Plot
The film opens with the outbreak of a war in the previously peaceful kingdom of Wredpryd. Count Ferdinand is the inventor of a new submarine who is assigned to command the new ship in battle. The King of Wredpryd orders the Count to sink the "ProPatria" ("for my country"), a civilian ship that is believed to be carrying munitions as well as civilian passengers. In his mind's eye, the Count sees a vision of what would happen if he sent a torpedo crashing into the liner, and he recoils. He refuses to follow his orders, saying he is "obeying orders -- from a Higher Power." Realizing his crew will carry out the orders, the Count fights with the crew and blows up his submarine, sending it to the bottom of the sea.
The Count's soul descends into purgatory, where he encounters Jesus. Jesus announces that the Count can find redemption by returning to the living world as a voice for peace. Jesus tells the Count, "Peace to thee, child, for in thy love for humanity is thy redemption. In thy earthly body will I return, and with thy voice plead for peace. Much evil is being wrought in my name."
The Count returns to life and is stoned and reviled by his countrymen. He is put on trial by the king, a modern Pontius Pilate, and is sentenced to death. Five thousand women gather at the palace singing a song of peace and pleading with the king to end the war. The mothers' plea inspires the king to visit the cell of the condemned Count. The Count is found dead in his cell, and Jesus emerges from the Count's body and takes the king on a tour of the battlefields. Jesus asks, "See here thy handiwork? Under thy reign, thy domain hath become a raging hell!" In the film's most famous scene, Jesus walks through the battlefields amid the carnage of war.
The signing of a peace treaty follows, and the closing scenes depicts the happiness in store for the returning soldiers.
Read more about this topic: Civilization (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)