Foolish Wives (1922)

Country: USA

Released: January 11th, 1922

Genre: Romance, Melodrama

Directed by: Eric Von Stroheim

Produced by: Irving Thaldberg

Written by: Eric Von Stroheim

It's not a good sign for your movie when I'm bored less than ten minutes in. It's an even worse sign when I'm bored and confused.

This is not entirely fair to Foolish Wives to be honest. I misread the list and was expecting a Buster Keaton movie. It's not easy standing in for Buster Keaton. Still that doesn't negate the fact that this movie was boring, and considering the kinds of films I've seen so far that is saying something. It has its bright spots of course: Eric Von Stroheim is great as the sleazy Wladislaw Karamzin and his look is instantly iconic, which makes sense considering he's dressed like a gay Bond villain. The sets were pretty cool too, but at this point I'm really grasping for compliments. All in all a dull movie, but what kind of sub-par film critic would I be if I didn't at least try to talk about it?

Basically, the film stars Stroheim's Karamzin, a sleazy conman who, after getting rejecting by the Village People, decides to travel to Montecarlo with his two associates in order to seduce and scam a rich American named Helen Hughes (Miss DuPont). What follows is two hours of rich white people indulging in the kind of decadence that would make Caligula blush. I'm talking real, "drinking the tears of child labourers" kind of degeneracy here. Christ, Louis IV would tell these guys to chill out. It's worth noting that the original version was over six hours long! Six hours of watching rich people be rich. Now I understand that the fact the other four hours are lost to history is a tragedy as far as film historians are concerned,  but I could not be more relieved. If I had to sit through another minute of this I'm pretty sure I would have blown my brains out all over my laptop. 

But I digress. After doing nothing for two hours except hit on women, manipulate his infatuated maid (Dale Fuller), and act like an all around cunt, Karamzin brings Hughes to a tower to romance her, only for said tower to catch fire. Karamzin escapes the flames unscathed but Hughes is injured, prompting Karamzin to be cast out by his peers for cowardice. He is then killed by the father of another one of his many girlfriends. The end.

Couple things to note. Why is Karamzin a coward exactly? He just leapt into the firefighters' trampoline before Hughes. Is it because he didn't abide by the sacrosanct "ladies and children first" rule of gentlemanly conduct? It's not like he used her to cushion his fall or anything. Seems a bit dickish to high-road him like that, especially when its coming from bunch of guys who use the blood of the proletariat to oil the amoral gears of capitalism.

Boy, I'm feeling weirdly socialistic today.

Рабочие всего мира, объединяйтесь!

Maybe that's why I don't like this movie. It was after all the most expensive movie of its day, wielding the first budget to surpass one million dollars. It sure doesn't feel like it though. Griffith managed to build the walls of Babylon and recreate some of the greatest battles of the ancient world with a tenth of the budget. And what did you do, movie? You built Montecarlo in your backyard. Why? Why not just save some cash and film on location at Montecarlo. I know traveling wasn't that easy in the 1920s but surely it wouldn't cost a million dollars? At least use it dammit! Shove in some more panoramic shots or something. 

Absurd budgets aside this movie feels like a subtle critique of the European upper classes, and European culture in general. World War One ended four years before this movie's release and the scars were still fresh, as was the bitterness. Following the Great War there was a real rejection of European Civilization by much of the world (this was a war that inspired figures like Ho Chi Minh and Jawaharlal Nehru). How could there not be? For many it was the so called "civilized" culture of Europe that had led to the most tragic war in modern history. Was that really what all that so-called progress led to? Death and destruction on an apocalyptic scale? This was the war that prompted America to embrace isolationism and turn its back on its Western cousins. This disillusionment is palpable throughout the movie, as the villains are aristocrats and nobles, most of whom are portrayed as greedy or aloof to the plight of others. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it; I didn't really pay attention after all. I was too busy looking for some grass to stare at and ease my crushing boredom.

As I sat in front of my computer gazing at Stroheim cleaning his monocle, eyes long-since glazed over, I could help think, "is this it?" Is this all there is? Are were condemned to walk upon this Earth, this speck of dust floating through infinity, with nothing to do other than fill our precious time with mindless entertainment? For what is life but an endless parade of distractions, meaningless images and sensations designed to release chemicals into our brains and prop the illusion of purpose. Watching the characters suffer through their miserable lives I soon saw the face of God, and it was Hollywood, it was Electronic Arts, it was Apple, it was every peddler of entertainment using its wares to mask the terrible truth: That our lives are unimportant. Half-way through this film I ceased to watch Stroheim and his compatriots and found myself staring into the abyss, and in the brief moment wherein my mind touched the void I realized that we do not matter. That we never mattered. And that no matter what we do, no matter how much we suffer and hurt ourselves we will never matter.

Oh, and the lighting was also pretty good I suppose.

See you next time!