3/5 Montecarlo as Sin City: Interesting but LONG Psychological Perspective
  by Alberto M. Barral (new york)
Erich von Stroheim directs and plays Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin (Capt. 3rd Hussars Imper. Russian Army). He is very much in love with his dashing persona that is best described as an acquired taste, I think it would have been much more effective to have that much footage on a really talented actor that is also good looking,but that is just a detail. The film is a good film, the characters are interesting and well developed and the scenes are beautifully filmed.
The problem, and it is a problem no matter how much talent we may think von Stronheim had as a director, is the timing. It is an unnecessarily long movie, period. I can totally understand how this became a real challenge later as he thought longer was better and the more expensive the production, the better too. Neither one of these is necessarily true as we know from other great directors.
In all fairness, the length of time has always been endemic to German cultural productions, it is actually one of its most salient characteristics and can be traced all the way back to Goethe's Faust and Wagner's Operas, though I dare say it probably started out from the very beginning in their medieval dramas. The problem ussually starts with confusing and melding two different things which creates a third which is neither. For example with Wagner's operas, there is no question the music is great quality. The problem begins when throwing that content into the structure of a performance: 4 or five hours without interruption is not the usual amount of time people can sit without a bathroom or refreshment break. As far as this perspective is concerned if you can't take four hours to say it, then it is not worth bothering with, and I for one could not disagree more. Here for example at the very beginning of the film we see the characters in a villa endlessly having breakfast. I mean you have all the time in the world to count the patterns of silk on Count Sergius' silk robe, which I also found overly done and a bit ridiculous.
Then there is the walk he takes with the wife of the American envoy to Monaco (Miss DuPont) that turns into a total nightmare as they hit a rain storm and when it is raining the hardest Count Sergius takes her into a boat and decides to go across the lake to some hut, where a witch like hag lives with her goats. This entire scene, which is endless, is totally unnecessary, we get to see several long shots of the goats too, as if they were major characters, and of the hag sleeping. In the midst of this a monk stops by and stays with them too, another twenty minutes going nowhere.
The film finally takes off when he tells the American wife to meet him at his villa, where his cousins Maude George as Princess Olga Petchnikoff and Mae Busch as Princess Vera Petchnikoff, who look like Weimar trans-gender women, run a mini casino where they clear Cesare Ventucci, (Cesare Gravina) a Counterfeiter's bills that he makes for them on a regular basis. The permanently depressed and abused maid Marushka (Dale Fuller) however has been having an affair with the Count as well, she has even given him her life savings after he has a crocodile tear scene asking her for money, which she consents to do thinking of his (false) promise of marriage. As one of the first vengeful neurotic lovers in film, she sees them through the keyhole and decides to set the place on fire and throw herself to the sea from a cliff later. Both scenes are shown in exhausting detail.
I can totally understand why this movie was heavily edited, but can not begin to comprehend how it could have possibly been longer than this. Suppossedly one of the 'great' ideas was that it reproduced Montecarlo on a Hollywood backlot. Unless they were going to do a series on the Riviera, it would have been better to go there. I now can see why von Sronheim ran into problems with "Queen Kelly" and Gloria Swanson as that story started to 'grow'. The word 'cut' must be very difficult to pronounce, or to put in mind in German, which is a shame for there is no question there are great qualities here as well as a lot of talent. I have hear that the original length of his 'masterpiece' "Greed" was 9 hours, even cuting it down to two viewings of 4 and 5 hours each is difficult to envision. Who had that much time for a movie then? or now?

4/5 Good master of ancient material
  by Phil S. (USA)
Very interesting story of deception among the jet set before there was one.
Eric von Stroheim plays a real Count who dishonors his home and visiting country by enlisting two fake cousins in his schemes to extract wealth from Monte Carlo vacationers. When he's not pursuing rich married women, he's "borrowing" from the Housekeeper he has promised to marry.
One of the "cousins" is Mae Busch in an early role. Known better as "Mrs. Hardy" or L & H's nemesis in many Laurel and Hardy films, it's fun to watch her strut her stuff: the character is similiar to the one from "Chickens Come Home", from about 10 years later.
Great sets, costumes; interesting camera angles; tintype effect. New musical soundtrack is a solo piano, beautifully incorporated.
Viewer should know that the film conatins some very disturbing racial
content, of course, typical of the period.

4/5 Shooting Captive Doves
  by W. Shriver (Portland, OR)
Giving a mere four stars to Stroheim's FOOLISH WIVES (1922) may seem faint praise to some. Be that as it may, WIVES is a trend-setting example of grifters gradually losing control of a "long con." For that alone, it is entertaining to watch. Best of all, in Stroheim's character of the fraudulent "Count," we have one of world cinema's first and best sociopaths.

The trio of faux Russian aristocrats in Monte Carlo, including the Count and two women posing as his relatives, are involved in forgery, blackmail, seduction and murder. The Count insinuates his way into the life of the lonely American wife of a diplomat, and in the process his own lechery goes to battle with his greed, prolonging the con to an unsustainable length.

As in virtually every major film of the silent era, visual metaphor and synecdoche are important to the storytelling. One scene features the Count, a sharpshooter, entertaining a crowd (including his "mark") by shooting doves which are released from small wooden boxes on the ground before they are cut down by gunfire when they are barely airborne. It is the kind of bold flourish that most directors of talkies have shied away from in favor of dialogue exposition. Howard Hawks continued to use these types of "old-fashioned" devices with great success in the sound era. When Jean Renoir set out to expose the oblivious pre-war mentality of the upper classes, one wonders if he had this scene in mind when he devised the rabbit-slaughter sequence in RULES OF THE GAME.

Maybe this is heresy, but to me, FOOLISH WIVES, in its 107 minute version, feels complete. That is a proper length for a feature film of this genre, especially when, at the time, this was the most costly film in commercial cinema's 20-odd year history--it needed to be of a standard length to recoup its cost. Possibly the two-to-five additional hours (I've read conflicting information on the lost bits) is as compelling as what we see here. If so,then it is a pity this great director was born 75 years too early to create and produce an HBO miniseries.

5/5 Admirable film!
  by Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela)
Once more the genius of Erich von Stroheim can be appreciated in this superb and mature film. The astonishing handle of the camera and the facial expressions have in him an eloquent and perfect ambassador. Sobriety, charm and exquisite good taste are the real difference.


5/5 "Foolish Wives" - A 1920's Costumer Designer's Delight
  by Gelvin (Mississippi)
My main interest in Erich von Stroheim's 1922 silent film classic "Foolish Wives" is in the use of lavish background sets and the glittering costumes which represent Monte Carlo in the 1920's.

I was surfing through TV channels and came upon the Turner Classic movie already in progress. As I watched the rich black and white images, it seemed as if I were looking at an album of old photographs which came to life.

I'm buying a copy of this movie because I'm intrigued by the furniture, the use of everyday articles of the 1920's, and the formal dress. And, hey, it's not a bad story, either!