The World Moves On (1934)

Film: The World Moves On (1934)

Stars: Madeleine Carroll, Franchot Tone, Reginald Denny, Louise Dresser, Stepin Fetchit

Director: John Ford

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Madeleine Carroll-click here to learn more about Ms. Carroll (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

All right, we start out our third season of Saturdays with the Stars with Madeleine Carroll, an actress many probably don't know, despite the fact that she starred in two Alfred Hitchcock films.  We're going to continue doing these chronologically in 2021 (so, as a result, we will hit the Hitchcock films over the next two weeks rather than starting there), and instead go to the movies of a different icon, John Ford.  We'll talk about Carroll's career at this point in a second, but Ford was not yet "John Ford, Screen Icon" but was getting close to it.  Earlier in 1934, he had made The Lost Patrol, which would be a big hit (and critically-acclaimed), and the following year he'd make one of his important movies, The Informer, which would win him his first Oscar for Best Director.

(Spoilers Ahead) The World Moves On is an oddly-plotted movie, but I'll give it a shot here.  Essentially it takes place almost 200 years apart, with the opening scenes being a will reading of a man who gives his empire to his sons, and ensure that each will represent a different country as part of the business.  This works, but 185 years afterward, they run into a situation with World War I, where these men's businesses are at odds with each other.  Two of the family members, Richard from America (Tone) and Mary Warburton (Carroll) play lovers both 185 years later, and as distant cousins, in the 20th Century.  They end up together, but they have to do so through decades of strife, and largely losing the business as the war progresses.

The movie is deeply anti-war from my perspective, and that's its most notable trait other than the meandering (and frequently perplexing) plot.  I was shocked even in 1934 to see a post-Code Hollywood so fervently against World War I in the actions of the family, seeing our main characters like Richard & Mary suffer so much at the hands of a war that few can explain the cause of (this isn't incorrect, it's just surprising coming from John Ford & the studio system).  The movie is also heinously racist, having Stepin Fetchit (then the most famous black man in the movies), playing a bumbling, foolish African-American servant who is constantly procreating.  Fetchit's Dixie is not a large character, but it borders into the obscene how he's treated onscreen, and I would be remiss if I didn't point it out.

As for our star, she's gorgeous, but kind of bland.  Franchot Tone is kind of the textbook definition of "gorgeous but bland" during this era, and he & Carroll make an attractive couple, but they don't bring any fire to these creations.  This did, however, cement her stardom at the time, as this was her first major American film & within two years she'd be the first British leading lady to have a major star contract in Hollywood, and likely draw the attention of a specific director.  After all, her Mary is a tortured woman, icy & beautiful & very, very blonde, something a certain director would make a trademark in his career...