"The Road to Yesterday" is a misfire from the director of huge mega-epics, Cecil B. DeMille. While today he's known wifely for his religious epics, in the 1920s he mostly made romances and dramas...but I can't recall him ever making a film with a plot like this one! It's all about reincarnation and feelings of déjà vu...and people unwisely allowing their lives to be governed by these feelings.
The story begins with a man and woman going on their honeymoon to the Grand Canyon. Inexplicably, the new wife starts acting strangely. When asked, it's because she is filled with feelings of dread and talks about some mumbo jumbo about them in past lives. She tosses him out of the bridal suite and he's stuck fending for himself.
While wandering about the Canyon, he meets a nice fellow, the Reverend Jack Moreland (William Boyd) who tells the hubby to put his faith in God. The hubby says he'll try being a Christian...but later gives it all up when his injured arm gets worse.
Shortly after, Moreland meets a flapper-type girl, Bess, and he becomes infatuated, though she had just flippantly agreed to marry some guy she just met.
Oddly, in the next scene, the newly weds return home to a party....and apparently they somehow patched things up. Moreland shows up to the party and begins spouting about having loved Bess in their past lives...a VERY odd thing for a Christian minister to say. Now, he be been Buddhist or Hindu...it would have made a lot more sense. The party guests make fun of the Reverend and Bess joins them in mocking 'ol Moreland. And, the hubby is made at God and gives up on his new faith. There's a lot more...and things get really strange when all the leads in the film just coincidentally end up on the same train bound for San Francisco! When it crashes, it somehow sends everyone back several centuries...and the characters do all sorts of wacky things.
If this all sounds like a weird confection of various religions and plots, you're right. As such, it's bound to be the type thing that would not appeal to various believers because it's such a hodgepodge. Likewise, most atheists and agnostics would find all the religious elements tedious and confusing.
Apart from some decent acting and some really exceptional cinematography, there isn't a lot to love about this film. Its plot is confusing, the intertitle cards are VERY heavy-handed and preachy and the overall picture is just strange...but not in a good way. And, I'm not sure if there really is even a point to all this story.
BY the way, get a load of the trainwreck sequence as the Reverend tries to protect Bess...and his hands end up on her boobs. That likely would have been edited out had the film come out during the Production Code era! This alone makes it worth seeing!
