The World Moves On (1934)

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

This movie reminds me a bit of the best picture film, "Cavalcade", that was made a year before "The World Moves On". Both stories are set over a very long time period and involve a wealthy family during good times and bad--the bad being WWI. However, there are also a lot of differences--enough that it's well worth seeing both films.The film begins in the early 19th century. At the death of a so-called 'Cotton King', his will is read and it gives amazingly detailed instructions about his estate. To satisfy the conditions of the will, the family must make a business merger and then send its family members to set up a business empire in the major industrialized nations at the time--France, Prussia (later, to make up a large part of Germany), Britain and, of course, the United States. Through the decades, the family ties remain strong--even after there are distinct lines of the new family that speak different languages. The idea is that despite national interests, the family and the company come first. However, this is all complicated 90 years later when WWI arrives. And, surprisingly, the film continues from the end of WWI to the Depression and its impact on the family.The film has excellent production values and clearly was a project that Fox Studio heaped a lot of money on--with lots of fancy sets, an up and coming director (John Ford) and a pretty good cast headed by Franchot Tone and Madeleine Carroll. For the most part, the writing was also first-rate and the film quite enjoyable. There were only a couple things I really disliked about the film. First, subsequent generations of family members are played by the same actors in several cases--as if descendants look EXACTLY like their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents. This is a stupid Hollywood cliché--as this does not happen in real life--even with families where incest is all the rage!! Second, for 'comic relief' for the WWI scenes, Steppin Fetchit is cast--even though he has NOTHING to do with the movie. And no, he does not play the 'black sheep' of the family! He is simply a walking, talking negative racial stereotype that was very popular in the 30s but which makes almost everyone cringe today (and it should). Also, the notion of a need for COMEDY during WWI is brainless and misguided to say the least! What part of 11,000,000 war dead is funny?!Now you should be able to look past these two problem areas with the film and if you stick with it, the movie is pretty amazing for its scope, its very brutal scenes of warfare (some of the most harrowing of the era, in fact) and its rather non-partisan stand--which was quite the rage in the early to mid-1930s--when most Americans had come to accept that this war had no good guys or bad guys--only many victims. Of course, WWII and the rise of Hitlerism in the years following this film would change this attitude considerably. Still, it's a mostly forgotten fact that practically all films about WWI made in America during the 1930s were very critical of the war and took a neutral stance on it--as was also true of many of the films in France (such as "Grand Illusion" and "J'Accuse!") as well as Germany up until the Nazis took control ("Westfront 1918"). Plus, I was amazed that the movie dared to criticize the rise of nationalism and fascism in the 1930s--they were correct, but Hollywood (aside from this film) pretty much ignored this until AFTER WWII had already begun!By the way, you probably could guess that I am a history teacher and film buff--hence all this background material that you might find interesting. And, speaking of this, history teachers should particularly appreciate this well-made film.

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.

Aside from a couple of shots, it would be almost impossible to tell that John Ford directed this if you didn't see the credits. There is an astonishingly good combat sequence, but apparently most of this footage comes from a French film that Fox bought a few years before Ford made World in '34. Nonetheless, the combat stuff is breath-taking, and very well integrated with studio footage of the principals. Stepin Fetchit has some good lines. Some nice compositions show that Ford (or his cinematographer) wasn't totally disengaged. The multi-generational love story with its mystical overtones seems totally out of character for Ford, but the opening and closing shots of Christ on the cross remind us of Ford's lifelong religiosity.