The cinema is more interested in the stories of private detectives than in the intrigues of business leaders. So if the boss is also a boss, the field is reduced even more. In this summer series, we have selected four films, French and American, from 1933 to 2017, in which the heroine is a leader. Tough or sensitive, in the world of industry or fashion, respected or hated, virtuous or scandalous, they all say something about the society in which they evolve and the way they are perceived. For L’Express, today’s great bosses have taken a look at their fictional counterparts.
Staging a Jewish woman with very free morals, at the head of a financial newspaper and a banking establishment, practicing fraud and breach of trust in France between the two wars, it was daring. If it is only with Romy Schneider at the top of the bill, the director Francis Girod held in his sleeve a master asset. And that the frame of The Banker (1980) ultimately has nothing extravagant: the character of Emma Eckhert is taken from a true story, that of Marthe Hanau, a finance amazon in the Paris of the Roaring Twenties. A century later, women are much more numerous in the Comex of the establishments… and cause less scandal. Marguerite Bérard, director of the commercial bank in France of BNP Paribas, finds in this film a particular flavor, in more than one respect. This forty-year-old is an unconditional fan of the main actress, discovered from childhood in the series of Sisi. She knows all the filmography of the star born in Vienna and disappeared forty years ago. Finally, it treasures the work that Isabelle Giordano dedicated to Romy in 2017, a few years before the former Madame Cinéma de Canal + joined the BNP Paribas Foundation.
“Romy Schneider is excellent”
A fellow student of Emmanuel Macron at the ENA from which she graduated, finance inspector and former adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée, Marguerite Bérard joined rue d’Antin in 2018 after five years with the BPCE group. A professional’s verdict on The Banker : “It’s not his best film – Max and the scrap dealers, La Piscine and even more Caesar and Rosalie are a cut above in my opinion. But Romy Schneider is excellent there, she admires, also welcoming the quality of the dialogues. What interested me, it is especially the inspiration of the scenario. Marthe Hanau was a scammer, she ran The Franc Gazette, a cabbage leaf riddled with insider trading, and she had set up a veritable Ponzi pyramid: she was paying the interest of her clients with the money brought in by the new ones. A very colorful woman, with an extraordinary personality, who confronted, without fear, an environment of men.”
The Banker by Francis Girod with Romy Schneider, Marie-France Pisier, Claude Brasseur
© / 1980 Studio Canal Image – France 3 Cinema
Also in the film, many males revolve around Romy. Famous actors – Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Claude Brialy, Daniel Auteuil, Daniel Mesguich and even Thierry Lhermitte, in a small role – who nevertheless seem very bland next to the flamboyant Emma Eckhert, a woman of modest means, ambitious, manipulative , which turns into a passion for small savers. In the political world as in the press, she intrigues, worries, turns heads. She is nicknamed “the lovely banker” as well as “Madame 8%”, the promised return. Even Mussolini will entrust him with his money! This strength of character earned him, in return, strong enmities. “The character is not presented as dishonest – in any case, he is much less so than his model! The film above all depicts the crisis of confidence that she has to face when someone threatens to close her counters” , notes the director of BNP Paribas. Imprisoned, Emma Eckhert begins a hunger strike and, more dead than alive, manages to escape, determined to regain her honor and repay everyone down to the last franc.
It is another banker, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, who causes his downfall. Exasperated by this rival who promises mountains and wonders to her subscribers, her character, Horace Vannister, maneuvers behind the scenes with political power. Like Horace Finaly, when he wanted to put an end to the crazy epic of Marthe Hanau. This immigrant from Budapest, close to Marcel Proust and Léon Blum, chaired the Bank of Paris and the Netherlands. The ancestor of Paribas. A detail that did not escape Marguerite Bérard.
The Banker (1980), by Francis Girod. Screenplay: Georges Conchon and Francis Girod.
With Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Claude Brialy…