(That’s why casting an everyman like DeVito was a stroke of genius.)That’s you, me, and everyone else who invests in a retirement portfolio.“Ah, it is that way he escaped!” he exclaimed.Although the movie has a serious message and takes a dark turn, it does so with a comedic edge.“She is not married yet, although she is past twenty, and pretty as a rosebud.We see that it is empty except for defending other people’s money.It is amazing how good an argument he makes.But it’s difficult to like the guy when we see how callously he treats women and how inappropriate he is in his dealings with Kate.And, eighteen months after his wife’s death, he had already spent a large portion of his fortune, when he fell into the hands of an adventuress, whom, without regard for his daughter, he audaciously brought beneath his own roof.The stairs, with wrought iron balusters, are wide and easy, and the ceilings twelve feet high.
is the right actor to play Larry the Liquidator. He doesn’t have to say that he uses big piles of money to compensate for the lack of love in his life. We know.He was a man of weak mind,—one of those marked in advance to play the part of eternal dupes.“Bash!” said he:“God blesses large families.”The dwelling was fit for the man; and every thing from the very hall, betrayed his peculiarities.For the man had one passion,—money.Larry is a smart man. That’s one of his appeals. He is also immensely likable, except when he is trying to strip-mine the family firm.The movie is set up as a struggle between Larry the Liquidator, the Manhattan-based predator, and Jorgy (Gregory Peck in his final feature film role), the salt-of-the-earth president of New England Wire & Cable. Larry, who already owns a chunk of the company’s stock, decides that it’s undervalued.After a while, and unable to hold in any longer:“Quick,” said he, “look!Speaking of the—you know—It is twenty minutes past five, there is M. Favoral coming home.”“I knew I was right,” he said.And holding out a paper to Mme. Favoral:Walking with his head down, he seemed to be seeking upon the pavement the very spot upon which he had set his foot in the morning, that he might set it back again there in the evening.She gave her consent; and, twenty days after the first interview, she had become Mme. Favoral.“He is above all peculiar,” continued the shop-keeper, “like most men of figures, it seems.
For him this was sublime.He conceived nothing beyond.They need each other and they know it, and they spar with this unspoken knowledge in a series of wonderful scenes, including a lunch in a Japanese restaurant and a telephone conversation during which he serenades her on his violin.They continued silent.No one in the dining-room knew what might have taken place in the other room; and a single word might be treason.Each one felt as if he had a share of the disgrace of this police invasion.“Where is Mme. Favoral?” resumed the commissary, evidently well informed.After the war, her father tried to make her marry a stock-broker, a stylish man who always came in a two-horse carriage; but she refused him outright.I should not be a bit surprised to hear that she has some love-affair of her own.She was an only daughter; and her parents, wealthy silk-merchants, had brought her up like the daughter of an archduchess desired to marry some sovereign prince.But at fifteen she had lost her mother.He is smitten but being in love isn’t enough to derail his business interests.The curtains had been turned so as to display their least worn side.Nothing will work.There's only one thing I like better: Other people's money.”She must have had a sweet time of it with her maniac of a husband!To his office, as to a lay confessional, all passions fatally lead.Any thing appeared to her preferable to the contact of a woman whom she abhorred and despised.