The World Accuses (1934) User Reviews

A soaper that repeatedly strains the limits of credibility.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 15 June 2013]

"The World Accuses" is a very watchable bad film. The acting is good and the story works provided you never once think! If you just turn off your brain, you could easily enjoy this one. Think too much and you'll see so many silly plot elements that it seems almost like a comedy! Genevieve Tobin plays Lola Weymouth--an ex-actress who has traded in the life to marry and raise a family. The problem is that although she tries to be a good mother and wife, her mother-in-law is Satan--and does her best to disrupt the marriage and second-guess Lola. Naturally, the marriage is compromised since the husband is a complete momma's boy--and refuses to stand up for his wife. When the husband is murdered by an old boyfriend of Lola, this conniving mother-in-law does her most to destroy Lola's reputation and make her out to be an unfit mother. Soon, the court takes Lola's baby--even though there really is no proof he's done anything. Simply put, the mother-in-law's fortune has been used to steal the child and the sensational court case destroys Lola's reputation.

Lola tries her best to have contact with her child but cannot. So, she takes all her love and gives it to children at a residential school for children. She's changed her name and over the next few years she proves herself to be practically a saint. However, all kinds of craziness is to come--with one nutty soap opera plot after another all conspiring to rob Lola of any chance at happiness. I could say a lot more, but suffice to say that one incredible incident after another occurs to her--such as the return of the husband's murderer AND her baby eventually being enrolled in her school!! It's all very contrived and silly--but also decent enough due to Tobin's nice performance. But it also is a film you can hardly take seriously due to the crappy script.

J'Accuse!

[boblipton · 4/10 · 17 July 2019]

Vivian Tobin and Paul Fix live at the Waldorf with their baby boy. They would be happy, except he doesn't work, and his money comes from his disagreeable mother, Sarah Edwards, from a trust fund for him left by his father. She dislikes Miss Tobin because she was in show business and wants Fix to divorce his wife, or no more money. When the couple is out on the town, Harold Huber, an old admirer of Miss Tobin, picks a fight and kills Fix. Miss Edwards takes the baby away. Miss Tobin winds up in a day-and-sleeping nursery school. There she is courted by Russell Hopton, the father of one of her students, Cora Sue Collins.

It's an involved set-up and one of those too sentimental plots that make sense if you assume that there are only twenty or thirty people in the world, especially when you see how the baby, grown into Dickie Moore, comes back into Miss Tobin's life without her knowing it. The movie is very cheaply made and shows it. Charles Lamont, usually an expert at stretching a budget, can't do much here, where the actors seem to declaim rather than speak their lines. Besides the cast already named, seasoned actors such as Mary Carr, Bryant Washburn and Lloyd Ingraham seem awfully anxious to speak their lines, collect their checks, and go home.

The Night Turns Into a Nightmare!!

[kidboots · 6/10 · 23 March 2015]

Vivian Tobin (no relation to Genevieve) didn't exactly sound like a chorus girl in this film - very uppercrust!! Which makes it very strange that the premise of the film was initially about a girl from the stage who was made to feel that she was dirt beneath her mother-in- law's feet!! She plays Lola Allen who has given up fame and fortune for marriage to spineless mother's boy John Weymouth (Paul Fix). And what a mother!! She goes out of her way to belittle and badger Lola - even questioning her mothering skills!! Lola suggests she and John have a night out on the town,revisiting their old haunts - John even meets her outside the stage door, the same as when they were courting. But the night turns into a nightmare with John involved in a fracass at the club and dying as a result of a knock-out punch delivered by good old Harold Huber as "Checkers" who is sent to prison - then Lola finds herself facing court on an "unfit mother" charge!!!

The trial seems a bit hard to believe with Lola losing the right even to see her little boy again. She wanders about in a daze until she is taken in by the head of a day nursery (Mary Carr) who sees in Lola a natural mother and puts her in charge of the home when she is about to retire. Meanwhile, there is trouble at the Weymouth residence - the attorney (Jameson Thomas, who else?) who successfully prosecuted at the sensational trial, commits suicide after embezzling charges are found to be true. Mrs. Weymouth loses everything and is forced into a nursing home, the butler given full charge of Tommy and brings him to - you guessed it, Lola's nursery!! She doesn't realise that Tommy (Dickie Moore) is her own little boy as everything is handled very hush hush!!

Also running around is cute little Pat (Cora Sue Collins) whose father (Russell Hopton in a lighter role), a radio announcer, has fallen for Lola. But wait!! - I spoke too soon because Huber has now escaped from prison, is on the run and eventually finds himself "holed" up in the nursery attic. Suddenly it turns "gangster" with everyone, including Lola, packing pistols - the children have innocently gone up to play in the attic and it then becomes a siege before the children escape onto the roof. In another unbelievable plot twist, after harbouring a fugitive in a day nursery, Lola is deemed a fit mother to get her Tommy back!! Whewww!!!

Oh, so soapy, and thus, so sappy.....

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 12 April 2011]

Unhappily married Vivian Tobin has put up with a non-working husband (Paul Fix), a nasty mother-in-law (Sarah Edwards), and an ex-lover (Harold Huber) desperately out to get her back. The ex kills the husband, the mother-in-law gets custody of their son, and the poor widow must hide her identity to work in a day nursery run by the sweet Mary Carr. Years later, Tobin has taken over the nursery and the nasty mother-in-law gets her come-uppance by having her estate absconded which results in her being sent to a sanatorium. Tobin's son (played at this point by Dickie Moore) ends up in her care with an alias so mother and son have no idea who they are. Then, the ex-lover escapes from prison and threatens Tobin with exposure.

From the get-go, this melodramatic heart-tugger so cries for its viewers emotions that it at times is unbearable to watch. The heroine is set up for viewer's sympathies, the husband is pathetic, and the mother-in-law so nasty that one wishes she ended up the murder victim, not the husband. Like other thirties mother-love movies, the heroine becomes front page news (overshadowing the depression and the rise of Hitler) as she looses custody of her child, and its obvious from the get-go where this story will go. The highlights of the movie are the scenes between Moore and young Cora Sue Collins as the daughter of the man Tobin ends up involved with. Otherwise, you've seen this all before, and done much better, particularly in those Warner Brothers dramas starring Kay Francis.

Nice Little Story

[CatherineYronwode · 7/10 · 30 August 2010]

This movie has a bit of the quality of the many movies adapted from Saturday Evening Post or Collier's magazine short stores. It is tidy, neat, and well paced, with a satisfying resolution in a manner that makes such films (and stories) pleasing but not amazing.

Vivian Tobin did not make a lot of films, but she is quite charming here as Lola, a spunky Broadway actress who marries a wealthy but spineless socialite (Paul Fix). Unfortunately for Lola, her husband is under the complete domination of his wealthy and narcissistic mother (Sarah Edwards). The couple has a child, but then tragedy intervenes in the person of a psychopathic book-maker (Harold Huber) and a not-so-kindly judge (Lloyd Ingraham).

Suffice it to say that Lola's next five years are rough, but she manages to make a go of it, thanks to the help of a gentle older woman (Mary Carr) and her helper (the extremely tall Jane Keckley), a gregarious suitor (Russell Hopton), and a passel of young kids, including the boisterous pair played by Cora Sue Collins and Dickie Moore. And then, just when you thought this would become a tear-jerker of a "woman's movie," danger strikes, and it turns out that everybody has a gun, even poor downtrodden Lola! This is not the usual last reel wrap-up to the semi-Stella-Dallas set-up we've been watching up to that point.

To say any more would be essentially to spoil the film, for in a plot as economical and precise as this one, each scene leads to the next in a way that cannot be teased apart for examination without deconstructing the entire edifice.

I'm pretty sure that at 62 minutes, the print i saw had been chopped for television, and the cuts seem to have come at all the predictable character-building spots, but still, it's better to have seen it in this form than to have missed it altogether. It's a nice little first feature for a double-bill home-showing of old-time movies.