The House of Rothschild (1934)
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The House of Rothschild Movie Review
The House of Rothschild is a 1934 historical film directed by Alfred L. Werker and starring George Arliss, Loretta Young and Boris Karloff. It’s a fine, but expectedly bland flick.
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“To trade with dignity,
to live with dignity,
to walk the world with dignity“
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The film chronicles the rise to power of the Rothschild family of European bankers and the various struggles they faced during that rise, especially with Anti-Semitism. This is obviously a highly famous family as one of the richest in the near history and the movie focuses on them well, but still the plot involving banking, money and transactions and so on… That isn’t really suitable ever for a cinematic feature.
But what pleasantly surprised me here was its handling of Anti-Semitism. It was solidly handled and some scenes are quite strong, especially in terms of the dialogue. Although nowhere near as strong as some of the 40s films with this subject matter would be, the filmmakers still need to be commended for making such an early film about this issue.
The characters are beyond forgettable, bland and boring. None of them was ever remotely memorable to me and that’s a problem as this family needed better portrayals and that was simply never on the table here. But the acting performances are good themselves with George Arliss being particularly strong in his role which is rich in screen time.
The House of Rothschild has one huge problem that it simply never overcame and that is its entirely non-cinematic approach to telling this story. Maybe this particular story never could have been particularly cinematic, but still I expected much more or they shouldn’t have made it in the first place.
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It’s simply stagy as hell and very theatrical in its feel. The costumes, the cinematography, the score and the overall look and sound of the movie are highly uninspired and boring and simply dated. That’s why the movie was only nominated for one Oscar and nothing else. Still, it did not deserve its Best Picture nomination for all these reasons and especially for its somewhat unsubtle approach and very mediocre editing and pacing throughout its runtime.
The House of Rothschild solidly deals with Anti-Semitism and it’s commendable in that regard as a very early film about this issue. It’s also quite well acted. But the characters are bland and boring and the movie is never cinematic at all and rather stagey due to mediocre cinematography, score, editing and the overall look and feel to it are never cinematic.
