The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo

This morning I watched The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, since it's available on DVD courtesy of the Fox MOD scheme.

Ronald Colman plays Paul Gaillard, who shows up in the film's opening scene at a baccarat table in one of the casinos of Monte Carlo. He bets all he has on a single hand, and wins! He then rides this bet and wins a whole bunch of times, until he's amassed a sum of ten million French francs, which was supposedly a substantial sum back in the mid-1930s. This is enough to break the bank; Paul couldn't play any more if he wanted to because the casino doesn't have any cash on hand to pay out winning bets. All this is newsworthy, and the casino is willing to take the rare loss like this because of the publicity. But Paul points out that his gambling winnings were pure dumb luck and that nobody else should try it. That, the casino can't countenance because it's bad publicity.

Paul returns to Paris, meeting the lovely Helen (Joan Bennett) along the way. He's immediately smitten with her and wants to romance her, but she turns him down at every opportunity, seemingly in part because she's on the train with her brother Bertrand (Colin Clive). Both Paul and Helen have ulterior motives, however. As for Paul, when he returns to Paris, he goes straight to the Café Russe, where it's revealed that Paul is a Russian émigré of noble background, and the money he's won is going to finance the Russian émigré community in Paris, so that they can live in at least a bit of comfort.

Helen and Bertrand, however, were hired by the casino manager. The casino was rather insistent that Paul come back and gamble some more. It's not so much that they wanted to win back all the money that Paul won, although that would be a nice side benefit. Instead, they want him back to undo all the bad publicity over his saying he wouldn't be gambling again and that, by extension, nobody else should be gambling in the casinos either. The casino has hired the lovely Helen to lure Paul and use her sex appeal to get him to go back to Monte Carlo.

Helen does lure Paul to Monte Carlo, in part because of that sex appeal, and in part because Bertrand is so villainous at doing his part of the job. But along the way, Helen begins to fall in love with Paul, not realizing his real past. So she begins to develop a sense of doubt about the job she's supposed to be doing....

When I saw the box guide synopsis of The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, my first thought was of the later Café Metropole. There are certainly some similarities, but also important differences. The box guide listed The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo as a comedy, but I don't think that's quite right, as it's rather darker in tone than the extremely light Café Metropole. That darker tone is something that I think doesn't work in the movie's favor, as it seems to be a bit too serious at times. Still, Colman and the rest all do good jobs with the material they're provided. Even if some of that material is a bit daft.

The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo isn't a bad movie, although I don't know that I'd pay Fox MOD prices for the DVD.