Artivels Undescribable Perfection

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Justin Bryan This movie made in 1933 predicts World War II, and the 9/11 attacks but except in 1940.This deals with same social issues we have dealt with from the Vietnam War to the Gulf War, to now.The movie also shows the "future" American watching Television, even though Television doesn't take off until 10 yrs after 1940. It also tried to depict future fashions and people using "video phones."The eerie part is when a airplane with a bomb on board smashes in to the Empire State building on a attack on New York City.This movie was way ahead of its time for 1933!

blanche-2 Lewis Stone, Diana Wynyard, Robert Young, and Phillips Holmes star in "Men Must Fight," a 1933 film. The movie starts with a young nurse, Laura (Wynyard) and her lover (Young) as he prepares to go off to World War I. He's killed; she's pregnant, and a rejected suitor, Ned Seward (Stone) offers to marry her and give the child his name. Laura vows that no son of hers will ever fight in a war.Flash forward to 1940, and Seward is now Secretary of State, working on a peace treaty, with Laura's help. Their son Robert (Holmes) is a talented chemist and in love with Peggy (Ruth Selwyn). Unfortunately, the peace treaty fails, and the country is going to war with "Eurasia." Seward advises Laura that she will have to stop her peace-making attempts and objections to war, but she refuses. Having raised her son as a pacificist, Robert refuses to enlist, to the disgust of Peggy.The film was made in 1933, but obviously the signs of conflict were already in the air; if one looks carefully at an anti-war rally that takes place in the film, one will see the Japanese sun and the Nazi swastika. Pretty amazing.The acting by today's standards, with the exception of Stone, is quite melodramatic, as is the dialogue. The handsome Holmes, who himself died right after flight training in Canada, is good as the conflicted Robert. Diana Wynyard, too, is very good, but both actors have very over the top dialogue to say.Very, very interesting film, and well worth seeing, with some excellent battle scenes.

MartinHafer During the 1930s, quite a few antiwar films were made. Considering how wasteful and unnecessary WWI was, it's no surprise that these films flourished. The problem, however, is that while the films were absolutely right about the pointlessness of wars like the First World War, they also didn't take into account that there sometimes are wars that need fighting. After all, Hitler was truly evil.While many of these idealistic films are true classics (such as ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, J'ACCUSE (the remake), GRANDE ILLUSION, WESTFRONT 1918), some, like MEN MUST FIGHT are not. Now it is very thought-provoking and unique--and it certainly gets points for that. Unfortunately, the film also comes off as a bit preachy, morally ambivalent as well as quite dated. But it does try.The film begins with a nurse (Diana Wynyard) and a pilot (Robert Young) having a tryst in a rented room (after all, this is a Pre-Code film--where the moral values of the late 30s and into the 40s were NOT at all evident in many Hollywood films). Unfortunately, he is soon killed and she is pregnant. Nice guy Lewis Stone marries her knowing this and she vows to raise the child as a pacifist.For a while, Stone seems happy raising this boy this way. After all, he becomes Secretary of State and his role is as a peacemaker. Unfortunately, though, when war threatens with the fictional country of Eurasia, he joins lockstep in the American war effort and expects this pacifist son to do the same. Well, the son doesn't and the mother spends much of the film heading a national pacifist movement. Naturally, this leads to conflict and chaos within the family.The problem is that the film was awfully hard to believe sci-fi. While it was cool watching everyone talking on videophones in the future year 1940, the film doesn't seem to make a good case for pacifism or going to war. Perhaps if the acting had been a bit better and less earnest AND the film not been so morally ambiguous it would have succeeded. Instead, you have no idea why the war occurs, who is at fault, what is at stake or the events leading to this conflict. As a result, it's quite watchable but also not a necessary film to watch.

David Atfield This brilliant film deserves to be re-discovered. Made in 1933 it predicts a world war in 1940, and even shows a catastrophic air-raid on a major city (in this case New York, but it certainly echoes the destruction soon to be unleashed on London, Berlin etc). The film carefully presents the pacifist and nationalist arguments in an amazingly contemporary way, embodying the argument in the character of a young pacifist man who must decide whether to fight or not. The irony that the actor playing this part, Phillips Holmes, was later to die in the real World War 2, adds to the power of this remarkable film. Diana Wynyard is extraordinary as his mother - indeed the strength of the female characters is one of the film's greatest achievements - few people will not applaud the sentiments of the final scene. Great futuristic design too - including televisions and video telephones. It is very sad to see this film now, knowing that the warning it gave to the world went unheeded. I urge you to watch it. I imagine that the reason it is so little known today is that MGM found its anti-war themes embarrassing when they found themselves having to support the war effort, and buried it in the vaults. Now it should be seen to warn others not to repeat the mistakes of the past.