Ploydsge just watch it!

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

jacobs-greenwood Its most basic flaws are its awkward, clumsy attempts to make a social statements - about race and humanity - which are unearned by the depth of its exploration. However, given the fact that the movie was released years before the Civil Rights Act was signed by President Johnson in 1964, we should probably cut the film-makers some slack for their early effort. It is a shame though that such a tantalizing subject - being the last person(s) on the planet, and the root causes of such a predicament - is so muddled.Though it was clearly intended, the story doesn't quite succeed in communicating its forewarning message(s) to/about mankind because it's too narrowly and inadequately (per the censors and/or fears of audience reaction?) focused on racism.The film's strengths are its depictions of a post apocalyptic world and some of its character's actions that follow, but the producers' (Harry Belafonte among them) tunnel vision caused them to give short shrift to the other 'big picture' issues.This movie has to have been one of the first 'last man on earth' sci-fi dramas. It precedes the three movies based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, and was obviously a model for them since many of the scenes and props are so similar. Mannequins as companions and the use of a short wave radio to contact other survivors are among the staples not previously listed.After being trapped underground for nearly a week, a miner (Belafonte) emerges to find that he's seemingly the only person left alive on the planet. From Pennsylvania, he makes his way to Manhattan where he finds deserted streets, except for the exit routes - which are clogged with empty automobiles - on the edges of the city. No bodies are to be found anywhere. He enters a radio station which is still running on backup power and learns about the fate of civilization via an audiotape recording: nuclear isotopes were released in the atmosphere, the resulting clouds circled the globe killing everyone within five days but then disappeared without leaving any residual radioactive danger. After expressing some grief and anger, this 'last man' busies himself by outfitting a penthouse apartment with various amenities including generator electricity while he rescues various cultural valuables from deteriorating libraries and museums.Enter a woman (Inger Stevens). She has been watching him without revealing herself until he, frustrated by his loneliness, throws an ever smiling mannequin out of his apartment's window and she screams, assuming that he's just committed suicide. Hearing her shriek, he rushes to meet her and they have a rather unbelievable conversation. Initially, she is credibly frightened of him, but then both are rather standoffish given their situation. Over the passage of some time during which he provides her apartment with electricity and installs a telephone between them, they become platonic friends.Then it is her - not him - that mentions the possibility of a closer (e.g. sexual) relationship, but it's him - not her - that declines, citing their differences in race. In a role similar to those that were or would be played by Sidney Poitier, Belafonte plays the noble chaste black man; it is he that enforces the separation between himself and the white woman. This conflict causes their separation. Weeks pass until their reconciliation - a birthday celebration for her - but it's filled with contradictions: he gives her a gigantic diamond, creates a romantic candle-lit dinner environment complete with a custom record he'd made that includes his singing a love song but then, despite her invitation, he refuses to join her and instead insists on assuming a stereotypical waiter role.The third act in the drama involves the discovery of another male survivor (Mel Ferrer), who'd been boating for six months presumably in search of others; it's never explained how he managed to survive the holocaust. The boatman collapses from exhaustion, so Ralph (Belafonte) and Sarah (Stevens) work together to nurse him back to health.Once on his feet, Ben (Ferrer) is direct and unapologetic about his sexual desire for Sarah; he also senses her love for Ralph. But even though Ralph intentionally stays out of the way, doing his best to facilitate the other two's relationship, Ben comes to view the presence of the all too perfect handyman as a threat.Viewing Ralph as an 'opponent' that needs to go away, Ben tries to force a showdown. From here, the drama gets even sillier: a chase that beckons The Most Dangerous Game (1932) etc. is on - with Ben claiming the high ground, shooting his rifle from atop the skyscrapers, while a reluctant (though now armed) Ralph runs below among the streets. An aimless Ralph comes to the United Nations where he reads this inscribed passage:THEY SHALL BEAT THEIR SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES. AND THEIR SPEARS INTO PRUNING HOOKS, NATION SHALL NOT LIFT UP SWORD AGAINST NATION. NEITHER SHALL THEY LEARN WAR ANY MOREHe then throws down his weapon and confronts Ben, telling him to drop his weapon and saying that "it's all over". After a brief scuffle, Ben asks why Ralph won't fight and prepares to shoot him at point blank range but can't saying "if you were afraid, I could do it" before walking away. Seeing this, Sarah approaches Ralph and finally gets him to take her hand. She then calls to Ben "wait for us" and, after the camera angle changes to a birds-eye view, the (Miklos Rozsa) score's volume rises as the words THE BEGINNING appear on screen.

higherall7 This is a fine film that nonetheless highlights the limitations of cinema versus theater. It brings to mind THE DUTCHMAN which I was surprised to find was done as a film adaption before Leroi Jones became Amiri Baraka. The opening scenes are indeed stunning and brilliant and do credit to the professional craft of Harold J. Marzorati. As in the original THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, all the howlers and logical inconsistencies are there, but this does little injury to the novel concept of Adam and Eve finding each other in a dystopian Garden of Eden.Because there are no rotting bodies or other evidences of radiation produced consequences, this feels like a stage play set up by aliens to observe humans recently acquired for their Intergalactic Zoo as they work their way through a well simulated scenario of the End of the World. A great idea to introduce prime human physical specimens into. So we eagerly await the encounters between Inger Stevens as Sarah Crandall and Harry Belafonte as Ralph Burton to see what fireworks will commence.Naturally, the aliens will be taking notes for their Encyclopedia Galactica and their Catalogue of Interplanetary Species available for a limited time only and on sale. The problem is it's as though the principals involved somehow sense that they are being watched and their reactions, especially on Belafonte's part, feel forced and less spontaneous than one would imagine between an attractive male and an attractive woman. The scene where Ralph Burton can barely bring himself to cut Sarah Crandall's hair is a case in point. While I did not expect them to rush each other a la SWEET SWEETBACK'S BADASS SONG, I was expecting a little more romance between the two; and perhaps a walk through the ruins of New York to visit the local library, museum and church or even night club, hospital and cemetery to further extend the theme of Metropolitan devastation introduced by director Ranald MacDougall and his cinematographer Marzorati. This would have been visually more interesting and allowed for flashbacks of a prior life to give background and depth to their characters. As it is, we actually find out little about Sarah Crandall and Ralph Burton in terms of their personal histories with friends and families, etc. That's really a shame as there was so much to work with here.The bias in film of course is to accent the visual over the verbal, but here it appears that neither the visual or the verbal is much exploited past the novelty of placing a black man and a white woman in a playhouse as large as a city and then seeing how they adapt to this strange environment. This is neither 'NAKED AND AFRAID' or ' DINNER WITH THE LAST MAN AND WOMAN ON EARTH' and either route would have made for more compelling watching either on the voyeuristic plane or the emotional and intellectual plane. It would have been interesting to see the two compare cultural perspectives and even vent angst about competing cultural aspirations with a little bit more than irritated frustration and resentment.All this being said, and taking into account the racist and sexist atmosphere of the times in which this film was made, it still succeeds largely on it's own merits. I just think it would have been interesting to have both Sarah Crandall and Ralph Burton see a little bit more of The World, both singly and together, show a little bit more of The Flesh they were so stoically keeping from getting all worked up over, and for Mel Ferrer's arrival as The Devil to be a lot more devilish before he calls his gang in to separate Sarah Crandall from Ralph Burton forever as they attempt to take over the city for themselves.Just my idea of how matters could have developed and progressed through a full blown catharsis to an electrifying end. The musical score by Miklos Roza and hearing Belafonte sing are also undeniable features of interest.

bkoganbing Harry Belafonte is a coal miner trapped in a cave-in. He hears the drilling of the rescue crew which abruptly stops. Belafonte claws his own way to the surface and finds everything abandoned. I mean really abandoned. An Armageddon has occurred when some nation decided to forego the bomb and all that destruction and just use the radioactive byproducts. It gets out of control and wipes out everybody.Well, almost everybody. Harry hot wires a car and travels to New York City in search of life in the largest population center. After a while he finds it in Inger Stevens. It looks like another Adam and Eve ready to begin again when Mel Ferrer also shows up. By that time Belafonte has established some kind of contact with some unknown foreign survivors somewhere in the post apocalypse world?Of course with two men, two races, and only one woman, things start to look like business as usual for mankind. I was reminded of Neil Patrick Harris's line from Starship Troopers about how we're in it for the species. Will all three of them and anyone else they contact decide we're in it for the species in The World, the Flesh and the Devil?Director Ranald McDougall got three good performances out of his small cast. The World, The Flesh And The Devil does ask some thought provoking questions as to whether man is capable of screwing up once again. What kind of culture will they establish and will a Supreme Creator/Deity need to intervene?

pppossum This film was an excellent film of its type. It was daring in its (not quite complete--you couldn't get away with it then) treatment of race in those times. The film clearly pointed--it never said--that Inger Stevens would end up with the best man.It was extremely well acted. Belafonte was so human, so believable as the telephone engineer who couldn't accept this end. When race arose in the picture, it arose as a problem, a real problem, but not an hysterical diatribe. Inger Stevens was good. Mel Ferrer, as another viewer noted, was not the easy bigot, but a man who was used to getting his way, given the methods society allowed. He didn't really care about Belafonte's color, but about the girl. The script, given the willing suspension of disbelief you needed to accept a world in which no bodies could be seen, was excellent as well. As for realism, the theatre (correct spelling, IMDb!) has been using this kind of signification since Greek theatre didn't allow acts of violence on the stage. My only problem is not being able to get a copy because of the years of bad press from a public that loves gore more than human substance.