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5.7/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.7/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Inflation remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Only if you are a completionist of early instructional cinema or have a weird obsession with how they explained the Great Depression to people who were living through it. Everyone else? Probably not.
It’s not trying to be a blockbuster, obviously. But man, it’s dry. Imagine your most monotone professor standing in front of a chalkboard while a projector whirs in the background. That’s the vibe.
Pete Smith is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. He’s trying to keep things light, but the material is just too dense to move like a real movie. It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in Birthday Blues, except instead of childhood chaos, we get the crushing weight of the banking system.
The whole thing feels like it was filmed in a single afternoon between lunch and tea. There’s no scenery to speak of. Just guys in suits pointing at charts and looking very concerned about the money supply.
Sometimes they hold up stacks of cash like it’s supposed to illustrate the point better. It just looks like guys holding paper.
I caught myself staring at the wall behind the actors for about three minutes straight. The wallpaper pattern is actually more interesting than the dialogue about unemployment cycles.
It’s weird to think about people in 1933 watching this to 'get' their reality. It’s like watching a tutorial on how to fix a car engine when the car is already upside down in a ditch.
Anyway, it’s a short. It doesn't overstay its welcome. It just kind of exists, like a smudge on a lens you can't quite wipe off. If you want a better look at the social anxieties of the era, you’re probably better off watching something like The Stormy Petrel instead.
At least this one doesn't pretend to be high art. It’s just blunt, functional, and deeply, deeply unexciting.