The Trouble with Money

Ferdinand, a cashier, has the money bag he is carrying snatched in the street. Nobody believes him; he is assumed to have taken it himself, and his reputation is finished in a day. Then something strange happens: with his name in the papers over the same incident, people start to think he is rich, and companies queue up to go into business with him. The subject is not theft but how reputation is manufactured. Ferdinand does nothing at all; everyone simply assumes he knows something, and the assumption feeds itself. Made during the slump, the film says outright that money is a social fiction rather than a material fact. The form is unexpectedly experimental: sections open with song, a chorus intervenes, and the narration mocks itself from time to time. Max Ophüls' flowing camera is here too. Ophüls made the film in the Netherlands during his exile after leaving Germany, so it is the work of a director moving country to country, shot in Dutch with a local cast. It went largely unremarked there for a long time and was reassessed later. Herman Bouber plays Ferdinand and Rini Otte his daughter. Who it is for: anyone curious about European comedy of the thirties and Ophüls' least known period. Who it is not for: viewers who want a consistent tone; the film keeps shifting between realism and fantasy.