Sabourin vs. Rubenstein

I agree with your assessments. However, it may be because I'm a devious sort (grin), but I've always been troubled by the film's ending (assuming you're rooting for Sabourin as an anti-hero).

Back in 1956, passports tended to be the only photo-IDs around. I can even remember my first few driver's licenses were printed on common paper stock without photos or fingerprints and could easily be forged. In short, in 1956, it was far easier to create and maintain a different identity.

If I were Sabourin in 1956 ... facing deportation to Czechoslovakia ... I'd have quickly liquidated my wealth into cash, assumed a new identity, and disappeared into the woodwork. Back then, it would have been a very simple thing to do for a wealthy person. Certainly, he'd have to lay low for a while and not risk being seen by those who might recognize him. But there are worse things than living behind the walls of a new mansion until the heat blows over (grin) ... or retiring rich.

This is certainly what his real-life counterpart attempted to do (retire rich) when Serge Rubenstein was deported from France to Britain. Unfortunately, the person who strangled Rubenstein had other plans. However, I suspect that Rubenstein had the where-with-all to "disapear" as easily as Sabourin could have ... if either of them had come down off their inflated egos for a moment to consider the option.

Absolutely right. We need to empower government to confiscate all the money of all those corporations and dirty scoundrels. Just look at the likes of Rockefeller, who's Standard Oil took over control of oil refining in the United States. In a few decades his monopolistic company reduced the retail price of kerosene from over a dollar a gallon in the 1860's to less than ten cents a gallon by the turn of the century. In 1913 the first gas station in America charged 27 cents a gallon and ten years later Standard Oil had lowered that to 11 cents. The dirty bastard.

Bill Gates, wrote a rinky dink computer programming language for hobbyists that he offered to sell to IBM. They wanted it, but didn't have enough confidence to buy it. Instead, they wanted to lease a license from Gates for one year, provided that he also include an operating system. Bill bought the operating system from a friend who didn't want to be involved with "corporations." A year later IBM wanted to buy the operating system and the programming language rather than renew the lease but, then, Bill refused to sell. Instead he stuck to a lease contract, but increased the price substantially (I think several fold). Microsoft went on to be our most loved, and hated source for inexpensive operating systems and applications for PCs for the last thirty years.

Oh, Rockefeller gave billions to charity and Gates is in the process of doing likewise.

Carnegie did likewise for steel, lowering the price while improving the quality, and then leaving over a billion dollars to establish Carnegie - Mellon (his banker) University, museums, scholarships, and so on.

Those damned insurance companies, they sell us insurance as cheaply as possible while providing substantial security from car accidents, household fires, medical issues, accidents, and death. For this frivolous perceived need of our society, those bastards insist on making a profit.

You know, you will never find satisfaction here in capitalist America. I recommend that you find a free, democratic and communist or socialist country to live in. I understand that finding one that has not gone bankrupt or dangerous to live in because of ongoing revolutionary strife, but one must make sacrifices to live in a garden of Eden.

Raymund,

You're certainly not shy in your opinions about . . . well, just about everything, I guess. Good for you. Btw, on which one of those money-grubbing capitalist's products do you recommend those "sewer rats" view the film? Ah, on the off-chance you haven't checked, I think you can get the best buy on any of 'em at Wal-Mart! Same for the padlocks you'll want to be using to shut down all those useless enterprises.

Oh yeah, seems to me, those bast**ds have been "sowing" a pretty bountiful crop, considering what they've been "reaping" up 'til now. 'Course you haven't bought those padlocks yet! (Hey, Wal-Mart's open seven days a week.)

Wasn't it a fellow traveler of yours who once said -- "When the last bourgeois is hanged, a capitalist will sell us the rope." Always seemed something of an oxymoron to me. I mean, Lenin couldn't make his own rope without the aid of the muiddle class?

Anyway, power to the people . . . comrade!