The Upton Sinclair classic is filled with labor relations, leftist struggle sessions, and disproving American imperial propaganda, but we get a movie about mean oil man doing mean things. What a travesty and an erasure of Sinclair’s message. The man could layer irony on so thick that it would make Chapos jealous. Has anyone here read the book, and, if so, what are your favorite passages? Mine is:
Someone mentioned another stunt of the returned soldiers—their setting up a censorship of moving pictures. One Angel City theatre had started to show a German film, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and this Hun invasion had so outraged the Legion men, they had put on their uniforms and blockaded the theatre, and beaten up the people who tried to get in. Tommy Paley laughed—the courage of each of those veterans had been fortified by a five-dollar bill, contributed by the association of motion picture producers! They didn’t want foreign films that set them too high a standard!
Then Schmolsky. He was too fat to comprehend such a thing as irony, and he remarked that the directors were mighty damn right. Schmolsky, a Jew from Ruthenia, or Rumelia, or Roumania, or some such country, said that we didn’t want no foreign films breaking in on our production schedules. An hour or so later Bunny heard him telling how the Hollywood films were sweeping the German market—it wouldn’t be three years before we’d own this business. “Vae victis!” remarked Bunny; and Schmolsky looked at him, puzzled, and said, “Huh?”
Vae victis, indeed. The entire text can be found here for free:
I wouldn’t say it’s a disservice. PTA named the movie “There Will Be Blood” instead of “Oil!” specifically because it’s not a faithful adaptation of the book.