Boom Town (1940, USA) – Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable are oil prospectors (and occasional thieves) who strike big, go bust, fall out, make up, etc. etc. This goes on for about 20 years. There Will Be Free Market Ideology, (a little bit, at the end – yay!) Watched it all.

The Bank Dick (1940, USA) – I’ve been disappointed by the comedies of this period. Even including the occasional funny screwball comedy, the first to hold up to even a lesser Marx Brothers is this W. C. Fields movie. The plot .. ah, who cares? I laughed. Watched it all.

Seven Sinners (1940, USA) – Marlene Dietrich has fallen since her earlier movies, which this feels like a regurgitation of. Watched: 15 minutes.

Die Rothschilds – Aktien auf Waterloo (1940, Germany) – When I watched The House of Rothschild, a pro-Jewish movie about the rise of the Rothschild bank, I had no idea how influential it had been on anti-semitic German movies. Die Ewige Jude used a distorting sample from it to prove Jewish greed, and this movies refutes it, retelling the same events from an anti-semitic and anti-capitalist perspective. Watched: 25 minutes.

The Ghost Breakers (1940, USA) – It was a dark and stormy night. The lights went out, and Bob Hope told a joke about painting his stupid black servant white, so he could see him in the dark. Watched: 8 minutes.