The Match King

TCM aired The Match King yesterday morning at 3:00 AM, shown as one of the last movies in its Thursday night series of October movies from the Great Depression. Its previous showing on TCM, as I recall, was in 2005 as one of the favorite movies of guest programmer Stephen Sondheim. The Match King demonstrates a mastery of editing that puts this movie in a class of its own, with the final montage of mini-scenes decades ahead of its time.

In The Racing Form, the capsule description for a horse winning a race by pulling away from the others at race's end is "driving." That describes this movie, which moves at a headlong pace throughout, as it describes the career of crooked businessman Paul Kroll, a fictional version of Ivar Krueger, the real-life match king, who just died in 1932. The same year The Match King was rushed into production at Warner Bros., Hal Wallis the uncredited supervisor, Darryl Zanuck the studio production chief doing his usual job of making movies ripped from the newspaper headline pages of the time.

At the movie's end, Kroll's partners are at a meeting where they now realize they all face economic ruin as Kroll's business empire is about to collapse. Their first though is, sell all their shares before the public finds out. The cynicism in this scene is a capper for what went on before, as Kroll sells down the river almost everyone he has dealings with, including going as far as murder and getting one problem person locked up for life in an insane asylum to shut him up for good. This movie shows the influence of 1932, the bottom year of the Depression, when many people though all businessmen were thieves and crooks who wrecked the world's economy. The more things change, the more. . .

Even with all the technical mastery available now to Hollywood filmmakers now, no studio can come close to the greatness of The Match King, made only two years after Warner Bros. scrapped its Vitaphone sound discs to switch to sound on film cameras. The Match King shows there is something to be said for a movie studio run like Warner Bros., a real slave labor operation where quitting time was not 5 or 6 PM, but when the day's scheduled work was done, which could be 2:00 AM the following morning. A studio where the words "income security" did not exist, as Jack Warner strove to cut everyone's salary, actors' employment contracts be damned (with no worry for craft union contracts, there were none then in non-union Hollywood).

There was a downside to Jack Warners' cheapness. One of the hardest working actors on the Warners lot was Warren William, but apparently when his contract was up in 1936, he went off the Warner Bros. studio payroll. William joined a parade of other acting talent in the repertory company that Zanuck created when he was in charge of hiring actors before he quit in 1933. Looking back now, it seems incredible that the Warner Bros. dream factory could make one high quality movie after another in 1932, usually with a 3 week production schedule (6 day work weeks with no overtime pay) on a budget of around $150,000.

In this year of 2009, as the financial world is again enmeshed in worldwide economic downturn caused by thieves in business suits, thieves now who sold near worthless derivatives to investors on a massive scale, Hollywood turns out hit movies dealing with robots and teenage vampires. A far cry from 1932, cinema wise. There are no movies in fast production now involving the Madoff Ponzi scheme, the strange death of Madoff investor Jeffrey Picower or the subprime mortgage meltdown. The big corporations that run the Hollywood studios are not about to produce movies that remind moviegoers about the real life wreckage of the U.S. economy. Ripping movies from current headlines is not done anymore, especially making grim movies like The Match King. That is just too bad for moviegoers. Good thing there is TCM to finally show The Match King again, a movie about a real world in 1932 that does not seem that far away today.

When Orson Welles made Mr.Arkadin, he was inspired by two remarkable figures: "Merchant of Death" Basil Zaharoff and "Match King" Ivar Krueger. The whole Zaharoff story has never been brought to the screen, though he was a key figure in that delightful British series, Reilly: Ace Of Spies. The even more incredible tale of Ivar Krueger was brought to the screen shortly after his suicide in Paris, in this obscure, but brilliant "roman a' clef" film from the poor man's major studio, Warner Brothers. This film is incredible, Somehow, two minor directors, unknown writers, and an obscure cinematographer combined to bring a film of considerable power and narrative originality to the screen. Did I mention the acting? That is what really drives the film. The still under-rated and obscure Warren William puts in an remarkably subtle performance as the brilliant, ruthless Kroll, who used borrowed (and stolen) money to build a world -wide empire from the manufacture and sale of that most commonplace and useful of objects, the match. Kroll lies, steals ans seduces. He has a brilliant inventor stuck in a booby hatch. He does not even shrink from murder. In the end, he is destroyed by his obsessive love for a Hungarian actress and his own belief in his invulnerability. In short, this is both an interesting example of how the old studio system could put together an stunning story with ordinary talent and of the far too little appreciated artistry of Warren William.

Three years into the Depression, America was cynical of the institutions that had led to a system which had failed, and resentful of its professional classes. Films like 'The Match King' really illustrate this, and if for nothing else, they're worth watching for that reason. With Warren William playing a guy who rises to the top of the match empire through his ruthless behavior and cheating the system, you may see some parallels in the businessmen of today as well.

In the film, William will do anything to individuals around him or in the world at large to advance his own power and prosperity. It's all a giant game to him, one in which he cautions others to "never worry about anything 'til it happens, then I'll take care of it" usually before screwing them over. He borrows money to revive the family's business in matches, and then borrows still more money to pay off the first loan and expand the business - going into debt heavily in a pyramid scheme. He is comfortable in debt, heedless of what it might mean for the future, an approach that is mostly form and marketing, with little substance. He plays on the public's ignorance, pushing the myth about "three on a match" spelling doom in order to increase demand. He digs up dirt on people to use it as leverage to expand his business. He shows his character most when an inventor has come up with a breakthrough - a reusable match - which would clearly be great for humanity, but which might threaten his bottom line, so he schemes to have him silenced.

The scene with the inventor is interesting both for what William says and for what he doesn't say. He simply asks how much it cost to make the reusable matches, and whether anyone else knows about it, which shows he has only business in mind (it should also be noted that ironically, he doesn't care to use matches of any type himself, preferring a lighter instead). He doesn't ask anything at all about how the technology works, how many times the match can be used, whether the materials are safe, how the scientist figured this out or if there are other applications, etc - he doesn't care about any of that stuff. This is not some benevolent, enlightened businessman who is pushing humanity forward with his own personal success; he's the polar opposite of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark. We see a cold-blooded criminal in the white collared world, one who plays classical piano and speaks eloquently instead of toting a gun, but is a criminal nonetheless. We also of course see the deep cynicism America had towards businessmen in the 1930's.

William gives a fine performance, even if he was typecast. The film falters a bit in his love interest (Lili Damita), which is a bit of a clunky subplot. I loved the retrospective sequence showing the consequences of his actions, which I thought was a nice touch. If only those thoughts ran through the minds of all corporate crooks.

This gangster-styled story set in the world of business shows the rise of a janitor Paul Kroll, who as a janitor in the US returns to Sweden and rises to own and become a monopoly in the world matches business using unscrupulous and immoral antics. You know he has to fall. Good acting by the always good Warren William and an extremely beautiful LIly Damita as the "woman". The difference between making the movie today, than back then, would be the lack of melodrama between the William and Damita character (heck! it was the era of the woman's picture) Formulaic stuff but good formula all the same with an unusually expensive look (good cinematography, tons of location shooting, great sets, lots of wide shots) for a WB thirties picture tells you this was probably an expected blockbuster in the year of 1932.

Though the script could have used a rewrite, mainly to upgrade the dialogue, Warren William's presence makes the film worth watching. He plays a lying, evil, conniving, and utterly ruthless human dynamo who works his way up from janitor to international power broker.In other words, a typical Depression-era anti-hero. Especially enjoyable is the penultimate flashback sequence, in which William remembers every rotten thing he's ever done. In a word, fun.