Review #1237: The End of the World.
Cast:
Olaf Fønss (Frank Stoll - Mine Owner), Carl Lauritzen (Mineformand / Mine Forman West), Ebba Thomsen (Dina West), Johanne Fritz-Petersen (Edith West), Thorleif Lund (Minearbejder / Worker Flint), Alf Blütecher (Styrmand / Ship's Mate Reymers), Frederik Jacobsen (Den vandrende Prædikant / The Wandering Preacher), and K. Zimmerman (Professor Wissmann) Directed by August Blom.
Review:
It sure is hard to believe it has been a while since I covered a film from Denmark, where I covered Master of the House (1925) in 2017 - along with being only the 12th film from the 1910s to be done here. In any case, it seems necessary to deliver another world cinema review, which I hope you folks enjoy.
The End of the World (known as Verdens Undergang in its native country) can certainly be called a curiosity, having been released just six years after the passing of Hailey's Comet. with the Earth actually passing through the comet's tail on May 19; there had also been a Great Daylight Comet that year, for which at one bright point it even outshone the planet Venus. It also was a film released in the midst of World War I, for which the country was neutral on. The curiosity for me is in how the comet effects would look, having been done by showers of fiery sparks and shrouds of smoke. The other curiosity is admittedly how Blom and writer Otto Rung get to this climax with their story, which does try to juggle itself with a few threads, revolving around romance, manipulating stocks through the comet, panic through the streets and unrest throughout social classes. In this sense, the effects do shine a bit more handily than its story, but it isn't exactly a hard film to sift through, and I will say that the pacing is relatively steady through its 77 minute run-time. It doesn't test the patience of its audience too much, soaking in its melodrama in the ways you could expect from a film of its ilk, where you see actors try to live up to what is needed to be seen on screen to accompany occasional inter-titles that further the plot (or say something about a character), with the only sound you'll hear is from musical composition (unless you're watching a silent film with no actual music). In any sense, the actors do a fine standard job with such material, playing their types to a T that makes its ultimate fate a bit of a foregone conclusion, with its ending being a bit ham-handed but serviceable, and it surely must have played fine for its target audience. It can prove to be a hokey film at times (gotta love the rich people deciding to have a party on the day a comet is going to hit), but I can give credit for its fair ambition to make a efficient little tale without going completely overboard. Honestly, this is the kind of movie one could just re-purpose for a 70s disaster movie (such as Meteor (1979), although that was pretty terrible), so at least one can enjoy this movie for its own interpretation of the disaster movie before that was even termed as an actual genre. This is a film you can find fairly easily on the Internet, having been restored by the Danish Film Institute in 2006. In the end, I feel that there is just enough in its parts to make this a worthy piece to check out for movie lurkers wanting something from the past century that like a bit of worldly flair in their dramas.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
