During the 1950s, Harry Belafonte was one of the few Black actors in Hollywood (along with Sidney Poitier) given the opportunity to be a leading man. Like Poitier, the roles were limited, and often based on his racial identity. Yet he made the most of the parts he was given, as evidenced by his performance in the 1959 doomsday drama The World, the Flesh and the Devil. Released at a time when America was becoming both increasingly concerned about the threat of nuclear war and aware of the Civil Rights Movement, it envisions a world in which the races must learn to work together after a bomb has wiped out humanity.
'The World, the Flesh and the Devil' Was Based on Real Fears
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Belafonte plays Ralph Burton, a Pennsylvania mine inspector who gets trapped in a collapse. After a few days pass without help, he claws his way out to find the Northeast has been hit by an atomic bomb. He travels to New York City in search of survivors, finding the usually bustling streets disturbingly empty. After gathering supplies and restoring power to a high rise, he meets Sarah Crandall (Inger Stevens), a young white woman who evaded death by staying in a bunker. When another white survivor, the widowed Benson Thacker (Mel Ferrer), arrives via a boat, Ralph tries to step aside so that he can romance Sarah, yet can't keep his own feelings hidden. As Benson feels threatened, his rivalry with Ralph turns violent.
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Written and directed by Ranald MacDougall (Oscar-nominee for Mildred Pierce), The World, the Flesh and the Devil is a cautionary tale about the dangers of the nuclear arms race. Films like Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe, and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove dealt with these anxieties in a variety of ways, yet all were based on legitimate fears that had come about during the Cold War. In MacDougall's version, humanity seems to have just completely disappeared; there are no bodies lining the streets, no mutated zombies roaming for food, just an eerie emptiness that breeds loneliness and desperation.
'The World, the Flesh and the Devil' Asks If Unity Is Possible In the Face of Nuclear Annihilation
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What distinguishes MacDougall's film is that it uses a story about nuclear annihilation as a means of exploring racial prejudice, at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was just beginning to take shape. It shares a lot in common with Kramer's The Defiant Ones, released in 1958, in which Poitier and Tony Curtis play escaped convicts who are chained to each other and must set their differences aside in order to evade capture. These sorts of extreme situations — two men on the run, the last remaining survivors of a nuclear holocaust — act as a great equalizer, and beg the question: is racial harmony achievable even in the worst of circumstances?
From the moment they meet, it's obvious Ralph and Sarah see each other as more than just friends. Yet when she suggests moving into his building, Ralph shoots the idea down because "people will talk." Even with the rest of society wiped out, he holds onto the bigotry that would keep the two of them apart. (Considering anti-miscegenation laws weren't struck down until the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, having a depiction of an interracial love story in a Hollywood film would've been unthinkable.) For her part, Sarah blithely describes herself as "free, white, and 21" without realizing how much that would hurt Ralph. And although he's grateful to Ralph for saving his life, Benson allows some of his own prejudice to come out when competing against him for Sarah.
Belafonte, a Civil Rights icon who briefly left movie screens during the 1960s to focus on activism, was the perfect avatar for the film's themes. Rather than play into the stereotype of the exceptional Black man -- a person so noble as to be above reproach by the most virulent of white racists -- Belafonte depicts Ralph as an ordinary man doing whatever it takes to survive. That might not make him an extraordinary person, but then again, a person shouldn't have to be extraordinary in order to be treated equally. It's little wonder Spike Lee used Belafonte in BlacKkKlansman, the final film he appeared in before his death in 2023, considering that gravitas had always been present both onscreen and off.
The World, the Flesh and the Devil is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
Custom Image by Nimesh Niyomal
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
English (US) ·