Wes Anderson has said more than once that the idea of The Phoenician Scheme began while he was reading biographies on 1950s European tycoons. These were the titans of industry who became a peculiar kind of celebrity in their day; men like Aristotle Onassis and Gianni Angelli.

Yet one of the most amusing things for anyone who buys a ticket for The Phoenician Scheme this weekend is how much of the film as a whole is immersed in that mid-20th century aesthetic, from Europe to Hollywood; soundstages to North Africa. After all, Phoenician is shot entirely in the kind of artificiality that Michael Curtiz used to make Casablanca (1942)—a film that Anderson nearly namechecks when he has Benico del Toro’s Euro mogul Zsa-zsa Korda wind up in a nightclub run by Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amal

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