La Loi des montagnes

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.

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.

Erich Von Stroheim's first film as writer/director stands as one of his most satisfying works. Not so coincidentally, it is one of only two films he directed that was left largely intact by the 'Front Office' executives of his studio, Universal, at least on its initial release. (The other would be his 1925 version of The Merry Widow, made for MGM.) Surviving prints of Blind Husbands lack some material cut for a 1924 reissue but are otherwise substantially complete. After this successful debut Von Stroheim's productions became more elaborate, his off-camera behavior more outrageous, and his relationships with studio chiefs and money men behind the scenes more contentious, almost always resulting in the films being taken out of his hands and re-edited by others. (The movie career of Orson Welles would follow a sadly similar trajectory.) But the trouble and notoriety came later. In 1919 Erich Von Stroheim was still a little known character actor noted for playing sadistic Huns in war movies, and this maiden effort as screenwriter, director and star took Hollywood by surprise.

In comparison with Von Stroheim's later, more elaborate, and often bizarre works, Blind Husbands is simple and straightforward. The story concerns an unhappy romantic triangle involving an upper class American couple, Dr. Robert Armstrong and his wife Margaret, and a Lieutenant Eric Von Steuben, whom they encounter while vacationing at a resort in the Austrian Alps. The tension between the three is apparent from the beginning, as they share a carriage ride uphill to the resort. The husband is inattentive to his wife; she is frustrated; and the lieutenant, having quickly analyzed the situation -- and Margaret's legs -- begins a determined campaign to seduce her away from her seemingly indifferent husband. This opening sequence gives us the essence of the plot in a matter of moments, primarily through visuals instead of wordy title cards.

We soon learn that Lieutenant Von Steuben has other irons in the fire, so to speak: he is a 'serial seducer' with a number of lady friends at the resort, including a frumpy middle-aged chambermaid and a young local girl who pathetically takes his protestations of love at face value. Dr. Armstrong, on the other hand, treats his wife coldly, and the only clue we're given as to why this is so comes when he cheerfully holds a villager's baby -- then shoots a significant look of unhappiness at his wife, who is shopping and doesn't notice. Clearly, this man wants to have a child, and his wife is either unwilling or unable to accommodate him. We have to assume that the former is the case, because as the story develops we learn that although the doctor is something of a cold fish he is also a basically decent guy, and not someone who would resent his wife for a medical condition beyond her control. Margaret appears to be considerably younger than her husband, and presumably doesn't feel ready to settle down to child-rearing.

Whatever the reasons for the friction in the Armstrong marriage, the plot turns on Margaret's response to Lieutenant Von Steuben's brazen advances; this is the crux of the film and what makes it worth watching today. Viewers unaccustomed to silent drama might expect a great deal of arm-waving, eyebrow-waggling, and other histrionics associated (with some justification) with the early days of cinema, but here is where Blind Husbands made its mark in 1919, and why it's still surprisingly watchable today: director Von Stroheim, a one-time assistant to D.W. Griffith, inspired his actors to give intensely felt yet remarkably restrained performances which for latter-day viewers might suggest Ingmar Bergman's ensemble company, or, more specifically where this material is concerned, the triangle at the center of Roman Polanski's A Knife in the Water. Thanks especially to the understated work of Francellia Billington as Margaret Armstrong, a great deal of information is conveyed with glances, shrugs, half-smiles, and frowns; no arm waving is necessary. It is clear to the viewer that Margaret is startled and then flattered by the lieutenant's audacity, at least at first, but also that she soon feels he has overstepped his bounds and is more upset than pleased about the situation. Von Stroheim's own performance as (his alter ego?) Von Steuben is highly enjoyable and set the standard for some of his later screen scoundrels, although the character is rather limited in scope in this early incarnation. Also notable in a sympathetic supporting role is Gibson Gowland, who would later embody the dentist MacTeague in Von Stroheim's masterpiece Greed.

The plotting of Blind Husbands turns hokey at the climax, when the doctor confronts his rival face-to-face on a mountain top. (The original title of the screenplay was "The Pinnacle.") There is some melodramatic hokum over a letter Margaret wrote to Von Steuben, but after all that understatement a little melodrama is forgivable -- and, frankly, rather fun.

An earlier posting concerning this film suggests it's a comedy, which it's not, but there are nice comic touches throughout. I first saw it at a museum screening a long time ago, and still remember the laughter when Von Steuben approaches two different women at a party and uses the same pick-up line, verbatim, on each of them. That device is still amusing today. And this movie stands as one of Erich Von Stroheim's strongest achievements in his all-too-brief, star-crossed career as a filmmaker.

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.

Blind Husbands (1919) : Brief Review -

Erich von Stroheim's extremist tale of masculine mistakes before he showed feminine faults in Foolish Wives (1922). Erich von Stroheim was an extremist when it came to films that showed feminine and masculine stuff from the perspective of married couples. Of course, that extramarital relationship thing drew a thin line between the acidic forms of female and male. When I saw Foolish Wives, I was stunned by his vision. I just couldn't believe that he made such an erotic film in 1922. Today, when I am just done watching Blind Husbands, I'm even more impressed. And believe me, it hasn't got anything to do with my male ego. At first I thought that this would hurt my male ego or satisfy that feminine anger, but I had no further thoughts of hating anything while watching it. I also realised that this film has given birth to the idea of an ignored wife - with different theories and conclusions, of course. Like, I remember David Lean's "Brief Encounter" (1945), Satyajit Ray's "Charulata" (1964) and "Ghare Baire" (1989), which all had the same idea of an ignored wife falling for the third man. And in the beginning credits, this film makes an extreme speech by saying, "People always blame the third man, but what about the husband?" That's so true. We never really thought that way. With that topic, Blind Husbands has that power to spark a debate even after 103 years, today in 2022. Stroheim excels as an actor and also as a director. Sam De Grasse and Francelia Billington looked great together even though they didn't have many scenes together. The intertitles and screenplay keep you intrigued, and the cinematography is decent. A bit too simple a film, but for 1919, I guess it was too much, especially when you learn the fact that many marriages were actually broken by 'the third man', just like this film says. Overall, a great effort for contemporary filmmaking, if not a great fllm.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.