Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim, 1922)

Erich von Stroheim and Maude George in Foolish Wives

Cast: Erich von Stroheim, Miss DuPont, Maude George, Mae Busch, Rudolph Christians, Dale Fuller, Albert Edmondson, Cesare Gravina, Malvina Polo, C.J. Allen. Screenplay: Erich von Stroheim; titles: Marian Ainslee, Walter Anthony. Cinematography: William H. Daniels, Ben F. Reynolds. Art direction: Richard Day, Elmer Sheehy, Van Alstein. Film editing: Arthur Ripley. 

Erich von Stroheim's reach exceeded Hollywood's grasp, though not without some initial encouragement by the studio heads. Universal eagerly promoted Foolish Wives as "the first million-dollar movie," and most of that sum was apparent on screen: the huge sets re-creating Monte Carlo that were built on the Monterey Peninsula in California. Some of it, too, wasn't visible: Stroheim reportedly insisted on having underwear created for his actors bearing the monograms of their characters. But there were limits to what the studio would do for the director: When Rudolph Christians, a key actor in the film, died in mid-filming, Stroheim proposed that his scenes be reshot with his stand-in, Robert Edeson, but was forced to give in to the studio's work-around: Edeson played the role in the remaining scenes with his back to the camera. But mostly, the studio's resistance was to Stroheim's vision of a movie that would run somewhere between six and 10 hours and be shown on two consecutive nights. He was forced to settle for a three-and-a-half-hour version, which was subsequently cut again under the instructions of the New York censors. More cuts by the studio followed after the film was a box office disappointment, so that what we see today is a reconstruction cobbled together from existing versions. But after that, what we have is a juicy, kinky melodrama about decadent Europe trying to corrupt innocent America. Stroheim plays a con man pretending to be an exiled Russian aristocrat, Count Sergius Karamzin, living with two women he says are his cousins: the phony princesses Olga Petchnikoff (Maude George) and Vera Petchnikoff (Mae Busch). They're out to milk whatever cash they can from suckers at Monte Carlo, and Sergius sets his sights on Helen Hughes (Miss DuPont), the wife of an American diplomat (Christians). In his down time from that seduction, he also pursues, with purely carnal intent, a hotel maid (Dale Fuller) and the pretty but mentally challenged daughter (Malvina Polo) of the man who counterfeits the money Sergius uses to bilk gamblers at the casino. There's a spectacular storm and an even more spectacular fire, too, before Sergius gets perhaps more than what's coming to him. Even in its truncated version, Foolish Wives is almost too much.