Il mondo va avanti

The World Moves On (1934)

** (out of 4)

Flat look at two families, the Warburtons and the Girards, who are bound by marriage in 1825 and form a business that places parts of the family in England, America and Germany. All is well until WWI breaks out and soon the families are torn on all issues. I've read numerous reports saying that director John Ford never cared for this film and rumor has it that Fox was really hounding him to film screenplays the way they were written and not to go so far off track. Rumor has it that Ford did exactly that here and turned in a pretty lifeless movie just to prove a point to the studio. Of course, this has never been proved to my knowledge but if you watch the film it's easy to see why this might be the case. I've seen dozens of films from the legendary director and there's no question that he's made some duds throughout but THE WORLD MOVES ON should have been a classic but the end result is so lifeless that you can't help but think there was something going on behind the scenes. Ford has always been great at showing patriotism but that's missing here and it plays an important part of the picture. There are many actions scenes scattered throughout but none of them contain any energy and they come across so flat that it seems like they just set the camera up and started shooting without trying to do anything special. This is especially true during some horrendous comedy moments with Stepin Fetchit, which are just so embarrassing that you really wonder what the director was thinking. I know Fetchit appeared in several Ford films and the image that he plays rubs a lot of people the wrong way but no matter how you view it the way the character here is used is just bad. Performances are pretty good from the leads (Franchot Tone, Madeleine Carroll, Reginald Denny) but they're certainly letdown by the direction. The look of the film is quite good and there's a very interesting story here but sadly it just never comes to life. I think with more care there's a classic movie here.

There is one bit of dialog that I feel needs to be revisited. The husband says "Are you ready dear?" to his wife before she drops him off at a train station. Her response: "Of course dear, I've been ready for over an hour." This, which is a statement that has never been uttered again by a wife whilst getting ready to be somewhere, and the character Dixie played by Stepin Fetchit (it's surprising how offensive his character plays almost 80 years after this movie was made), are the only two memorable parts in this multi-generational tale directed by John Ford. I don't mean to trivialize this great artists' work, as he earned every accolade ever thrown his way, but this is a hiccup in a nearly flawless career. There are lessons to be learned here about avarice and lust for power, but they're sort of brushed over, because, as it turns out it's difficult to tell a story that spans 100 years in under 2 hours. Just remember to put those who love you and have stuck by you first and you don't need to spend the time seeing this. Rating 16/40

Part of a seemingly endless stream of WWI films that attempted to process the trauma of that war or bemoan the fact that it happened and was the most barbaric one in recent memory. The World Moves On falls more comfortably into the former camp, although the way in which it conflates familial loyalty and national comity, particularly through the avenue of financial connectedness, comes off a little tone-deaf. And to be honest, the central drama of the family weathering the tides of time was rather tepid and uninvolving, for the most part. The film's strongest segment was the war itself, which captured its chaos and neverendingness in an extended montage. The film's ending attempts to reconcile the impending feeling of another war on the horizon with the hope that the "family" will continue on as before. But when that "family" is so tied up with Old World sentiments that, through blindness and idealism, led WWI to sneak up on them, it rings hollow. Those Old World certainties are dead, and the liberal myopia that led them into the conflict needs to die as well. As a film, I admire the craft that John Ford put on display, but it left a bit to be desired thematically.

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.