Cinema: Shapely Ironies

THE WONDERFUL CROOK Directed and Written by CLAUDE GORETTA

The Wonderful Crook would have given Karl Marx the willies. It describes a diffident young capitalist, Pierre Vauchez, who takes over the family furniture factory after his father's stroke and finds that the business is virtually broke. Pierre cares too much about the workers and their traditional craft to close the factory, so he fakes orders, carts away shipments to be burned secretly and, in his simplest and most desperate expedient, begins pulling armed robberies to meet the payroll. Talk about bourgeois paternalism! Letting the workers profit from the boss's labor may be...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!