Summary
With his country on the brink of bankruptcy, the prime minister of Casinaria appeals to
Monsieur Banco, the richest man in the world, to come to his aid. In return, Banco
is allowed to marry the Princess Isabelle. Shortly after his arrival in Casinaria,
Banco receives a blow to the head in an accident. When he recovers, he is a rambling
idiot - but the country’s leaders merely regard this as harmless eccentricity, a veil
for his unrivalled intellect. It is only a matter of time before Casinaria
becomes a dictatorship, with everyone blindly following the merest utterance of their
deranged saviour...
Review
Having achieved some success with his fanciful musical comedies, such as Le
Million (1931) and Le
Quatorze juillet (1933) director René Clair was eager to make a more socially
relevant film. Le Dernier milliardaire is a keenly observed satire and arguably
Clair’s most sophisticated work at that time. The film can now be seen as being
disturbingly prophetic, anticipating the rise of fascism across Europe, culminating in
the Third Reich.
Unfortunately for its
director, political upheavals in France (such as the riots of 1934) meant that the cinema-going
public had little appetite for this kind of socially relevant comedy. Despite an
excellent script and a monumental comic performance from Max Dearly, the film proved to
be an enormous flop, prompting Clair into a self-imposed professional exile.
It would be 12 years before he next made a film in his native France.
© James Travers 2002
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