Gulden Opportunity

Money, Money, Money is a how-to-do-it picture from France that demonstrates the easiest way to make money: print it.

The yen to counterfeit comes to a toothless loan shark, a loudmouthed used-car salesman ("The all-time jerk-he belongs in the National Bureau of Standards") and a fatcat brothelkeeper whose place of business has been shut down by the police. "Private enterprise," the pimp complains indignantly, "is being stifled." The salesman, a man with $20-$20 vision, sees what might be called a gulden opportunity for creative capitalism: to compete with the Dutch government in the production of currency.

To arrange the details of the deal, the three little pigs import a big bad wolf--a famous funny-moneyman known as Le Dab (Jean Gabin). They offer the aged but by no means senile counterfeiter a quarter share in the enterprise. "Two million dollars. Split it four ways and what have you got?" the brothelkeeper purrs. "Twenty years," Le Dab snorts, and demands half the loot. Slyly the three little pigs pretend to give in, but secretly they plan to eat high on the wolf before the deal is done. Or will the wolf make a meal of singed pork? Or will the censor insist on cooked goose?

Actor Gabin, who for 30 years was the great lover of French cinema, has developed with age into one of its more subtle comedians. At the same time he is still, at 58, a mesmerically charming man. Impossible not to approve of him, no matter what naughty things he is doing. Impossible not to feel, while watching him play Le Dab, that making bogus bills is an admirable career for a man--sort of like helping society to produce more rapid and efficient inflation.

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