Change Your Image
christopher_michael_taylor
Reviews
The Wheeler Dealers (1963)
On-the-mark satire with prophetic qualities (minor spoilers)
I first saw Wheeler Dealers as a kid in the early 70s and was tickled by the broad comedy of the Texas oilmen scenes and excited by the raw capitalism. The movie got shown regularly for some reason over the next few years and became a favourite of my circle of friends. Only when I saw it much more recently did the prophetic nature of some of the situations strike me.For example, the absurd way the oilmen use and recycle their wealth seems more like the Houston boom days of the 70s than the early 60s. Tyroon is an early investor in Pollock-style modern art and predicts it will one day sell like old masters. When he dreams up the infamous Consolidated Widget scam (the movie helped popularize use of the word with reference to technology) the blind enthusiasm over satellite components could have been straight out of Nasdaq in the late 1990s. And the scene with Ms. Remick decrying the lot of women investment analysts with her peers is startlingly contemporary - indeed I have trouble believing all the female analysts on Wall St. could have filled a room in 1963!All of which is just to say, plus ca change - catch this anachronistic (in the good sense) gem of a movie if you ever get the chance.