Blind Husbands

This is a review of the Austrian version of the film, which is available on the R2 Edition Filmmuseum DVD. I believe it is also available in the States on Kino DVD in the truncated American version that has a different sentiment.

Blind Husbands is a story about folks holidaying in the alps (Cortina specifically). The main characters are a famous American surgeon, his wife Maguerite, and Leutnant von Steuben, a German military man (the filmmuseum English subtitles are a bit misleading here because they translate the intertitles referring to him as an impostor, whereas I believe von Stroheim's intention was to portray him as someone unfit to wear the uniform rather than literally not allowed to wear it). Von Steuben is played by von Stroheim himself.

He's meant to be a philanderer of married women. He looks the part, excepting that he is actually very short, shorter in fact than Maguerite. The world may have changed a lot in ninety years, but I doubt the women back then were too different from women today who are generally unable to take the advances of men shorter than themselves seriously.

I'll give the world and the female race the benefit of the doubt for the movie's sake. Von Steuben is after a clinch with Maguerite, but he's already had a squeeze with two of the hotel serving girls by the time he gets round to her. He's got a soft target really, because the husband is much too self-involved to notice that his wife is feeling lonely and in need of rekindling. Obviously where the title "Blind Husbands" arises from.

There's quite a lovely dinner scene outside the hotel in Cortina at night, there's all these paper lanterns in lines interspersed with the permanent hotel lanterns, very pretty really. Maguerite excuses herself from the hubbub and goes inside to play the piano. Whilst sat at the piano we see her head shot against a totally black background, quite an unusual shot for a film of any era. It's at this point that she appears totally alone, not just lonely, but alone. Back to the normal shot and Steuben has sidled in. He picks up a violin and starts to play a duet. What a powerful thing to do to one in such a suggestive frame of mind! Part two of the plan is to buy her the marquetry box that hubby was too busy to notice that she wanted. It's apparently two hundred years old, the design on the lid is all lozenges and grains, really reminded me very much of a Matisse type pattern, we get a lovely close up of it.

As it happens there are another two shots against a dark background, one of a bell ringing in the bell tower (to mourn the dead) and one of von Steuben pointing his grubby finger at Maguerite.

Most of the film basically concerns the von Steuben/Maguerite cat and mouse game. Can't blame him for chasing Maguerite really, my favourite shot of her was her wearing these lovely antique sunglasses with wildflowers in the back of her alpinist hat band. The movie is all shot really quite sympathetically, I'd almost call it realism, a surprising term for a 1919 film! According to others the level of mise en scene is apparently not up to Foolish Wives or Greed standard, but I'll go with it on an absolute basis.

If you see the movie as containing realism, then the ending is a bit of a cop-out, a sop to dramatic cliché. However we'll let Erich off as it still kind of works. The movie turns into a bit of a bergfilm at the end, American superman, surgeon, strong, weakling German braggart, this being totally exposed as they climb the mountain, having been rather sotto voce before.

The only silly part of the film concerns the shadow of an eagle, which is blatantly produced by a crude silhouette hanging on the end of a wire (unless eagles can fly backwards), yikes! Other than that though I thought the movie was brilliant.

"Blind Husbands" is a film in which Von Stroheim both directed and acted. The story seems somewhat routine now, but was considered racy for its day. It concerns a rather bland American doctor and his neglected wife on vacation in the Alps who cross paths with Lieutenant Erich Von Steuben (Von Stroheim), a military man with an eye for the ladies. He pursues the doctor's wife while the doctor is preoccupied with climbing the local mountains. Its main features are that the characters are well-developed compared with other films of the 1910's and also that the running time is a mere 90 minutes compared with later Von Stroheim efforts where he wound up going wild and shooting hours of film.

Erich von Stroheim started his directing career with an adaptation of his own novel, The Pinnacle (a better title than Blind Husbands, I think), working with the original studio head of Universal, Carl Laemmle Sr. It was also the beginning of Stroheim's problems with producers since they cut him out of the editing bay at one point and recut the film to their own liking (Laemmle was also known for wanting smaller, cheaper productions because of Universals lack of ownership of first run theaters, something that Laemmle Junior would try to change a few years later when daddy gave him the studio as a twenty-first birthday present). There was a new restoration in 2021 to bring the film closer to Stroheim's original vision, but I couldn't find a way to watch it. I ended up watching the copy held by the Museum of Modern Art, the copy that's essentially been in some level of circulation for decades, and I was actually quite entertained.

Doctor Robert Armstrong (Sam De Grasse) and his wife Margaret (Francelia Billington) are going on vacation into the Dolomite Alps, and on the same wagon into the remote town at the foot of the mountains also rides an Austrian army officer, Lieutenant Eric von Steuben (Stroheim) who, as the intertitles tell us, loves wine, WOMEN, and song. He has obvious eyes for Margaret, an attractive young woman, and he can discern that there's a certain distance between husband and wife that he can exploit to his own ends.

One of the interesting things I find in the film is how Stroheim cast himself as the absolute cad Steuben. His look fits the part perfectly, of course, it's how an Austrian army officer should look, but Steuben is an awful human being. He goes from speaking sweetly in the ear of the woman tending tables in the inn to saying the exact same things to Margaret when she peels away from her husband to play on a piano alone. He's really aggressive despite her protestations that she loves her husband, so when he buys her an expensive box as a present, forces himself into her room while her husband goes up the mountain to help some climbers in trouble, and keeps himself so close and so aggressive that she promises to meet him later. The middle third of the film is split between this "seduction" and Robert finding out about it, thinking that Margaret is an enthusiastic participant.

The action builds up to a climb up the Pinnacle with Robert and Steuben tied to each other as they go up. Through the action of the film there's a minor character consistently on the side of the film, a mountain guide named Sepp (Gibson Gowland). He observes Steuben's actions quietly, even changing rooms with Margaret at one point to deter Steuben from making a move in the middle of the night, and he provides Margaret some solace about the climb up the mountain that she knows could lead to terrible result, saying that the two men will be fine if they can leave their concerns at the foot of the mountain.

The location photography is great, obviously born of Stroheim's need to get things authentic and refusing to shoot in a studio, and it helps provide a real sense of danger to the climb where the two men do seem to put everything aside...for a time. The thrills of the last act revolve around a letter written by Margaret to Steuben, the reveal of which allows Robert to demonstrate his resolve and honesty and for Steuben to reveal his duplicitousness and cowardice. The mechanical action around the letter (it gets thrown off the mountain and then Robert just picks it up on his way down) is not that believable and undermines it slightly, but it's nice to see the character beats play out around it.

And I think that's the core appeal of the film: it's a fairly simple tale well told where good guys win, bad guys lose, and a lesson is learned by all. That it's focused on an attempted affair is interesting for the period, showcasing the much more lenient air towards the content of movies before the rise of the Hays Office in the early 30s. The physical production is a real treat with location filming in northern Italy providing the wide expanse views of the mountains to give the finale, especially, a tactile reality that helps create a real sense of danger. The sets are lived in and detailed as well. Performances are strong as well, with nary a clasp at the chest to be found. Stroheim himself is great as the monster of the piece while Billington carries herself well as the embattled wife. De Grasse as the good, heroic, if absent-minded husband has a quiet dignity that's really compelling as well.

Erich von Stroheim blew up his budget, the first time of many, and got kicked out of the editing bay by his producer, but the end result is a solid, well-told little cautionary romance.

The story is simple and unoriginal: a love triangle, plus man's determination to conquer nature. But, this early effort by director Erich von Stroheim displays great restraint, especially for a filmmaker who would become notorious for excess. His films, such as "Greed" (1924), are better known for their production and post-production histories than for their actual merits. He would shoot an excessive amount of footage for films of extraordinary length, which the producers then butchered. That's not the case with "Blind Husbands", though; this one has a normal runtime.

It also features the familiar Stroheim touches on a smaller scale. The acting is rather subtile. Stroheim introduces his typical role as a villainous Teutonic womanizer, with a scar, a monocle and a history of military service--"the man you love to hate". Here, he's the other man. Furthermore, the mise-en-scène takes precedence over camera movement or editing. The décor is detailed and occasionally allegorical to the melodrama. Attention to lighting is also evident. "Blind Husbands" is sensational and too contrived and ruminant at times, but, for the most part, the simple story is harmonious with the restrained, yet detailed, film-making.

The story is seemingly simple and straightforward. For modern audiences, it probably feels like a cliche, but I'm sure that at the time of its release, 'Blind Husbands' might have been considered quite a raunchy movie - there is a scene where a married woman is kissing the strange man. There are more than enough written about Erich von Storheim's work ethics as a film director, so I will not go into that again.

'Blind Husbands' tells a story about a renowned surgeon and his wife who travel into the Dolomites, a mountain range in Italian Alps. With them travels Lieutenant Eric von Steuben (perfectly sly and vile performance by Erich von Stroheim) who notices that the beautiful wife is somewhat neglected by her husband. A womanizing lieutenant doesn't waste a minute and starts to make advances towards the wife every possible way.

The story is simple, especially more than a hundred years later, when the love triangle has become one of the most overused plot devices in all forms of storytelling. Taking that into the consideration, that the story might seem nothing special, the more special is the way it is brought to the screen. Von Stroheim gives us the three main players and the coming relationship right away. I like how the surgeon and his wife constantly meet with newlyweds (fresh wife asks from her husband - you'll never neglect me like that?). It is not perfectly explained why the doctor ignores his wife so much - yes, he is a good man, he even goes to help the needy while on the vacation; the mountain guide Sepp (Gibson Gowland is just awesome in this role) is the doctor's good old friend whom he hadn't seen years. Still, it wasn't quite clear why the good old doctor Armstrong ignored his gorgeous wife (rich performance by Francelia Billington) between. There is not only (melo)drama, but also nice touches of comedy - when we see von Steuben hit on one girl using a mawkish line about the moon, and later he tries to seduce our main heroine with the exact line.

I can't go without mentioning the exciting mountain climbing scene as the grande finale. Altogether 'Blind Husbands' might not compare to the greatest works of silent cinema, but it is a very good movie that is more nuanced than its simple plot might suggest.