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.
Review of Noah's Ark
