Forbes’ story on “The Ten Greatest Business Movies” and related stories on Forbes.com, says a lot about films’ attitude toward business. The top ten were: Citizen Kane, The Godfather: Part II, It's a WonderfulLife, The Godfather, Network, The Insider, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Tin Men, Modern Times. I discuss these films in the latest version of my article.
This film list provides new fodder for my theory. My thesis, again, is that, while films usually portray business in a bad light, they do not really say that business is bad. After all, the films most of us see are produced by big businesses.
More precisely, films are made by people working in these businesses. Filmmakers see themselves as artists, the latest in a long line from cave painters through Michelangelo. Yet, unlike many artists, filmmakers’ art is so costly that films cannot get made without lots of money. Filmmakers must get this money from capitalists, who, in turn, must sell tickets. Because film artists resent their shackles, they often show struggling workers, greedy capitalists, and heroic artists. “Good” businesses are those where the artistic types have the upper hand, and bad businesses are those where the artists have lost.
In other words, films see firms from the cramped perspective of the assembly line or the cubicle. From way out in Hollywood, firms often seem like beehives or rabbit warrens, unfit for human habitation. We don’t see what businesses actually do – create social wealth and meaningful jobs, and provide means for all of our ends, from writing articles to. . . making movies. In fact, businesses couldn’t succeed in the long run if they ignored the needs of their workers and customers.
A companion Forbes article discussing the making of a television movie about Enron suggests that the medium is the message. In other words, films have to approach business as they do to make money. For example, the audience identifies most easily with the underdog, so the Forbes articles says that the Enron movie will tell the story from the perspective of a young worker fresh out of business school – “a rat’s eye view of the Titanic.”
But this can’t be the whole story. Film is a remarkably flexible medium that can tell any story – from the lowly assembly line worker in Modern Times to the rich and powerful Charles Foster Kane. If it can describe the intricacies of the mob customs and practices in the Godfather and many other movies, it can describe the intricacies of doing business. Indeed, many films do this, from salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross and Tin Men, to currency trading in Rogue Trader and securities trading in Wall Street and Boiler Room. Even the package delivery business had its day in Cast Away.
True, it helps to move things along if people are getting killed, but that isn’t essential to a great and popular movie. Of the Forbes top ten business movies, killings are featured only in the two Godfather films. If you want drama, it doesn’t have to be worker vs. boss – it could be a businessman building a business from scratch as in Citizen Kane.
Back to the top ten list and what it reveals. Two deal with the artist’s role as social conscience. In Network, an anchorman breaks out of the capitalist straightjacket the network has him in, while in The Insider the CBS people do not always act so courageously. Six of the ten films deal with oppressed or morally challenged workers – the two just discussed plus Modern Times, Tin Men, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Wall Street.
Although Citizen Kane and the Godfather movies might be seen as the rare films that show what it takes to build a business, they don’t paint a pretty picture. The ingredients don’t include insight and creativity, and the result isn’t a better society. Kane inherits his money and his first newspaper. He builds his fame and greater wealth on dubious yellow journalism, along the way acquiring megalomania, and losing all of his friends. The oppressed worker in his firm, his long-time friend played by Joseph Cotton, gets to make a last stand against his boss by panning Kane’s girlfriend’s opera debut.
In the Godfather movies the formula for success includes murder and, in the case of the family’s brush with the film business, the severed head of a race horse. Most notably, in a move echoed more recently by The Sopranos, these films suggest important parallels between the Corleones’ businesses and the legitimate business they hope to be, except that the mob “firms” are more family-friendly, principled and exciting places to work.
Only It’s a Wonderful Life holds out some real hope for business on screen. Made by Frank Capra, one of Hollywood’s rare Republicans, Wonderful Life is about a socially responsible bank executive who does good for society. But Stewart is good not necessarily as a businessman, but as a person who happens to be a businessman.
Films’ treatment of business has significant social implications. Movies are very influential. They might explain why people are so ready to accept more business regulation whenever anything goes wrong, despite the fact that we know that legislators and regulators are also flawed. After decades of business-unfriendly movies, we assume that business cannot be trusted.
To provide a mechanism for thinking about these issues, I propose an alternative to the Forbes poll – a poll of the most, and least, business friendly movies. FWIW, my nominee for the most business-friendly movie is Other People’s Money. For the least, Glengarry Glen Ross.
