Hardcore Plutography: High Finance on the Silver Screen

As I write this, Hollywood is rushing to bring some version of the R/WSB saga to the silver screen (working title The Antisocial Network?). Hopefully AMC Theatres will still be around to host the gala premiere? It occurred to me to start a thread to discuss the many (many, many) movies throughout film history that have shaped the popular understanding of finance. Contribute and comment as you feel inclined.

A Corner in Wheat (Griffith, 1909). Don't know if this is truly the first film addressing financial operations and their impact on the average person. But it did my heart good to see karma strike so directly.

L'Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962). Come for the glimpse of Jeanne Moreau's seins nus in a bathtub. Stay for the spectacle of traders briefly remembering a fallen comrade, only to plunge back into frenzied trading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPhF_YwWvoM

As mentioned on the other thread: not good, even with James Garner being James Garner. I only made it about 20 minutes in when I read the book about a decade ago.

no, you don't understand, "a corner in wheat" is the name of my dog!

Trading Places (Landis, 1983). This movie seems to have warped my girlish mind in ways that I am still now just discovering.

really miss morbs on these threads. :(

Wall Stree (Stone, 1987). Gordon Gekko is supposed to be the bad guy, right? Years ago at the World Bank I met peers who had clearly seen the film and thought "I want to do that!"

The big short

Wolf of wall st

Get em out of the way like

Grapes of wrath

working title The Antisocial Network?

The Big Squeeze?

I love Margin Call

ok but lol at the the 20 minute mark of Barbarians where they talk about early iterations of "smokeless" cigs smelling like farts

also a young Hank from Breaking Bad playing the scientist

Bulls and Bears (Sennett, 1930). A comic glimpse at the popular market frenzy that fueled the 1929 crash. Bud Jamison as a grocery clerk who spends more time on the phone with his broker than doing his nominal job might as well be Joe Kennedy's shoeshine boy with a hot market tip.

I worked at a grocery store one of the times they tried to launch the smokeless cigs, even we underage smokers wouldn't take them for free they were so bad.

The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese, 2013). I've already seen...anticipations?...of Margot Robbie, back in her bathtub, explaining "naked shorts" or whatever. Surely most of the audience for this film couldn't have told you what her lines said.

https://letterboxd.com/pollyprecoder/list/hardcore-plutography-high-finance-on-the/detail/

The related Letterboxd list.

The Big Squeeze?

― jmm, Monday, February 1, 2021 4:26 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Big Short II: Tendies Never Sleep?

I think the Margot Robbie explainer was in The Big Short

i really hate that insecure big short/laundromat style, comes off as v patronizing and smug to me.

"a dummy like you probably thinks numbers are boring, but they're actually exciting!!!"

there's a Wolf Of Wall Street from 1929?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020596/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5

also a British film called 'High Finance' from 1933 starring Ida Lupino but apparently no copies have survived

There's this one. Three hours tho!

L'Argent (1928)
The business tycoon Nicolas Saccard is nearly ruined by his rival Gunderman, when he tries to raise capital for his company. To push up the price of his stock, Saccard plans a publicity stunt involving the aviator Jacques Hamelin flying across the Atlantic to Guyana and drilling for oil there, much to the dismay of Hamelin's wife Line. While Hamelin is away, Saccard tries to seduce Line. Line finally realizes that she and her husband were pawns in Saccard's scheme, and she accuses him of stock fraud.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019646/

The Saphead (Smith & Blache, 1921). As a Buster Keaton vehicle it lacks in physical comedy; as a drama (or black comedy) of high finance it's dissatisfactory. However, there is a sequence showing a trading floor (and Buster gets to jump around and save the day). It's a remake of The Lamb, Douglas Fairbanks' 1915 film debut, but I haven't tracked it down yet.

there's a Wolf Of Wall Street from 1929?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020596/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5

Presumed lost, except for some Slavko Vorkapich montages that he retained (the one I saw struck me as very Terry Gilliam). Pity it's not available; George Bancroft's surviving performances in Underworld (1927) and Thunderbolt (1929) are brutally effective.

I love Margin Call

Me also. It very accurately reflects what Wall Street looked like on the day the bubble exploded in Sept 2008.

Boiler Room. Not bad, as I remember it--a bunch of aspiring stockbrokers watch Wall Street like it's the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArS16ZyOxLQ

Aimless otm, Margin Call is prob the best cinematic depiction of the look & feel of that place & time

There’s also a Wolves of Wall Street (2002), which I bought on dvd for €1, and remains an unbelievable waste of the time I spent watching it. The brokers are werewolves, Eric Roberts is in it, and he pisses on a character’s shoes to demonstrate dominance. All told, I would rather have kept my euro. Though the behaviour depicted seemed largely accurate tbfttwows.

I mean theres a number of hugely contradictory statements in that post

he pisses on a character’s shoes to demonstrate dominance

outrageous plagiarism from film classic WOLF (Nichols, 1994)

We call that Getting Giamattied now.

Learned it all as a kid from Rollover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDpsFPM2NF4

I love Margin Call

Me also. It very accurately reflects what Wall Street looked like on the day the bubble exploded in Sept 2008.

― Compromise isn't a principle, it's a method (Aimless), Monday, February 1, 2021 6:23 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Plus Jeremy Irons is perfectly blatant about being willing to take a small loss as long as their competitors take even bigger hits.

The further up the chain of command we go in Margin Call, the less the bankers know about the operation of the bank, even as their pay goes into the 10s of millions. The CEO Jeremy Irons flies in on a helicopter in the middle of the night and requests to be explained the problem ‘as you would to a small child or a dog’. Stuck with me did that.

Hell or High Water?

Hell or High Water?

Normally I'd exclude bank robbery films from this classification. But this movie has an interesting sense of strategically striking back against the financial order that has put the protagonists in their current place. Fine by me if you want to discuss it.

Yeah i feel it's fairly explicit as a theme but possibly not, tbf, high finance

Not a movie, but the McMafia miniseries gets into the drugs and murder that adhere like barnacles to many seemingly benign shell companies that float in and amongst various asset holdings

Would also very much like to see a good thriller set around freeports (that is not Tenet)

There was supposed to be a film in development about the Olympus financial scandal that led to the dismissal of its British CEO, Michael Woodford, but it seems to be stuck in development hell. Would definitely watch that.

L'eclisse has already been mentioned--here's a clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtxbbfENLdA

If you open this up to documentaries, there are lots, most of them appearing right after the 2008 meltdown.

has anyone else seen the new-ish tv series: Black Monday?

I keep thinking that there are a bunch of things I've seen but can't remember the names, which is possible, but mostly it's a bunch of books I've read, and a number of shows/movies that briefly refer to things in the books but aren't really "about that"

Though another ugh-xample would be Schindler's List

though i could be confusing it with another movie involving financial speculation and genocide ...

Constant Gardener!

Alain Resnais' Stavisky, about the guy who wrecked France's economy prior to WW2.

has anyone else seen the new-ish tv series: Black Monday?

entering this thread to say I'm watching it and it is great