When it comes to the world of cinema, there has never been and probably never will be a bigger villain to make an impact on the screen more than that of—cue ominous stinger—the studio executive. Our oft belittled and antagonised hero, the auteur-director-genius, fights for his art to survive the relentless scissors which hack and cut and simplify and malign his soul's innermost-visions, his heart's dismays and his head's vitriol at a world which sneers at the misunderstood, holier-than-thou artist. The villains play their part well, and live up to their reputations in more cases than not. However, when watching Foolish Wives, one can't help but feel that maybe roles have been reversed for a short while. Erich von Stroheim writes, directs and stars in his first "grand vision" of a film which somewhat fittingly focuses on a leading character with no likable qualities or redeeming features. In the majority of other films, he would be the villain. Unlike Lon Chaney in 1920s gangster flick The Penalty however, this doesn't make the rest of Stroheim's bloated film interesting or in any way enjoyable.
Watching the movie now, with a mere 140 minutes of footage salvaged from the original six hours, it's plain to see why most of the movie was mercilessly cut to ribbons. Often laboriously indulging in his own elaborate sets and painfully uninteresting characters (with the exception of his own), the film goes on and on, only briefly doing something interesting before succumbing back to mundane trivialities that go nowhere slowly. Stroheim does a fair job at portraying his character as dutifully repugnant as was obviously his intent, and his cast of supporting actors and actresses hand in commanding performances when called upon. But in building this self-indulgent attack on what he saw as European hypocrisy, the director comes off as a bit of a sham himself; talking loudly and endlessly about next to nothing of any real significance other than as a means to stroke his own fragmented ego. The moral of the story? The cutting room floor isn't always where genius and art dies. Sometimes it's where overweight, needlessly self-important films go to heaven. There's probably a decent film here, but it was lost in the seventies, not in the twenties.
Watching the movie now, with a mere 140 minutes of footage salvaged from the original six hours, it's plain to see why most of the movie was mercilessly cut to ribbons. Often laboriously indulging in his own elaborate sets and painfully uninteresting characters (with the exception of his own), the film goes on and on, only briefly doing something interesting before succumbing back to mundane trivialities that go nowhere slowly. Stroheim does a fair job at portraying his character as dutifully repugnant as was obviously his intent, and his cast of supporting actors and actresses hand in commanding performances when called upon. But in building this self-indulgent attack on what he saw as European hypocrisy, the director comes off as a bit of a sham himself; talking loudly and endlessly about next to nothing of any real significance other than as a means to stroke his own fragmented ego. The moral of the story? The cutting room floor isn't always where genius and art dies. Sometimes it's where overweight, needlessly self-important films go to heaven. There's probably a decent film here, but it was lost in the seventies, not in the twenties.