Le monde et la chair

White Russians are fleeing the triumphant Bolesheviks, heading to Sevastopol. Unfortunately for them, Commissar George Bancroft is on their trail, and overtakes them. One of their number is ballerina Miriam Hopkins, whom Bancroft wants. The others persuade her to go to him, while they continue their flight.

In other words, it's an uncredited variation on Guy de Maupassant's 'Boule de Suif.' Everyone talks in the stilted manner that seems to have been fashionable, save for Alan Mowbray as an aristocrat; Bancroft refers to himself in the third person. Director John Cromwell tries to get some good out of this programmer by hiring Russians to play the extras for some color. It only got the regular extras mad at him.

Bancroft was Paramount's answer to Wallace Beery at the end of the silent era, and he gave some muscular performances for von Sternberg. By this time, however, his career was on the downslide, with advancing age and changes in taste. His starring career ended in 1934 with the rise of the Production Code, which I think no coincidence. He remained a capable character actor through 1942, then retired to become a rancher. He died in 1946, aged 74.

...set during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

The film opens with a train freight car filled with aristocrats in ragged disguises fleeing to Sebastopol, one of the few White Army strongholds left, as "Red hordes" savage the countryside. Among those fleeing are Miriam Hopkins, as a former commoner-ballerina who had become accepted as a part of the luxurious upper class, and Alan Mowbray as a proud aristocrat.

Arriving in a town, they temporarily set up quarters in a hotel only to have it soon captured by some Red sailors, headed by lumbering, macho strutting George Bancroft. He sets his eyes upon Hopkins, with one thing largely on his mind but she, ugh, is most definitely not interested.

The print of the film I saw was often quite dark, but that didn't stop me from seeing that this was still a film of considerable production values as far as sets and photography (Karl Struss behind the camera) were concerned. The story sets up tension by having the White Army suddenly take the Reds prisoner (now it's Bancroft and his sailors forced to shovel coal on a ship headed for a White-held city where they will be executed) only to have them stage a daring mutiny. But there will be still more plot turns ahead as to who will and will not be the prisoner and facing a firing squad.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is when, as a ruse, Hopkins offers herself to Bancroft (his sweaty dream come true) as part of an escape plot by the aristocrats on board a ship. The next morning, though, she's in love with the big lug and wants to save his life now that, she thinks, the tables have been turned, and he and his men will once again be prisoners.

The story will have both Bancroft and Hopkins ready to sacrifice themselves for the other and it becomes ridiculously over the top in the manner of so many studio productions. Besides, just looking at burly, towering roughneck Bancroft and petite, svelte, refined Hopkins, there's not much credibility they could ever be a couple.

Nevertheless, despite a story that becomes increasingly silly towards the end the first portion of the film still has considerable tension, the production values are solid and they make the film worth a look. And, for those familiar with 1933's Story of Temple Drake, seeing the similarities in Hopkins' reactions to a night of sex (assault in the case of Temple Drake) with a brute brings another aspect of interest to this film.

"The World and the Flesh" (1932) is a George Bancroft starrer when he was in full stride of stardom. Co-starring with all the fervor she possessed, Miriam Hopkins far out acts Bancroft and everybody else in the film except Alan Mowbray, who steals every second of time he's on screen from everybody, period. This is one of so very many Russian revolution films made between 1918-1940 by nearly every studio in Hollywood. The list of films is very long indeed. This one pits the white Russian aristocrats against the Reds. It begins, too, Hopkins versus Bancroft. As a relationship evidently legitimately develops, the tenor of the film changes slightly. It's absolutely hokey. The two actors can't overcome the implausibility of the plot the way it's written. Still, compared to so many other of these Russian revolution films, I found this one quite watchable nevertheless. It was actually fun watching Mowbray's attitude during the film. His behavior might even be said to be a series of antics. Hopkins tries to have the same kind of aura about her, but she's not up to the height of the task as Mowbray, probably because of the way the part's written. Lots and lots of character actors and actresses appear who one might know from a host of late 20s and early and middle 30s films, from Edwin Maxwell (uncredited) and Bob Kortman (uncredited) to Oscar Apfel, George E. Stone, and Ferike Boros. Watchable, but, frankly, forgettable. A real potboiler, from the writing and plot to the title.

The working title for this Paramount production, "Red Harvest", was discarded before its release due to popularity of Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name published three years before the motion picture was completed (its replacement title signifies, of course, nothing). Although an excellent work, it was largely ignored because of its charitable depiction of Russian aristocrats during the 1919 Revolution, a latter day event in the experience of most contemporary critics in Depression devastated United States who viewed it as portal to a bold and promising proletarian adventure. John Cromwell, always a capable craftsman and noted for his close rapport with actors, has to deal here with two of the most temperamental: George Bancroft and Miriam Hopkins, the former's overweening ego and the insistence by the difficult Hopkins upon achievement of visual perfection for each of her scenes defeating most directors. Nonetheless, Cromwell, as is his custom, responds to a good script, as does any effectual talespinner, and as this example by Oliver Garrett, freely adapted from an original play of Philip Zeska and Ernst Spitz, is a very fine one indeed, he sagely permits Hopkins to create her own performance that consequently is only strengthened, while the director concentrates upon the overall achitectonics, including masterful use of montage. The scenario tells of grim resistance to captivity by members of the Tsarist aristocracy fleeing from a Red Russian brigade that is intent upon bringing about their execution before they can reach Sevastopol, White Russian stronghold along the Crimean coast. The film is interestingly cast, with Alan Mowbray excelling as a patrician refusing to accept hegemony by Communists, and the storyline evolves in engrossing fashion, as twists and turns abound to the very closing moments. True auteur of the film is its cinematographer, Karl Struss, a celebrated still photographer whose work today is frequently exhibited and very collectable. A creative technician of the first order, ever inspired to seek an appropriate aesthetic for each film, Struss here fashions images that are among the most memorable in cinema, his camera's eye a vicarious observer during artistically lighted scenes wherein effects upon tangential characters describe action in this splendid motion picture that has been wrongly relegated into The Memory Hole