Foolish Wives

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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Three Russian aristocrats lease a villa from which they can luxuriously enjoy Monte Carlo. They are: maid-pinching Maude George (as Princess Olga Petchnikoff), blonde-wigged Mae Busch (as Princess Vera Petchnikoff), and monocled lady-killer Erich von Stroheim (as Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin). You should also keep an eye on their foolish maid, Dale Fuller (as Maruschka). Mr. von Stroheim is the film's star, director, and writer. It becomes obvious the trio are really counterfeiting con artists. The gang of three are intrigued by the notice of the arrival of American Envoy Rudolph Christians (as Andrew J. Hughes) and his wife Miss DuPont (as Helen); they decide to strike up a societal acquaintanceship with the Americans, to help provide cover for their swindling. Then, von Stroheim shows Ms. DuPont his stiff cane, and give her bare legs a leer…

Have a great laugh when Ms. DuPont, while applying her face cream, declares she is twenty-one years old; husband's reply he that is a sun-burned forty-one shows he can shave off years with the best of them. Mr. Christians died during the production, and his white-haired replacement, back to the camera, is obvious; with all the expense obviously spent on "Foolish Wives", it's difficult to understand why von Stroheim could not add a little bit of cheap shoe polish to Robert Edeson's head. There are other problems with the story, which was brutally cut down from a multi-hour epic. Still, the studio heads could not cut the neither the length of von Stroheim's cigarettes, nor the fact that his (vanity) production of "Foolish Wives" retains its spectacle.

Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957) was a man with many realities. He was born into a poor Jewish family in Vienna, tried to join the Habsburgian army but was rejected, flew to the United States and started as a swimming instructor and boat guide. How he managed to meet David Griffith is unclear, but finally Griffith appointed von Stroheim as assistant director for his "Intolerance" (1916). It is hard to imagine how such different characters like Griffith and von Stroheim could get along with one another, but I assume that the most important feature that they shared was their megalomania. Soon after, von Stroheim started his career as director and actor, although he had no education at all – not in theater, not in film business, not in literature. But this did not prevent him either to write screenplays.

After his debut with Griffith, he changed his identity and invented a new one. He added the predicate "von" to his name, told everybody that he is the descendant of a family of Viennese nobles and had made a carrier as an imperial officer in the Habsburgian army. Von Stroheim trained so long, until he could perfectly imitate the behavior of all ranks from a colonel up to a general, from a prince up to a count. And these were the roles that he should play mostly during his whole life: counts, barons, captains, lieutenants, majors, generals. He played them until he believed that he was what he played: the borders between his seeming and his being became more and more fluid. It therefore would be a terrible mistake to assume that Erich von Stroheim was a liar, a cheater and a betrayer. Similar to Don Quixote, he constructed his own reality, including his identity – and believed in it himself.

Strangely enough, although von Stroheim directed only about 10 movies, but acted in in 74, he is nowadays known mainly as a director. Once arrived in the United States, the Habsburgian monarchy was broken together already, so nobody could check if Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian noble, an officer or not. In his very personal way, von Stroheim took the famous passage of the Declaration of Independence more seriously than many other Americans or peoples who became Americans: the breaking-up of his own past and scooping out fully his chances in the land of unlimited possibilities. However, in creating his personal reality, he was obliged to maximal authenticity. So von Stroheim for example reconstructed meticulously the Casino of Monte Carlo for his movie "Foolish wives" (1922). Instead of using raspberry jam as imitation for caviar he had imported original Russian Beluga caviar – extremely expensive and hard to get so shortly after World War I. The movie was the hitherto most expensive film, it cost over one million of dollars. Von Stroheim's megalomania – caused by his obsession for authenticity in order to convince not only the public but mostly himself about his creations of reality – leaded finally to the end of his directing career in the United States – and also inaugurated much later his fame as the most extravagant film director ever.

Married to Valérie Germonpréz, Erich von Stroheim met already in the United States his secretary and later life-mate Denise Vernac (1916-1984), who was 31 years younger than him. Although he never divorced from his wife, he finally left the U.S. after his failure as a director and lacking film roles. He settled to France in the castle of his girlfriend who enabled von Stroheim to continue his life of self-creation. He always wore his golden watch and bracelet, his stick with silver knob and dressed like a baron. Totally unaware that he could never reestablish himself as a film director, he continued writing screenplays that would never be filmed. His style of writing was so clumsy that he could not even publish the novels that he also wrote. He drew whole film scenarios that never would be put in scene. Meanwhile he appeared in main roles in French and again in American movies in which he played his usual roles in order to forget that he sat, as a director, unnoticed by the world in the castle of his girlfriend, writing letters of love to his wife, but fully depending financially on his girlfriend, his only public performances being his showing-ups in Paris' most expensive high-society restaurant "Maxims" where everybody knew him. In order to get there from Maurepas, where von Stroheim and Denise Vernac lived, they had to drive each evening a long way. Often, von Stroheim presented himself in the restaurant in the costumes of the barons and generals that he played on screen: the borders between reality and fantasy were abolished. However, he did not lack a special kind of self-irony, and this is shown best in "Foolish wives", where a girl is reading a book with the same title, allegedly written by Erich von Stroheim or in another movie where he played a megalomaniac film director. But nevertheless, he acted in real life, and his life of self-creation was doubtless his greatest role. In this context, is seems almost ironical that only a few days before his death the state of France appointed him knight of the honorary legion: Erich von Stroheim's only real award that was not created by himself.

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.