User Reviews

From a Tolstoy short story, transferred to post-Napoleonic England, this is a simple, sweet moral fable. The film is only 45 minutes long.

It reminded me of the films of Borzage - unsentimental in its depiction of the hardships of working-class life, sentimental (to modern tastes) in its Christian piety. The milieu is one of decent, ordinary people, struggling to survive, not overly bothered about man- made laws (at least as far as a bit of smuggling is concerned), but buoyed up by unquestioned religious faith. It's a film that couldn't be made nowadays, when the characters would have to be shown as downtrodden, oppressed, and thus not responsible for their own actions.

Into their lives comes a fallen angel, temporarily exiled for disobedience and sent to learn the answers to three questions about the human condition. The acting is excellent, in the theatrical style of the time, but not over-stated. There is a very effective contrast between the naturalistic dialogue of the ordinary people (well done, considering it originates in a Russian short story), and the limited speech and affect of the angel, until his final long declamatory speech.

If you like Chaplin or Borzage, or Victorian moral novels, I would very much recommend this if you ever get the chance to see it. (It was recently on Talking Pictures TV in the UK.)

I'm not usually one for morality plays but WHAT MEN LIVE BY is something different, and unexpectedly great. This rare 1938 short feature was recently shown on TV in the UK by the great Talking Pictures TV channel, which really is invaluable for all your old rare British film needs. The tale is a fable based on a short story by WAR AND PEACE novelist Leo Tolstoy, adapted for the screen and directed by Vernon Sewell at the outset of his career (he would finish it making such B-horrors as THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR, CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR, and BURKE & HARE).

The story is about a poor carpenter who lives alone with his wife and struggles to make ends meet in a post-war unspecified historical period. A stranger comes into his life and soon becomes an apprentice in his workshop, and there are twists in store. Although this is a religious story and quite sentimental at the explanatory climax, I found that the subject matter was handled sensitively and in a moving way. The great Esmond Knight plays the angel, before a war injury cost him one of his eyes and thereafter saw him typecast in sinister roles.