Noah's Ark (1928)

Undescribable Perfection

Must See Movie...

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

During the rain sequence when the girl is on the ground and the blind guy goes to pick her up, you can see some of her, well, boob. Well the point of her boob. Don't know any other way to put it. Pretty surprised to see that they missed that during editing or the editor just decided to put that in and hope the censors missed it. Don't know how anyone could have missed that on the big screen in theaters though. It was pretty obvious watch it today Dec. 2 2016 on TCM. Surprised that TCM has not even seen that when they put it on TV or watch it before putting it on TV. If you get a chance to watch this movie or record it or if the have a DVD of this, you will see that they missed it.

After God destroys civilization in The Great Flood, biblical patriarch Paul McAllister (as Noah) thanks the Supreme Being for a successful trip. God's chosen captain, some selected wives, and pairs of the planet Earth's animals rode out the storm in "Noah's Ark". Alas, men immediately returned to their wicked ways - and the whole exercise was for naught. Events quickly lead up to The Great War (aka World War I), wherein blood replaces the flood. Jesus Christ notwithstanding, beautiful blonde Dolores Costello (as Marie) is sentenced to die on a cross, as a spy for her German brethren...Hunky husband George O'Brien (as Travis) must somehow save her! With Ms. Costello in dire straits, we flashback to tell the story of "Noah's Art" that ended in the film's opening prologue. In the Old Testament past, ever-lovely Costello (as Miriam) is led to be sacrificed as a virgin. While we wonder how a woman resembling Costello managed to remain a virgin, Mr. O'Brien (as Japheth) is blinded and put to work at a treadmill...Only a miracle will save him! The juxtaposition of "The Flood" and "The Blood" draws uncomfortable parallels; probably, filmmaker Darryl F. Zanuck didn't intend to imply God caused both. This is another film inspired by D.W. Griffith's colossal "Intolerance" (1916), but executed on the relatively smaller epic scale Cecil B. DeMille used in his original silent version of "The Ten Commandments" (1923). Again, we have "Biblical" and "Modern" stories being told, and not all too well. Still, the production values and close-ups are terrific. Some of the talking parts have been restored, but the color sequences are apparently lost.******* Noah's Ark (11/1/28) Michael Curtiz ~ Dolores Costello, George O'Brien, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, Noah Beery

No matter how good this silent movie is, it could never make up for the horribly tragic deaths of several extras due to an indifferent director and studio. When I saw the incredibly spectacular flood scenes, I couldn't help but think about this...as three died to make these scenes.The film is not exactly a film about the flood. Like DeMille's first "Ten Commandments", the Biblical tale is only a small portion of the film--and much of the rest of the film is a heavy-handed contemporary story that only tangentially relates to the Bible. The bulk of the story is about WWI and the film compares this to the flood(!)--about how man's inhumanity that lead to the flood is the same as what lead to the war. And, like the promise of no more earth-covering floods, the film makers were bold enough to promise that with the end of WWI that there would be no wars!! They go so far as to say that the death of over 10,000,000 in the war was NOT in vain! Wishful thinking...especially in light of WWII and countless other wars since! On top of this, the WWI sequence is filled with one amazing one in a million occurrence after another--such as George O'Brien meeting his bestest buddy on the battlefield AND accidentally killing him only minutes later AND having the friend (Guinn Williams) die in his arms! The coincidences were too many to believe and are the result of bad writing--a problem through much of the film.The film goes back and forth several times from the time of Noah to the present. It also throws in several Bible stories that occurred AFTER Noah--and I assume this is because the writers didn't do their homework. There are also one crazy spectacular scene after another--great to look at but poorly written as well, as much of it was just confusing hogwash.A few things to look for (other than amazing special effects for 1928) are the idea of the same characters in WWI playing the sons of Noah and one of their wives. The most prominent of these women is played by Delores Costello--a huge silent star who became one of several wives for John Barrymore (and grandmother of Drew). Also, the scene where O'Brien looks up to Heaven as the rain falls is used on Turner Classic Movies' intro for Silent Sundays.For the most part, the special effects are THE movie. The story itself is confusing, preachy and nonsensical at times. But, in a bizarre way it's all still very entertaining...but hardly a film for the general public. Christians may well object to the fast and loose way the film mixes up the Biblical account as well as creates a lot of back story for Noah's children--from where it got this, I have no idea. Atheists, on the other hand, probably won't like the film because of the whole notion of a world-wide flood and God. So, as a result, much of the potential audience for this film is negated in the process! Overall, confusing, weird yet pretty exciting at times.

I have wanted to see this movie for ages having seen a clip many years ago in a movie documentary. It was worth it as this is a good film with some nice performances and it is, as stated by other reviewers, a bit of a curio. However, the one thing that does let it down is the moralising, sadly DFZ shouldn't have dipped his toe into screen writing. Although Dolores Costello is the star, she is one of the weaker elements, her voice is clipped and quite English (even though she was American) and didn't convey at all the fact that she was meant to be a German Frauleins, it was obvious that she had taken speaking lessons and they really hadn't paid off. The two main male leads however are a different matter, George O'Brien starts off rather stilted, but as he goes on his speaking role improves, Noah Beery is pretty much the same and both are good to listen to as well as being pretty good actors. The flood sequence is highly impressive as is the train wreck, I loved the burning book sequence a la Moses, very cutely done. But, the moralising became tedious. the sequence where the preacher admonishes the mother for smacking her child was particularly nauseating and all this did almost spoil the film, Ben Hur handled it much better. But, this was something that happened a lot in that era of movie making and you can forgive it. The saddest part came right at the end when they spoke of no more wars, how naive.