Jiggs in Society

In a cavernous metropolis that never decides whether it is New York, Vienna or a cardboard dream of both, Jiggs—an obstreperous Irish navvy turned overnight millionaire—thunders through silk-curtained drawing rooms like a rogue comet scorching pristine nebulae. His sudden affluence, wrested from a mining claim so absurdly rich it feels conjured by a drunken leprechaun, catapults him and his indomitable spouse Maggie into a labyrinth of chandeliers, white gloves and fork-counting tyrants. Yet the comedy is not the brute clash of accents but the erosion of identity: Jiggs’s brogue, once the music of pub camaraderie, becomes a gavel beating against the marble hush of opera boxes; Maggie’s dreams of social apotheosis curdle into masquerade as she learns that pedigree is spelled in whispers, not dollars. Around them orbit counterfeit dukes, predatory dowagers, a gigolo with a smile like switch-blade chrome, and a manic heiress who pirouettes between champagne stupor and suicidal balcony pirouettes. The plot pirouettes too—through botched fox-hunts, a counterfeit charity bazaar, a courtroom fiasco where justice wears two left shoes, and a climactic masquerade ball lit by chandeliers that seem to drip molten ice. By the time Jiggs, in a drunken epiphany, torches the tuxedo and plunges back to the clamorous tavern where a single fiddle can outshout a hundred violins, the film has asked a ravishing question: if society is a costume, who are we when the seams split?