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Released by: Pathfinder Pictures
Released on: 5/2/2006
Director: Daniel Bourla
Cast: Robert Strauss, Geoffrey Holder, Sally Kirkland
Year: 1974
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The Movie:
Robert Strauss (of Stalag 17), in his final role before he passed away in 1975, plays the titular Noah in this genuine cinematic obscurity released on home video for the first time ever by way of this DVD from Pathfinder Pictures. It's a bleak picture, one that doesn't have the same sort of happy ending awarded to the lead character's namesake.
Noah is the only man left alive after the Third World War kills every other living person on the planet. He is completely alone, and these catostrauphic events have happened just a few short weeks before he was to retire from the army for good. When we meet him, he lands his raft on a remote island that once served as a base for the Chinese communist forces but which now lies abandoned and at his complete disposal. There are enough supplies here to keep him going for quite some time, and so he sets out make whatever sort of life out of this that he can.
Bored out of his skull he reads voraciously and creates a makeshift golf game to keep himself occupied, but being the only man on the planet, it gets dull fast. Before you know it, much like a child left to his or her own devices, he's created an imaginary friend who he names Friday (we never see him but his voice is provided by Geoffrey Holder) after the character in Robinson Crueso. This seems to help Noah at first, until Friday decides he wants someone of his own, a female companion. Noah, not wanting to annoy his only friends, creates another imaginary being, who he names Friday-Anne (again, we never see her but she's voiced by Sally Kirkland). In Noah's mind, Friday and Friday-Anne begin having a torrid love affair, with Friday-Anne coming to the conclusion that Noah is insane and that she and Friday should do something about him. When Noah realizes that his own creations have turned on him, he sends them out on their own and slowly but surely begins to further descend into lunacy.
Similar in a lot of ways to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (and therefore sharing bits and pieces in common with The Omega Man and more specifically The Last Man On Earth), The Noah is simultaneously compelling and unsettling thanks almost entirely to Robert Strauss' excellent performance. He's completely believable in the part, we're able to understand his plight and feel sympathy for him and to pity him even all the while he know he's starting to crack and becoming a danger to himself. With only one performer on screen for the entire film, the movie feels very much like a play as much as it does a film but that doesn't hinder the effectiveness of what Daniel Bourla (who sadly has never made another film) has created here.
The cinematography is also quite noteworthy. Shot entirely in high contrast black and white the picture is moody and atmospheric and artificial enough without looking overly faked. It gives the story an other worldly look and feel that nicely suits its apocalyptic themes and ideas and that does a nice job of reflecting Noah's diminishing mental state. Bourla was clever enough to manipulate sound bites of various wartime broadcasts over top of the whole chaotic end portion of the film, where Noah's training takes over and he almost seems to be on autopilot.
So if The Noah is that good, why is it that you have never heard of the movie? Well, it wrapped in 1968 but sat until it was finally shown in 1974 for a few scant festival screenings. From there it vanished until supposedly it was shown on television in New York City. Someone tapped it, it was bootlegged (Film Theat wrote a piece on it a little while back based on one of those bootlegs) but it never did great a legitimate release of any kind save for those few screenings. With the film out on DVD, it should find a larger audience as it really is an interesting and very well made piece of work.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The anamorphic 1.77.1 widescreen transfer has been culled from the film's original negative and as such it looks pretty good with only minor print damage here and there and some moderate grain in spots. Contrast look good though the image jitters in a couple of spots. The only major flaw here is that the picture has not been properly flagged for progressive scan playback, so depending on your hardware set up you could find yourself dealing with some ugly sawtooth artifacts and trailing. Changing the settings however produces a pretty strong image.
The English language Dolby Digital Mono audio track is fine on this DVD. The voices that Noah hears come through with enough punch and Bourla's periodic soliliquies are clean and clear. The background music is properly mixed so as to never over power the spoken words in the film. If you listen really carefully you might pick up on a bit of hiss on occasion but it's not distracting and easy enough to ignore.
Light on extra features, aside from menus and chapter stops the only supplements that this disc includes is a small still gallery and some basic text biographies of the director and star of the film.
The Finale Word:
An eerie, and at times strangely stagey, blend of science fiction, horror, surrealism and arthouse filmmaking, The Noah is a genuinley interesting and often unsettling film that despite some obvious flaws gets a lot more right than wrong. Pathfinder's disc isn't perfect but overall they have done a nice job of rescuing this one from obscurity. Truly a film that should find a wider audience with cult movie fans.