|
Plot:
- by Zoë
Shaw
Ernest Bliss has inherited £2,000,000 and bets £50,000 that he can earn
his own living for a year without using any of his fortune for himself. He
has various jobs and looks set to win the wager. However, he breaks the
terms a few days before he would win, when he finds that his sweetheart (whom
he met in his first job) is going to marry her employer in order to provide
a home for her sick sister.
Review:
- by Debbie
Dunlap
Ernest Bliss is a rich, young man with too little to do and
too much money to do it with; he suffers from "ennui." Not realizing the
depression he's in is due to boredom, Ernest consults a doctor. Sir James Aldroyd,
disgusted that a healthy young man is ill simply because of laziness and an indulgent
lifestyle, gives Ernest a prescription he doesn't think Ernest can fill: Ernest must earn
his own living for one year using none of his current wealth. Ernest bets him 50,000
English pounds that he can.
Ernest learns the true value of effort through working; the
value of humankind, both good and bad, through living amongst the masses; the love of a
good woman not dependent upon his monetary value; and the blessing and responsibility of
possessing money.
Though Ernest wins his bet, he nonetheless pays the doctor
the 50,000 pounds: his token of appreciation for all he's learned over the course of the
past year.
VARIETY
Film Review - August 26, 1936
- by "Jolo"
- submitted by Barry Martin
E. Phillips Oppenheim's story (filmed years ago as a silent) is a
bit old-fashioned and present-day filmgoers may regard it as
implausible. Coincidences are highly improbable, and the
whole thing, despite excellent direction and acting, moves at a
pace that demands a large measure of cutting before being offered
to the general public.
Implausibilities include an elderly
lodging house keeper who refuses to oust a man from his room,
despite arrears of rent, when she could get cash from someone
else. Also encountering his former gold-digger mistress who,
finding him working as a chauffeur, deliberately leaves her
diamond bracelet in his car.
In the end everything comes out all
right, of course, and he is enabled to provide liberally for all
those who were kind to him during his self-imposed poverty.
There is a mechanical progression
in the photographic sequences which lacks credence, but this may
be fixed by cutting, thereby speeding up the movement towards the
story's culmination.
Cary Grant looks and acts the part
with deft characterization. He secures laughs easily and
apparently without effort. Mary Brian plays the role of the
typist with a metallic harshness which would be more in keeping
with the gold-digger. One expects more feminine softness and
sympathy from such a role. Most of the other actors and
actresses are adequate, and production details are very
good.
Review
Click here to read Jenny's Crackpot
Reviews at the Cary Grant Shrine
<< Back to Reviews
| Top of Page
|
