Deluge (1933)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 10 minutes, rated 6.3 by 437 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Verdict: ripped from today’s headlines.
Disaster looms as the weather produces giant storms. Polar ice caps melt. Rivers rise. The earth shakes. Avalanches fall. Volcanoes erupt. Hurricanes strike. This manifold threat divides humanity. One half tries to make a profit off this doom and gloom in Ted talks, religion, business, media, and politics. It is a godsend for these hucksters. The other half denies the reality of the threat even as they perish. Yes, it has a contemporary resonance.
After the tsunami destroyed New York City and most of the rest of the world in a Noah rerun, the film follows the trials of an assortment of survivors. But by then it is all rather anti-climatic. The few remaining souls set about recreating the society that destroyed the earth. The preacher fulminates; the businessman tries to profit; the politician sows discontent!
No, I am afraid the focus is more mundane than those stereotypes. A husband and wife were separated by the disaster, and each thinking the other dead, makes other, hmm, arrangements. There is a bully who thinks might is right, a milquetoast wimp whom Bully tramples, and so on. In the allotted runtime husband and wife are reunited, but … well, he already has a new Eve, double-but: no matter. It ends with a ménage à trois in the new Eden. Yes, the 1933 National Board of Review, aka censor, passed this dubious moral conclusion. Strange, no? Strange, yes.
Unusual to see Sydney Blackmer playing the lead. He made a career out heavies when not playing Teddy Roosevelt, to whom he bore no resemblance but played him – count ‘em – seven times. See below.
Never Kick a Man Upstairs (1953)
My Girl Tisa (1948)
Buffalo Bill (1944)
In Old Oklahoma (1943)
Teddy the Rough Rider (1940)
The Monroe Doctrine (1939)
This is My Affair (1937)
The special effects for the disaster (as above) are better than in many subsequent films until Ray Harryhausen revolutionised the business. Done with miniature models, and done well though the You Tube print is poor.