Le Dernier milliardaire (1934) - film review

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...

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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