Fascinating fact-inspired fiction (click to enlarge newspaper -with SPOILERS - below) stars Warren William in top Pre-Code form as a ruthless capitalist cad who ‘saves’ his Swedish hometown match factory by raising an unsecured bank loan, then continues rolling over bigger & bigger loans until he’s cornered the world market. 200 matches/a penny a box: worth billions. But if he ever stops growing, it will all catch up to him: Personally from the women he’s used for spying & sexual blackmail to gain state monopolies; Financially since he needs the next loan to cover the last. He can’t go on forever, but what might take him down? Corporate honesty? Unlikely. An eccentric inventor with a reusable match? Suppressible. An affair with an actress that turns into the real thing? Possibly. The economics, vague & simplistic, are enough to get the ideas across; the personal cost believable; and the film seems to turn the corner from Early Talkies to Talkie Maturity halfway along. (Did directing duties pass from Howard Bretherton to William Keighley at some middle point?) Lili Damita (later Mrs Errol Flynn) probably has her best role as William’s romantic Achilles Heel (she’s certainly gorgeous enough), but all the supporting roles are memorably taken with an exceptional turn from Harold Huber as a counterfeiter with fake Italian bonds to sell. Marvelous stuff; suicide by PONZI!
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Maxwell, the newspaper tycoon who compounded one fraud on top of the last to keep his empire going, has much in common with William’s character. And the same might be said of MR. ARKADIN/’55, Orson Welles’ thrilling & maddening film about a secretive tycoon investigating himself.
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