Doomsday Reels: Deluge
Deluge (1933)
The Director
Felix E. Feist
The Actors
Peggy Shannon (Claire Arlington), Sidney Blackmer (Martin Webster), Lois Wilson (Helen Webster), Fred Kohler (Jepson), Matt Moore (Tom)
The Trailer
The Cause
Earthquakes/Flooding
The Story
"Foreward
Deluge is a tale of fantasy -- an adventure in speculation -- a vivid epic pictorialization of an author's imaginative flight. We, the producers, present it now purely for your entertainment; remembering full well God's covenant with Noah:
'And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the Earth.' - Genesis 9:11" - title cards
The Rundown
Doomsday stories are certainly nothing new. Ever since we became self-aware we've been wondering precisely how and when the world would come to an end. The most prevalent versions of these stories in early culture are found in various religious texts from The Bible to the Norse myth of Ragnarok. We've been all too aware of the fragility of the existence we hold dear but even though we've never stopped talking about it, the instances of people who wrote about it in the period before the 1900s are few and far between.
Stories like Mary Shelley's The Last Man and H.G. Wells' The Time Machine dreamed of a world where humanity had experienced some sort of catastrophic event and was forced to struggle to go on. Obviously the dystopian and post-apocalyptic sub-genres bloomed exponentially from this point but the early days of post-apocalyptic cinema were a sparse time.
Deluge isn't the first post-apocalyptic film, that distinction seemingly belongs to 1916's The End of the World but Deluge is the oldest talky I can find that portrays an apocalyptic event. For a considerable amount of time the film was lost until a nitrate print, dubbed in Italian was found in the early 80s. Eventually in 2016 an English-language nitrate print of the film was discovered and the film was remastered and released by Lobster Films with a following home video release by Kino Lorber.
Deluge concerns a global event wherein a series of storms and earthquakes effectively destroys the entirety of America and most likely the rest of the world. The story focuses mainly on a small section of people living near New York City in the countryside.
Claire Arlington is a world-class swimmer attempting to win a world record whose journey is postponed by the cataclysmic weather. Martin Webster is a lawyer, staying at his summer cabin with his wife and two children. When the weather causes the roof to begin to cave in, Martin escorts his wife and children to a nearby rock quarry where they will be safer but when he returns to the ruined house for supplies the greatest earthquake of all hits and New York City crumbles to pieces as a massive tidal wave submerses the entire area.
Claire is found outside a cabin on a patch of high ground that has been spared from the flooding by a massive John Goodman-y man named Jepson. Soon Claire finds out that Jepson's intentions for her are not terribly pure so she swims away, to wash up on the shore of a different island with a different cabin where she is found by Martin.
Martin has taken up stockpiling useful supplies and surviving as best he can. Since he thinks his family is dead he begins to fall for Claire. Unfortunately Jepson has followed Claire and has now taken up with a group of burly neerdowells who have just raped and murdered a woman.
After defeating the men, Claire and Martin find themselves in a small settlement nearby where they discover that Martin's wife and children are alive. Now Martin must deal with the fact that he is in love with two women.
Deluge was made in the era prior to the infamous Hayes censorship Code so, even though it's downright puritanical by modern standards it was practically an exploitation film at the time.
Lead actress Peggy Shannon, while never actually anything close to nude, is often depicted in a state of undress. The film wastes no opportunity to imply nudity or show as much skin as possible when she's onscreen. Yet strangely the movie gives Claire and Martin's wife Lois a good amount of agency of their own, it's very nearly a feminist story.
Unfortunately Peggy Shannon and lead actor Sidney Blackmer have very little onscreen chemistry and the movie very much glosses over Claire and Martin's courtship so when it's revealed that Martin's family is still alive it's very difficult to sympathize with Claire's desire to have Martin to herself. Lois seems genuinely interested in working out some sort of an arrangement but Claire comes across as a horrible shrew demanding to have the man to herself, this really fails to mesh with everything we've learned about her character up until this point.
Even more unfortunate, the movie spends basically no time on the concept of how one would deal with a conundrum like Martin's since even in the pre-Hayes' Code era a polygamous relationship was not going to fly. The problem is resolved with relative ease and no deeper analyzation of the idea of dealing with the realization that the person you loved and thought to be dead is still alive and well even though you've fallen truly in love with another is undertaken.
The film features some terrible composited disaster footage and some great miniature work depicting the apocalyptic weather's effect on the cities. It almost keeps you from realizing that the same group skyscrapers in New York City fall to pieces at least six times only to then be crumbled another time when the waves hit.
Ultimately Deluge is just a very underwhelming movie. The elements are there for a good story but the plot is far too timid to tackle any of the film's various conflicts or themes in a compelling way. This is further compounded by how atypically modern the story itself is for an era in film commonly remembered as unwilling to tackle complicated subject matter. Deluge is daring in intent but cowardly in execution.
The film is photographed beautifully (though the print is showing its age in several shots which are far fuzzier and grainier than others) and at a mere 66 minutes it's a breeze to sit through. Sadly the film's significance begins and ends with its place in early movie history and it's station as a "lost" film for so many years. Give it a watch for history's sake but don't feel compelled to own it.
The Shill
Next Time on Doomsday Reels
" Dad, you only care about yourself. That's why mommy left. "
