Review by MogwaiMovieReviews

This was Julien Duvivier's first talking film, but the pace and type of story feels much more like a late silent in its bleak and unvarnished honesty. There's not much effort to "entertain" the audience, and yet the story, of a rich man reaching the end of his life and realizing he has nothing, is loved by no-one, and is viewed only as a cash cow by everyone in his life, makes a lot out of really very little, and cuts deep, mostly due to Harry Baur's performance in the title role, which put me in mind of some of Emil Jannings' great performances in films like The Last Command, Variety and The Blue Angel. Alone and unattractive, unloved and unloveable, his David Golder seems today a strange character for us to be following the fate of with such sympathy and yet we can't take our eyes off him. He's not a good or admirable man by any means, but everyone else we see is even worse, and under those conditions his is as good a story as any to pick out and tell.

The film has an often patchy feel to it, and the camerawork is by turns functional and dazzling (the aerial stock market shots, the sea, the nature photography). It falls some way short of greatness, and there's perhaps a little too much talking and not enough action, but it's a real film nonetheless and a good one at that.

6½ /10.