells the story of a large cotton conglomeration with presence in the US, England, France, and Germany begun in the 1820s as it enters the 1910s and The Great War rears its ugly head. Loyalties get crisscrossed as the backdrop to a love story between two people, and then the movie doesn't find its narrative resolution for another decade. Contemporary reviews complained of the film, calling it way too long (a curious charge with a film that's about 100 minutes long), but I disagree. It's about half an hour too short.

The film begins in 1825 at the reading of the will of the Girard patriarch, cotton baron. His will sets forth the demands that his heirs split the company into four, one for each country, and run it in a way that puts the family and its needs first. In all of this is Richard Girard (Franchot Tone), set to take the reins of the American operation based in Louisiana. He sees the wife of a cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Warburton (Madeleine Carroll). They have a spark, but they are soon to be separated by thousands of miles and the Atlantic Ocean when her husband takes control of the English operations.

One of the more interesting things about the film is that Tone and Carroll play not only these 1824 characters but also their progeny in 1914. Richard's great grandson, also named Richard, is prepared to welcome the different branches of the family back in America for a celebration at the nearly 100 years of great work they have all done, and invited is Mary Warburton, great granddaughter of Mrs. Warburton. She is engaged to the German cousin Erik von Gerhardt (Reginald Denny), but when Mary and Richard meet, it's like the spark that their ancestors had shared carried over the years and they instantly feel a connection. There's falling in love at first sight in movies, and then there's providing interesting subtext and even a sense of magic to the idea.

The family is coming together to celebrate 90 years of success, and also to talk about the impending sense of war that is gripping the world. It's obvious that they'll need to strengthen their ties and gird for the upcoming disruption, and then they split to do their parts in the different parts of the world.

When war breaks out, Richard is in France, and he joins up with the French army to fight. Like Hawks' The Road to Glory and Ford's own Pilgrimage, most of the footage of battle is taken from the French film Wooden Crosses, and like Pilgrimage, the battle material is never the point. It's a small sliver of the larger story that Ford is trying to tell, and that story is the fraying of the family in the face of a world war. When Richard goes to England on leave, he meets up with Mary and quickly marries her, effectively ending her engagement to Erik. The family is unable to move goods from one branch to another because of the dangers at sea as well as the embargoes countries are putting up.

The war ends, and it feels like the story is going to come to an end as well. This is where the complaints that the movie is too long come from. With about twenty minutes left, we get the Roaring 20s where Richard becomes a megalomaniacal power mad businessman, making Mary feel abandoned in the process, and then the Stock Market Crash that brings everything down all of a sudden. The two have to move back to Louisiana from New York to rebuild. Thinking of the saga part of family saga, I really wanted this part to be at least an hour long, detailing Richard's change into a giant butt obsessed with money over family in the easy money times of the 20s after the hardships of the 10s. Instead, we get a contracted bit that feels like an extended coda that just happens to have some of the most important story bits in it.

Overall, the film is pretty good. A condensed saga that really could have either used more time to tell its full story or an earlier end point at the conclusion of the part of the film about the war. It's solidly made (even though Ford seemingly wanted nothing to do with the film during production) and acted. It could have been much more than it ended up being, but what it is ends up good enough to entertain.

For a John Ford film this one is usually not mentioned in any retrospectives I know concerning his career. For a film that is internationalistic in scope it gets sadly neglected.

Another reviewer compared The World Moves On to Cavalcade which came out a year earlier. For me this film most closely resembled The House Of Rothschild only instead of money the commodity is cotton and in the 19th century. In some places cotton was considered a kind of currency like in the American south. In 1825 the American family Girard merges with the British Warburtons and then has other sons settle in France and Germany just like Nathan Rothschild's kids as early proponents of globalism.

After an 1825 prologue the action skips to 1914 where Sig Ruman of the German branch is hosting a big blowout with nary a thought to a possible war breaking out. War and the Roaring 20s type materialistic peace that followed are what is dealt with.

By the way also watching this film I did wonder just how the combine managed to weather the American Civil War. But that was never mentioned.

The film focuses on Franchot Tone of the American branch and Madeleine Carroll of the English Warburtons. They marry and she jilts Reginald Denny of the German branch in the process. Then Tone almost on a lark enlists in the French Army. The family with losses both financial and personal carries on though.

Shoehorned into the film is Stepin Fetchit in a real travesty of a role. He's the family retainer as he usually is. Here he spots some French Senegalese African soldiers in dress uniforms and he thinks it's a lodge and wants to join. Of course he's eagerly recruited. Today's viewers might not realize but the popular Amos N' Andy radio show had their protagonists as members of the Mystic Knights Of The Sea Lodge. That reference to a lodge would not have been lost on a 1934 viewer. Stepin Fetchit's role adds zero to the story and it's more offensive than usual.

Best part of The World Moves On are the battle scenes in World War I. They are not glamorized in any way, hardly like one of Ford's cavalry epics.

I rate The World Moves On as low as I do because of Stepin Fetchit. Had he not been there this would far higher on John Ford's list of films for quality.

In the tradition of Fox Studios' Oscar-winning Cavalcade, The World Moves On covers over one hundred years in the lives of two Louisiana families: The Girards, of French extraction, and the Warburtons, formerly of Manchester. Forming an alliance by marriage in 1825, the families rapidly corner the cotton business in the South. Years later, three of Girard/Warburton sons split up to head business operations in England, France and Germany: as a result, descendants of the original families find themselves fighting on opposite sides during WW I (this episode is similar to a memorable sequence in the 1928 silent Four Sons, which like World Moves On was directed by John Ford). Surviving the war, Richard (Franchot Tone), the last of the descendants becomes a sharkish Wall Street speculator in the 1920s, ultimately losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash. Bloody but unbowed, Richard and his wife Mary (Madeleine Carroll) cut their losses and return to their ancestral home, to start all over again. Both The World Moves On and the subsequent Fox production Road to Glory rely to a considerable extent upon stock footage from the grim 1931 French antiwar drama Wooden Crosses.

Starting in the Civil War South like an across-the-generations romance in the manner of SMILIN' THROUGH, this stilted drama then slogs through World War I and the Great Depression like an American CAVALCADE. John Ford effectively showcases the luminous Madeleine Carroll [including a QUEEN CHRISTINA-like moment of gazing out to sea], but otherwise directs with little commitment to the material. Franchot Tone conveys zero chemistry with his leading lady, so he just goes through the motions, while Ford favorite Stepin Fetchit works his offensive "shuffling darkie" routine, but in Paris. The screenplay seems especially turgid since the situations are arbitrary and reveal little about the characters. Despite an occasional imaginative touch, this all makes for a long 107 minutes.