Forget the second day and Armageddon! 65 years earlier, this forgotten disaster film revolutionized the world of special effects

There is a good chance that you have never heard of floods, a 1933 film that has long been lost. For almost 50 years, he sinks up before the copy was miraculously found in Italy in 1981. Although it doubled in Italian and in poor condition, this version allowed a feature film with several enthusiasts repeated. Until there was a much cleaner version in France, the lobster’s films were restored that the public could eventually find this pearl in almost ideal conditions.

Flood It is a pioneer work of the disaster genre, which is often quoted as one of the first films registered in a given genre. With a freely inspired Sydney Foller Wright’s novel, it performs a series of natural disasters, including earthquakes and floods, which reduces the United States in the field of rubble. The heart of the story follows the efforts of a group of survivors trying to find order in this apocalyptic landscape.

But what is still a strike today is the technical courage of the project. At a time when the digital effects were clearly not existed, the director, Felix E. Feist, based on carefully shot models. The result, by 1933, is stunning. We are obliged to destroy these scenes in Ned Mann, a visual effect specialist supported by the inventive framework (Ernie Kroquake, Victor Sheurich and Carl Wester) and Russell Lawson, a matte painting master.

A more daring film than I can imagine

Another important fact: Flood Released before using a very harsh hay code, this famous censorship code that has been locking Hollywood for decades. These particular deadlines have allowed the film to contain scenes that we will discuss at that time shocking: flying nudity, but also disturbing allusions of violence that certain survivors suffer. These elements, which the cinema was going to expel shortly after, reinforce the raw material of the film and the filter side.

Flood Recently used with excellent nutrition, now DVD and Blu-ray are now available. For the curiosity of cinema history or lovers of feelings of old feelings, you should not miss it, the immediate ancestor of super products, or the day of 2012, before Roland Emerich finished the end of the world on the big screen.

Extract from the film below: