Millions

Gordon Harker stars as a financier who has financial,political and family struggles with Frank Pettingell.His son played by a very young Richard Hearne is supposed to be a composer who cannot read music or play a note.This may be funny once but it is rather flogged to death by the end.He is courting Pettingell's daughter much to Pettingell's dismay.There is also a plot which involves the cornering of the market in cloves.Harker plays the financier with his rather posh strangulated voice which makes one think that any moment he is going to break out into a cockney accent.Hearne has some acrobatic antics early on.later on in the film his "Mr Pastry" character is seen wandering about in a Turkish bath scene ,grinning for some reason in the background.this film feels as if there were a number of writers all with different ideas as to which direction the film should take.As a result the film does not work and is rather unfunny.Its main interest is in Gordon Harker and Richard Hearne.For fans of either of those actors,of which i am one,this film is of interest.

I'm using to seeing Gordon Harker as a star character actor in British movies, but he's got the lead here, as a merchant banker out to corner the market in cloves -- those things you stick in ham. He's got plenty of people out to take him: his wastrel son, Richard Hearne, who's mulcting him out of money on the speculation that he's a composer, turning out symphonic versions of "John Peel" when he doesn't know a staff from a semi-quaver; Frank Pettingell as a business rival, who wants to do him dirt on general principles and thinks he has inside information to break his corner and Harker; and the usual assortment of reporters, who don't care who gets thrown to the sharks, so long as there's blood in the water.

When the movie starts, it looks like Harker deserves it; he's smug, pompous, self-centered and unfeeling. Yet, under the direction of the reliable Leslie Hiscott, a remarkable thing happens: without altering Harker's character at all, the script makes him, not the hero of the piece, but the sympathetic protagonist. He's like a cut-rate George Arliss in his behavior, sailing through shallow shoals through the grace of his screen writers and a consistent performance. The movie has no great scenes or performances, but it remains watchable throughout.