Noah's Ark

A spectacular and ambitious part-talkie epic which marries a Biblical theme (the Flood) with a romance set on the eve of the Great War. Each actor doubles parts in the Biblical and contemporary stories, and the Warners special effects department has a beano: train wrecks, battles, deluges, and a cast of thousands. Whether it makes any sense as an historical parallel seems somehow beside the point. What matters is that they spent $1.5m on the production, and the money, as they say, is on the screen. A much-trimmed version running 75 minutes (the intertitles and dialogue sequences were eliminated, and a new sound effects track added) was issued in 1957.