Restoration of pre-Code Deluge
Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 12:39 pm
This month MoMA screened the pre-Code disaster film, Deluge. It's not the first talking-picture era disaster film ever made (that credit goes to Abel Gance's Napoleon ..er, I mean his 1931 film La fin du monde), but Deluge is the first Hollywood attempt to destroy the world (although perhaps the silent short Koko's Earth Control should get some kind of nod for a similar storyline).
And destroy it they do, with some dramatic scenes of earthquakes and tidal waves knocking down New York city - while a discerning eye can see that it's model work, it's still convincing, and very good for its era. The Empire State Building tries to hang on, but finally crumbles, as we watch the second movie in 1933 to feature the iconic building (as you remember, the other film is about a giant ape that pulverizes parts of Manhattan).
Overall, this film is very uneven, better in parts than as the whole, but some of the parts are terrific, and the film ends with a proto-feminist message as one of the women who sees that she has got a raw deal out of this new world, leaves the ragtag group of survivors and - in a method invoking Kate Chopin's The Awakening - leaves the group, perhaps going to her death, or perhaps to another future.
And destroy it they do, with some dramatic scenes of earthquakes and tidal waves knocking down New York city - while a discerning eye can see that it's model work, it's still convincing, and very good for its era. The Empire State Building tries to hang on, but finally crumbles, as we watch the second movie in 1933 to feature the iconic building (as you remember, the other film is about a giant ape that pulverizes parts of Manhattan).
Overall, this film is very uneven, better in parts than as the whole, but some of the parts are terrific, and the film ends with a proto-feminist message as one of the women who sees that she has got a raw deal out of this new world, leaves the ragtag group of survivors and - in a method invoking Kate Chopin's The Awakening - leaves the group, perhaps going to her death, or perhaps to another future.