Folies de femmes

Lots has been written on the subject and like many others I highly enjoyed the beautiful cinematography, the reconstitution ( both impressive and accurate to the minutest details ), the wit of the titles. However, what actually carried me away is the recurrence of weird finds. In what other movie indeed can you find details like these : - a countess pinching the arm of her maid - a man drinking a calf's blood cocktail first thing in the morning - a US special envoy having trouble in taking off his gloves in front of a prince - a disaster-movie summer storm preventing two would-be sinners from going beyond the point of no return - a wicked hypocrite shedding tears of...TEA ?

Stroheim is really the prince of eccentrics ( and not a bogus one ! ) and we love him for that

Erich Von Stroheim is a very, very odd character in the history of cinema. He made several films which nearly bankrupted the studios due to his insane insistence of complete realism--to the point of absurdity. In the cases of "Greed" and "Foolish Wives" he also delivered films which were impossibly long--so long that audiences of the day never would have sat through movies of six or more hours in length! According to many, he delighted in bankrupting the studios and had perhaps the most adversarial relationship with the studios of any filmmaker in history. As a result, the studios severely cut his films to the point where they were barely Von Stroheim projects...and for years people have been saying that his ORIGINAL films, uncut, were works of genius...though without having seen the original films (as only a tiny number of studio execs did), who's to say that he was right and the studios wrong?! It's one of those mysteries we'll never solve, as the films only exist in truncated versions...though the folks who restored "Foolish Wives" tried their best to restore the missing 2/3 of the film. The prologue admits that it was not entirely successful as too much of the movie simply no longer exists. So, they pieced together what they had and tried to re-assemble the missing portions as best they could. Keep this in mind when you're seeing the movie...it's not Von Stroheim's film but it's also not the general release either.

The film begins just after WWI and is set in Monte Carlo. Three worthless Russian nobles live there and they are thieves who live through stealing from others. But they maintain a very solid image...that of noble and virtuous folk. Sergius (Von Stroheim) is a cad and plans on using the American Ambassador's wife to make a fortune and a false sense of respectability...all in order to help his poor cousins, the Princesses, to live in luxury. How? Well, by hanging out with respectable folks, the assumption is that the forged money he and his cousins gamble with will be assumed to be real...and readily accepted by the casinos. Plus, Sergius plans on hitting up this woman for money...money that she will gladly give him after he seduces her. Is this all there is to his infamy...nope. Along the way, he seduces several women!

Overall, this is a very watchable film and generally didn't seem disjoint...at least until the ending. At this point, the film jumped about a bit and seemed to be pieced together. As a result, I'd give the film a 7--a very good film but one that suffered, a bit, from being too melodramatic at times as well as being a bit weak at the end.

There are a lot of great silent films that surprisingly for so long ago do not show their age and aren't as creaky. Am not saying anything negative about silent films in general, or trying to generalise if it comes over that way, quite the contrary (appreciate them hugely actually, though some don't hold up as well as others). Found the idea for the story of 'Foolish Wives' intriguing and admire Erich Von Stroheim as a director, with 'Greed' being a towering achievement in its day and now, and as an actor.

'Foolish Wives' has held up quite well. It is not one of the classic silent films, it is not without its flaws and it is no 'Greed'. There is though a good deal to go wow over, it is in many ways an achievement and there is no doubting Von Stroheim's committment to the project, considering that he did triple duty as lead actor, director and writer. A lot to take on, and he does remarkably well at the task and shows that he was more than up to it.

Starting with what could have been done better, the pace is erratic. It at times suffers from the long length, with the earlier portions of the film being a little too drawn out, uneventful and in need of a trim. At the same time, that 'Foolish Wives' was intended to be longer and that there was more material that needed to be cut is also at times evident.

It still manages to be remarkably cohesive and there was no real trouble for me understanding what goes on, but for my tastes it did start to jump around towards the end and feel on the choppy side. Some of the support acting is uneven, with Miss DuPont having bland, out of her depth moments.

Von Stroheim however is truly magnetic in every sense, one cannot take their eyes off him. Some unevenness aside, most of the acting is not bad at all and even if the characters are not the most rootable they are interesting and far from stock heroism or stock villainy. The direction takes full advantage of the film's technical mastery and boasts some quite powerful moments. Moments that include the storm sequence and that of the fire set piece, which for the time and now are quite jaw-dropping.

On a visual and technical level, 'Foolish Wives' looks incredible and it has to be one of the best-looking silent films. It was expensive to make and it looks expensive, which is meant in a good way, some surprisingly complex and varied film techniques are here and the sets are a marvel. Have not seen sets this richly detailed or this grand for any film in a long time, and when it comes to silent films it is up there with 'Greed', 'The Big Parade' and 'The Thief of Baghdad' in this regard. It has the right amount of suspense when needed, some darkly humorous ones and parts are even touching.

Summing up, many great things that would have been even better if the pacing was better. 7/10

Normally I enjoy watching old movies from the '20's, even the more slower paced one's but this movie just didn't do it for me, although it also is of course far from the worst I have ever seen.

The movie has a good enough story but it isn't exactly the most intriguing or tense stories to follow. Lots of sequences don't seem to have a relevant enough importance. It might have to do with the fact that the original length of the movie was over 6 hours long, which might had shown some of the relevance of certain sequences and characters but there is really no way I'm ever going to watch this longer version. The movie was already overlong as it was. The movie didn't had very much interesting drama in it and although the main character seemed intriguing, it just didn't worked out powerful enough in the movie.

The movie also isn't as technically advanced as some of the other movies from the same time period, clearly directed by more talented and more experimental directors such as F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Victor Sjöström and D.W. Griffith, among others.

But this all of course doesn't mean that the movie is a bad one to watch. The story of a fake Russian aristocratic lady-killer in Monte Carlo trying to get money from rich ladies as on its own quite a good story and in a way for movie standards also ahead of its time. Many more movies like this one, in many different forms were made and are still being made, many years later now. In this particular case this is a movie I wouldn't mind seeing remade, perhaps also with some more humor in it and a more clear message. The movie also uses some quite good camera positions, on a positive note.

Also the acting is good enough, though Miss DuPont seems heavily miscast as a pretty 21 year young girl. She is too old looking for her role and she also most certainly wasn't pretty enough to find the story very convincing. Same perhaps goes for Dale Fuller. Erich von Stroheim plays the real main part of the movie and he does this with lots of flair. He also wrote and directed the movie. Laurel & Hardy regular Mae Busch shows up in a serious role for a change and it was refreshing to see her like that for a change.

Certainly a watchable movie but really no essential viewing in my opinion.

6/10

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Foolish Wives (1922)

*** (out of 4)

von Stroheim's third feature (his second is now lost) had a budget of $250,000, which was quite high for the time but the "man who love to hate" managed to grow crazy during production and the final cost to Universal was just over $1.2 million. The director also managed to turn in a film running six-and-a-half hour only to have the studio cut it down to three-and-a-half. Still not short enough it was cut down to two-and-a-half and this is what it was originally released to. The studio would cut it again to 73-minutes, which is the version that would be shown for years until a 120-minute cut was discovered. Finally, using prints from five different locations, Kino's DVD restores the film to 142-minutes, which to date is the longest surviving cut. Using so many prints has left the quality quite shaky and poor but it is the film that counts.

Set in Monte Carlo, Count Sergius Karamzin (von Stroheim), with the help of his two cousins, lives a luxury life thanks to his ability to seduce married women and then blackmail them for money. His latest target is an American Miss DuPont) who is rather bored with her husband. The story is fairly close to that used in BLIND HUSBANDS and many ways this here seems like an alternate and more epic version of it. I felt BLIND HUSBANDS wondered a bit too long so I was a little nervous watching a longer version of it but this one here turned out to be much better all around. I'm not sure if the story would have worked at over six-hours but I'm going to guess that the longer version probably features more plot built around other characters including a maid as well as the two cousins who are more than likely lovers to the Count. It's impossible to discuss this movie without its budget but you can look at the screen and see where the money went to. von Stroheim actually rebuild the entire Monte Carlo city on the Universal back lot and the attention to details is quite amazing. Not for a second will you feel that you on a lot and it's a rather staggering achievement that the director was able to pull this off but then again it shows what a madman the director was. Apparently even the scenes where they are eating caviar had to use the most expensive caviar because the director wanted everything real. The story here is much better written than the previous film and you can tell that each character has their own bit of story and I think there reasons for doing everything are much better written and explained. The performances by von Stroheim and DuPont are both excellent and they work extremely well together. von Stroheim has no problem slipping into this snake role and he does a great job at playing the seducer as well as the con man. DuPont makes for a great victim as you can actually feel how soft and vulnerable she is. Even though the film is epic in scale, some of the best moments are smaller, quiet ones including a tremendously powerful scene where DuPont reacts to a man who has lost both of his arms in the war. The way this scene plays out is incredibly touching and perhaps the most powerful scene in the film. Another excellent scene happens when the maid, apparently another lover, finally realizes that she's been played all these years. Her breakdown is very effective and heartfelt. The ending has a spectacular fire sequence that contains some nice drama and the ending is pretty funny. The film being chopped down obviously leaves some flow issues but overall this is a much better film than BLIND HUSBANDS and one that really does fit the epic label. We'll never know if the uncut version is a masterpiece or not but what survives is a good indication of what might have been.