The World, the Flesh and the Devil (
1914The year 1914 in film involved some significant events, including the debut of Cecil B. DeMille as a director.-Events:*The 3,300-seat Mark Strand Theatre opens in New York City....
) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
silentA silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
drama filmA drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, and was the world's first dramatic
feature filmIn the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
to be photographed in color. The film, now considered a
lost filmA lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
, was made using the
additive colorAn additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors. Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the...
KinemacolorKinemacolor was the first successful color motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith of Brighton, England in 1906. He was influenced by the work of William Norman Lascelles Davidson. It was launched by Charles Urban's Urban Trading Co. of...
process.
Plot
The title comes from the
Book of Common PrayerThe Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
: "From all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, spare us, good Lord."
An intensely unhappy woman hatches a plot to switch the babies of a poor family and a rich family. But the nurse hired to pull off this transfer refuses to go through with it, leaving each baby with its proper family. When the babies are grown, the man from the poor family (who has been led to believe that he did come from the rich family) goes to the house of the other and throws him out. The remainder of the movie deals with the frustrations of mistaken identity.
Cast
- Frank Esmond — Nicholas Brophy
- Stella St. Audrie — Caroline Stanger
- Warwick Wellington — Sir James Hall
- Charles Carter — Rupert Stanger / Dyke
- Rupert Harvey — Robert Hall
- Jack Denton
-Selected filmography:Actor* The World, the Flesh and the Devil * The Card * The York Mystery * Old Bill Through the Ages * The Notorious Mrs. Carrick Director* Barnaby...
— George Grigg
- Gladys Cunningham — Mrs. Brophy
- Frances Midgeley — Gertrude Grant
- Mercy Hatton
-Selected filmography:* The Harbour Lights * The World, the Flesh and the Devil * Beau Brocade * The Laughing Cavalier * The Sands of Time * The Case of Lady Camber * A Sportsman's Wife...
— Lady Hall
- H. Agar Lyons — The Devil
- Nell Carter — Beatrice Cuthbert
- Frank Stather — Inspector Toplin
- Roger Hamilton — Wylde