600000 francs par mois

When bored American billionaire Charles Vanel is amused by the happiness of poor railroad man Nicolas Koline, he offers him a wager: if Koline and his family can spend 20,000 francs a day (about $11,000 in current American money) for a year, then he'll give him a nice pension. The rest of the movie is about the poor man and his family's efforts to win the bet.

The copy I looked at was derived form a Pathe-Baby cutdown, so I expect it was originally longer than the 51 minutes it took me to watch this version. I also suspect it was not a series of titles, followed by brief clips -- illustrated text movie-making in 1926 seems unlikely. In addition, the people involved (except for the screenwriter) had healthy movie careers. Koline (who also directed the movie) was one of the Russian emigree actors who did so well; he had appeared in Gance's NAPOLEON and he worked until 1955, retired to Long Island and died in 1966, age 88. Vanel also had a long career, starting out on screen and appearing in more than 150 features through 1988; he died the following year, almost 97.

It's an amusing set-up out of BREWSTER'S MILLIONS, but the lack on ornamentation in the shortened version doesn't leave that much pleasure.

Cinema has always had a fascination with stories of sudden wealth. It's almost a collective therapy: we watch someone who's never had money drown in luxury and, between one champagne glass and another, we wonder if we would do it differently. 600,000 francs par mois (1926) fits into this tradition with the ease of someone who's in no rush to spend a fortune. Similar to the classic premise of Brewster's Millions, the film follows a modest railway worker who, through a bet with a bored millionaire, must spend 600,000 francs per month for a year. And of course, this leads to a dive into high society and all the comic disasters that come with the package.

The big difference here is that the bet doesn't carry the same sense of urgency or tension as its cinematic counterparts. There's no suffocating pressure to follow absurd rules or an antagonist waiting to pull the rug out from under the protagonist. Instead, the journey feels more like a big opportunity for the hero to experience life as a rich man, without the paranoia of being one step away from failure. The film shines when it places this former worker in extravagant situations: overly generous tips, theaters where he steals the spotlight unwittingly, and, of course, the classic disaster at the casino-where, instead of losing everything, he ends up winning more money, to his own frustration.

If there's one thing to lament, it's that 600,000 francs par mois could have had even more fun with its premise. The protagonist doesn't seem to face many real obstacles to spending the fortune, and the lack of explicit rules takes away some of the strategic flavor that this kind of story usually has. Unlike Brewster's Millions (1985), where a protagonist surrounded by parasites and exploiters turns the mission into a true game of financial survival, here there's no race against time or characters trying to take advantage of the situation. It feels as though the protagonist is just enjoying a year of vacation financed by an eccentric millionaire-which, let's face it, isn't the worst life.

Technically, the film has the charm expected from silent cinema of the era. There's no soundtrack, but the cast holds the narrative well, especially the protagonist, who conveys a genuine joy of someone finally living the good life. His wife, more skeptical and argumentative, also adds good dynamics to the story. And, as is customary, there's even an unlikely romance, this time between the millionaire and the railway worker's daughter-because money and love always go hand in hand in cinema.

In the end, 600,000 francs par mois is an interesting curiosity within the subgenre of comedies about unexpected fortunes. It's not an essential piece or a great rediscovery, but it has its value as an early example of how this narratively delicious formula was already being explored in the cinema of the 1920s. For those interested in this type of story, it's worth checking out-if you can find it, of course.