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6.9/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.9/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Wolf of Wall Street remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you came here looking for the movie with the guy from Titanic and the Quaaludes, you are in the wrong place. This is the 1929 version, and it is much more of a downer.
Is it worth watching? Only if you really like old-fashioned melodramas where people stare intensely at ticker tape machines. If you hate slow movies with scratchy audio, you should probably skip it entirely.
George Bancroft plays the main guy, and he has this very heavy, imposing presence. He is a stockbroker who decides to start selling short in the copper business.
Basically, he bets that the market will crash. He is right, but he ends up destroying his friends' finances just to prove he's the smartest man in the room.
The scene where he’s just watching the ticker tape go through his fingers feels like it lasts five minutes. You can see him getting more excited as other people lose their shirts.
It’s actually kind of gross to watch. Not because of blood or anything, but just the way he smiles while his buddies are going broke.
Olga Baclanova is here too, playing the wife. She has these incredible eyes that seem to see right through everyone.
She’s much more interesting than the lead, honestly. I wish the movie spent more time on her reaction to the chaos than the actual stock market math.
There is a weird bit of dialogue during a dinner scene where the sound gets all muffled. It’s one of those early sound movie problems where you can tell they were hiding the microphone in a flower vase or something.
It makes the actors stand very still, which feels super awkward. It’s like they’re afraid to move and ruin the take.
If you’ve seen Fools and Their Money, you know the vibe. It’s that era where movies were obsessed with how money makes people crazy.
I think The Great Divide handled the drama a bit better than this one. This one gets a little bit too bogged down in the business talk.
The way he ruins his best friend is just cold. There’s no big fight, just a slow realization that they’ve been betrayed for a few extra dollars.
One shot of a man’s face when he realizes he’s lost everything lingers way too long. It starts to feel like you’re intruding on something private.
The movie doesn't really have a happy ending. It just sort of stops once the damage is done.
I kind of respected that. It doesn't try to wrap everything up with a bow or make you feel better about what you just watched.
It’s a bit of a relic, but a mean one. 📉
IMDb —
1920
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