David Golder (1931) review

Surly businessman David Golder (Harry Baur) refuses to help out his struggling former associate Marcus (Jacques Grétillat) which leads to Marcus committing suicide, then David travels to Biarritz to meet up with his spendthrift wife Gloria (Paule Andral) and only daughter Joyce (Jackie Monnier), he suffers a heart attack at a casino and is informed by Gloria that Joyce isn't his biological offspring ... and then he has an epiphany.  While the constant discussion about everyone needing money gets a little repetitive and its view on life is a bit oversimplistic (surely there's a "happy middle ground" where someone has "just enough"), what really makes this early talkie by Duvivier so solid is the truly haunting performance by Baur, who slowly becomes a broken man with nothing left to keep him going.  I originally feared it would veer too close to being anti-Semitic, considering Golder's Jewish - after all, the author of the book it's based on, Irène Némirovsky, had a complicated relationship with her own ethnicity (and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp) - but I think it's more of a general warning to anyone that loses sight of what's essential (and no, it isn't a Bugatti).