Reviews

Movies are generally praised when the characters are multidimensional with gray blurred morality spaces. That sounds fine, after all it is a better reflection of real life compared to perfect divine heroes and pure innocent girls.

But not every story can function within a gray morality space.(think of fairy tales and simple stories about love, good vs evil and ...) . A common problem with films after the mid to late 1910s is the "grayification" of characters in these simple stories, combine that with how preachy films at the time are, you end up with tons of films that don't actually deliver the seemingly simple message of the story and only come off as hypocrites.

Take this film for example, imagine being rich for god knows how many years, moaning over a boy while your mom is slaving away. Imagine putting yourself in this moral high ground while condescendingly throwing coins for people and constantly showing off your success and riches and overall, acting like a complete b**** and all of that is ok because some boy couldn't leave his home to come with you to paris. WHAT A PIECE OF S***, am i right?! Doesn't he know that's a sin. He's being unfaithful and that's THE worst crime. Unless he's being unfaithful to his fiance in my favor, then it's ok, it's beautiful actually since, didn't you know? I'm the main character, not her. One should fight for love after all, until he gets married, then he should torture himself and his wife and grow children in a house without love until he dies.

Saying the story doesn't make sense and the preaching is hypocritical is really an understatement and to think, this film isn't even close to being the most nonsensical "grayified" sermon I've seen. DeMille's filmography alone provides more case studies than you'll ever need.

As for the cinematography, it is so standard and typical of the time, it's boring to even think about. The only thing it has going for it is that the duration isn't long enough to make the film itself boring.

I also don't understand the praisals of Greta Garbo's "subtle" performance. She lashes out and laughs manically like a teenager roleplaying as a pirate. I personally don't see any subtlety here and the other characters are all too hollow for me to expect anything from the actors.

Another praisal of the film is for the torrent sequence. I tend not to discuss these scenes since whenever i complain "that's obvious cardboard/plastic/clay!" i'm greeted with "it was amazing for it's time" or "people back then couldn't tell its just cardboard". I personally am not 100 years old and can't tell what people back then would think. There are many silent films that don't suffer from these and by juxtaposition alone people should've been able to tell but i don't know. As for this scene in particular, the scales are obviously wrong and the boat is transparent. I leave the "what people in 1920s would think?" to you.

Thanks for reading.

The first 100 minutes of this roughly 160 min film is a complete bore. I'll be the first to admit i don't know much about the stock market and how it works but i don't think i need to be an expert in econometrics to enjoy a film yet that's how i felt during the first 100 mins. Its unusual for a story to care so much about such details and i would commend it if it was used to showcase how finances can go wrong in a brutally realistic way even if i don't understand it but the film throws all of that away to focus on simple lies and mischiefs, effectively making the first half of the film pointless. And is it me or a bank's financial state should be reliable enough and hedged correctly not to be completely dependant on whether a plane crashes?

Thankfully, the film picks up after the 100 min mark and is a good enough watch until the end.

The characters are more multidimensional than i expected for a film called "L'Argent". During the opening, saccard is shown to have lost his fortune. 15 mins later he goes to a restaurant where his peers visit and he doesn't seem to actually care about the money. After interacting with people that prefer to ignore his existence and seeing Line Hamelin (played by Marie Glory) he decides to lie his way back to success. Maybe he wanted respect? Maybe love, maybe money to buy love? Hard to say.

The same goes for line, she condemns saccard for "having only one creed ... money" yet she has no problem enjoying all the gifts and spending couple hundred thousand francs without hesitation. She tells her husband she "wants money for him" but none of her actions reflect that. She's far from the innocent girl she acts like.

Unfortunately, this depth and "greyness" of characters hurt the overall story. If the story was supposed to be about greed and money corrupts/enslaves, it actually never sent that message and how everything was blamed on saccard was moronic since everyone else used that money as well and "the heroic flight of hamelin was made possible by a single force". The ending was as idiotic as saccard blaming everything on gunderman.

As for the cinematography, regardless of whether you find the different unique shots brilliant or gimmicky, it suffers from inconsistency. Its obvious more care and attention was given to the first and last 20 mins of the film. As a result , you go from a shaking displaced rotation around an overwhelmed character in a large room with a map as paint to 2 hours of normal generic close-ups during conversations and amateurish fast cutting when saccard tries to force himself on line.

Thanks for reading.