Description: Most of Von Stroheim's films were severely *******ized by studio heads upon their release - Foolish Wives´ original cut ran 3 1/2 hours. It begins with the perfect iris shot. This is no ordinary "fade into" effect, but an entrancing reinforcement of the sinister, insular and constrictive nature of the milieu Von Stroheim is about to introduce us to. Because the man spent much of his life hiding his Jewish background, it probably comes as no surprise that there's so much lingering beneath the surface of his films.
In post-war Europe, a bogus Russian count, Sergius Karamzin, and his two "cousins"-cum-mistresses confer with their pathetic counterfeiter before descending upon the wife of an American envoy sent to Monte Carlo to meet with the Prince of Monaco. Karamzin's business is destroying lives, and over the course of the film's existing 141 minutes, he takes advantage of no less than three women: the American Helen Hughes, his maid Maruschka, and the counterfeiter's half-witted daughter, Marietta. At the time of its release, Foolish Wives was the most expensive film ever produced, and though Von Stroheim was widely considered a lavish spendthrift, his films remain triumphs of period detail.
The film features the most daring intertitles in the history of silent cinema, and Von Stroheim uses their stream-of-consciousness nature to enhance the film's startling aesthetic shifts and to point to the politics at work throughout the narrative. Karamzin is a monster, not so much because his "eyeopener" is oxblood and his "cereal" is caviar, but because he understands how to oppress others with sinister surroundings. Who knows what Universal suits left on the cutting room floor, but you get a sense that Karamzin knew poverty once. "Dense Marshes—Slimy—Sombrous—Betraying—Then—Ni ght." The count uses darkness to scare and seduce Helen, who defends her weakness to her husband in the only way she can: "I'm Free—White—and Twenty-One."
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