Summary
In the hushed, gas-lit opulence of a Prohibition-era suburbia where mahogany sideboards once groaned under cut-crystal decanters, Henry Carpenter—part Gatsby, part Elmer Gantry—presides over a dwindling empire of cork and legend. His cellar, once a cathedral of Claret and Champagne, now echoes like a drained baptistery; yet the neighbors still genuflect at the myth of its inexhaustible bounty. When the Volstead Act’s shadow falls, Henry transmutes scarcity into spectacle: he mounts a mahogany table, waves a trembling goblet like Savonarola’s torch, and denounces the very nectar that forged his social crown. The tirade ignites a political wildfire; suddenly the man who never finished a speech without hiccupping is the temperance movement’s messiah, courted by frock-coated kingmakers who smell votes in his sweat. On the eve of a dinner party that will either coronate or expose him, his aunt—part bloodhound, part Bacchante—unearths twenty-one hermetically sealed crates of 1906 Château d’Yquem and 1900 Perrier-Jouët Belle Époque, the liquid equivalent of buried Confederate gold. The camera lingers on Henry’s face as the labels flicker in candlelight like stained-glass windows in a collapsing chapel: salvation or damnation bottled at 12.5 percent alcohol. He staggers between ballot boxes and ballot-bubbles, between the hiss of soda siphons and the hosannas of constituency picnics, until the film ruptures the fourth wall and deposits the moral grenade in our lap—an electrifying flourish that turns the drawing-room farce into Pirandellian agony.
Synopsis
Henry Carpenter and his wife Millicent are the envy of their exclusive suburban set because of their abundant wine cellar, a blessing in the face of the recent prohibition against alcohol initiated by the Volstead Act. In reality, Henry is down to his last few bottles, and, faced with an impending dinner party, he decides to save face by denouncing the evils of drink. His impassioned speech earns him the support of the Prohibition party for a Congressional seat. Henry is relishing his popularity when his aunt discovers twenty-one cases of rare wine in the cellar, forcing the candidate to choose between political and social success. In despair, he asks the audience viewing the film, "What would you do?"
