Films about financial scandals are nothing new.
We tend to think of ourselves as entering into a difficult time. We’ve had a huge financial crash in the late noughties and smaller bumps along the way leading to it. However, in 1932 the effects of one of the biggest depressions ever felt across the world were still hurting everyone. Somehow it didn’t stop people from going to the cinema. They went to see a film about the times. That film was American Madness.
It was one of the first collaborations between Frank Capra and Robert Riskin. The pair would go on to make several successful films in the Golden Hollywood age of the 1920s through to the mid-1960s. The film centres around the loss of money and the risk it puts a bank or financial institution under. Tom Dickson is the President of a bank, but his board are worried. He has lent a lot of money to people during the Great Depression, and it seemed that if they didn’t pay up, the bank would be doomed.
Dickson is adamant that the debtors are good for the money. If he’d had the chance in 1932, he could have shown them all passing an AML IDENTITY CHECK, like those from https://www.w2globaldata.com/regulatory-compliance-solutions-and-software/aml-id-checks/, to alleviate the fears of the board.
After some shenanigans with some mobsters trying to rob the bank, it looks like poor Dickson has to resign as the bank has no money in its vaults. However, to save the well-liked boss, his employees contact the loanees past and present to see if they can help. Lots provide the bank with capital, and Dickson is saved.
