The earliest economics film is Michael Polanyi's Unemployment and Money: The Principles Involved (1940). The educational film consisted entirely of animation and voiceover. The film is about Keynesian Economics, going into detail about currency in circulation and trade cycles. While technically this film is an educational film, it popularised the idea that economic themes and education could have widespread appeal, and that it wasn't just for scholars and the elite.[1]
Remainder of the 20th Century
Raymond Arsenault, writing in Film & History, says that the 1987 film Wall Street, despite its flaws and limitations, remains a unique cinematic attempt to examine the economic fervor of the Reagan era. The film explores a topic that has largely been overlooked by historians. The moral perspective shifts between liberal and radical critiques, ultimately leaving it ambiguous whether Oliver Stone condemns the entire economic system or merely its abuses.[2]
Subgenres
From here the genre can be clearly divided into two sections: documentary style economics film and mainstream economics film.
Documentary economics
Documentary economics films followed many of the conventions of documentary films: they were hosted by a main presenter who narrated and guided the film, and consisted of a collection of interviews, narrator exposition and montages. Documentary economics films simply included an economic theory or impact as the central subject matter for the film, but this was complicated by Michael Moore's filmmaking. In the case of Roger & Me the subject was the outsourcing of labour to cheaper ununionized Mexican workers by General Motors that economically ravaged his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore took several liberties with the conventions of documentaries, mainly displaying himself as an everyday ‘working class hero’, avoiding the usual professionalism and authoritative nature seen by documentary presenters.[3] He also presented the film as a humorous chronological series of events, typical more of a vlog than a documentary. The documentary even has a ‘plot’: a quest to get an interview with the CEO of General Motors, the titular Roger Smith (executive). All of these decisions worked greatly in his favour, as the film effortlessly portrayed General Motors as a greedy corporation manipulating economics for major profit with no concern for the economic impacts on individuals, let alone an entire town. The film was polarising, sparking heated debate on its validity and narrative, which ironically fuelled its popularity further, even leading to Roger Smith the CEO of General Motors resigning.[4] The film's reception exemplified the inextricable link between the political spectrum and economic issues, cementing that a political narrative is the central force behind any economics documentary film.
"This is not an arthouse film. We want people to be entertained by the comedy and perhaps get some cathartic pleasure in feeling that this is one for our side, this is a film that sticks it to the man. But I hope it's an audience that will want to do something when it leaves the theatre, whatever that something might be."
This trend of economic documentary films being politically contentious continued throughout Moore's career,[6] and also through the entire genre. Major entries in this genre have included: The Corporation, Inequality for All and Capitalism: A Love Story.
Mainstream economics film
Promotional advert for The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is the 332nd highest grossing film of all time[7] and is the prime example of the glorification of excess and gluttony displayed in economics films. The film follows Jordan Belfort, a young investor who lands a short-lived job on Wall Street. His brief glimpse into high end investing shows a culture of drugs and luxury and he is told by his direct superior that a broker's only goal is to make money for himself. He eventually ends up trading penny stocks, utilising his charismatic and energetic personality to convince buyers to invest enormous amounts of money into generally worthless stocks. This culminates in Belfort opening his own firm, which is hugely successful, and he makes more money than he knows what to do with. The majority of the film then shows the absurd things they spend money on, ranging from a mountain of drugs to wildly inappropriate office parties and even superyachts. While the film was generally received as entertaining, audiences were split on whether the absurd excess was something to admire or to be horrified by.[8]
Despite Belfort being so addicted to drugs he drove away his family and ended up in prison, many still admire the film and actively desire the lifestyle portrayed in it. Scorsese himself was motivated to create the film out of anger towards the modern-day realisation of the American dream, “I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.”[9] The fierce online discourse around the film mirrored reception of many of Moore's films,[10]
The commercial success of The Wolf of Wall Street exemplified the potential for success in its subject matter of economics, something The Big Short focussed on far more so than its predecessor. The film follows a collection of different savvy investors who predicted the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and thus made enormous amounts of money through it. The film breaks the fourth wall to explicitly explain certain economic theories that motivate the investors’ actions. While the film uses the potential for financial gain as dramatic material as opposed to exploring the results of its success like The Wolf of Wall Street does, the film nevertheless largely ignores the social consequences of economic manipulation. Brad Pitt's character Ben Rickert scolds his younger apprentice investors, reminding them that for their bet to be realised millions of Americans would have to become unemployed and potentially lose their homes.[11]
^Arsenault, Raymond (1998). "Wall Street (1987): The Stockbroker's Son and the Decade of Greed". Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. 28 (1): 16–27. doi:10.1353/flm.1998.a395820. Retrieved 16 May 2022. Despite its flaws and limitations, Wall Street stands alone as a serious cinematic effort to dissect the economic mania of the Reagan years. Indeed, it probes a subject that has received little attention from historians of any kind... The moral voice of the film vacillates between liberal and radical critiques, and, in the end, it is unclear whether Stone has condemned an entire economic system or simply the abuses of that system.
