Foolish Wives (1922)

Originally posted to Facebook on 5/21/2017

Foolish Wives was our second film of 1922, and the first we’ve seen directed by (and starring) Erich von Stroheim. The production was famously troubled and over-budget (as can be verified by watching the made-for-TV movie Young Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Follies) -- and resulted in a six-plus hour running time before it was taken away from Stroheim and cut down to the length that survives today.

The movie itself -- or what remains of it -- revolves around Stroheim and two of his cousins, presenting themselves as Russian nobility, and trying to regain their former wealth. (The Russian revolution, of course, had happened just five years earlier.) The film begins strongly, with Stroheim playing a charming rogue, working with counterfeiters, and trying to seduce the wife of the American ambassador. However the charm begins to wear, particularly in a subplot involving Stroheim having carnal designs on a mentally disabled (or ”half-witted”, as the film puts it) daughter of one of his associates. I wasn’t terribly thrilled at having to explain this to the kids in as PG a fashion as possible -- nor at another scene where someone used the phrase “free, white, and twenty-one.” The film ends rather arbitrarily and abruptly, perhaps as a result of the studio’s radical re-cutting, but for long stretches it was entertaining to watch Stroheim play a sophisticated con artist. He has a real charisma, though the more you read about his actual personality, the harder it is to avoid drawing parallels with his character. Bizarrely Stroheim was still allowed to direct several subsequent films, and continued acting well into the fifties, including his role in Grand Illusion, and in Sunset Boulevard (along with so many other silent film figures.)

Next week we’ll see our third film from 1922, which is another iconic silent film that is still somewhat known today: Nosferatu. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT