Noah's Ark

Warner Bros.' delirious biblical-World War I hybrid — one of the most audacious and reckless productions in Hollywood history. The film intercuts a modern story of soldiers and sweethearts during the Great War with a recreation of the Great Flood from Genesis, using the same actors in both timelines. The flood sequence is genuinely staggering: director Michael Curtiz (years before Casablanca) dumped 600,000 gallons of water onto hundreds of extras with such force that multiple people were seriously injured. The result is simultaneously appalling in its disregard for human safety and undeniably spectacular as cinema. The modern war story is effective melodrama, and the transition between sound and silent sequences (the film was partially reshot with dialogue mid-production) gives it a fascinating hybrid quality. Not a great film, but an unforgettable one.