The World Moves On (1934)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

John Ford

Writers:

Reginald Berkeley (screenplay)
Reginald Berkeley (story)

Release Date:

31 August 1934 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | History | Romance | War

Plot Keywords:

Ship Sinking | French | Mussolini | Death | Last Will

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Madeleine Carroll	...	Mrs. Warburton, 1825 / Mary Warburton Girard, 1914
Franchot Tone	...	Richard Girard
Reginald Denny	...	Erik von Gerhardt
Sig Ruman	...	Baron von Gerhardt (as Siegfried Rumann)
Louise Dresser	...	Baroness von Gerhardt
Raul Roulien	...	Carlos Girard (1825) / Henri Girard (1914)
Stepin Fetchit	...	Dixie
Lumsden Hare	...	Gabriel Warburton (1825) / Sir John Warburton (1914)
Dudley Digges	...	Mr. Manning
Frank Melton	...	John Girard (1825)
Brenda Fowler	...	Madame Agnes Girard (1825)
Russell Simpson	...	Notary (1825)
Walter McGrail	...	The Duallist (1825)
Marcelle Corday	...	Madame Girard II (1914)
Charles Bastin	...	Jacques Girard, the Boy (1914)

Runtime:

104 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #1)

Company:

Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

This was the first film to be granted the production seal of approval under new guidelines set forth by the Production Code Administration Office and the Motion Picture Producers and Directors of America. The modern US ratings system continued its numbering system, which granted certificates to over 40,000 titles by the mid-2000s.

Movie Connections:

Features Les croix de bois (1932)

Soundtrack:

Rhapsody in Blue

plot

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.