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Evil, decadent Queen Regina V (Seena Owen, doomed queen of Babylon in Intolerance) is engaged to wolfish Prince Wolfram, but he falls for convent orphan Gloria Swanson whose pants have fallen down. I am not making this up. They go on for twenty minutes about her pants falling down, which is a pretty big deal in an hour and forty minute movie. Anyway the queen decides to punish Wolfram by moving up their wedding to the next day. And Wolfram plays a hilarious prank, breaking into the convent, setting it on fire to flush out his beloved, then kidnapping her. This doesn’t end well for either of them when the queen finds out. Wolfram is imprisoned (I like that he receives visitors in “solitary confinement”) and Gloria jumps into the river, killing herself, the end.

Queen:

Kelly:

But that’s only the end because Stroheim was fired from what was meant to be a five-hour film, so producer Swanson wrapped it up quickly and shipped to theaters. The DVD contains a couple reels of what was shot next, after Gloria was supposed to be saved from drowning in the river: some crazy scenes in an African brothel where Gloria is forced to marry the brilliantly grotesque Tully Marshall (Intolerance‘s High Priest who deposes the queen). The movie pops to life here, turns from a stodgy old costume drama with a few exciting shots into a sleazy melodrama with only exciting shots.

Wolfram, receiving bad news:

Kelly hanging over the river, remembering everyone laughing at her (left) as the queen (right) chased her from the palace with a whip.

Silent movies can get tiresome when they have too many intertitles, each of which lasts too long. Definitely the case here. Produced by Swanson and Joe “JFK’s dad” Kennedy, and supposedly sunk by clash of personalities, increase in Hollywood censorship, and the advent of talkies. I didn’t feel like watching the thousand minutes of extra features today, so I read the Senses of Cinema article instead.

Tully/Jan:

M. Koller:

In the African sequences… the relationship between Regina and Wolfram is mirrored by Jan Vooyheid and Kitty’s loveless, contemptuous marriage. As with Regina’s introduction at the beginning of the film, Stroheim uses a series of vignettes to summarise Jan’s attributes. Jan (Kitty’s benefactor) can also be seen as the degenerate extrapolation of an unredeemed Wolfram; old, ugly, and crippled by syphilis, he is a violent, disrespectful, gambling, whoring drunk.

by ·Comments Off on Foolish Wives (1922, Erich von Stroheim)

Crazy movie featuring an extremely evil Stroheim in league with two fake princesses, Olga (Stroheim regular Maude George) and Vera (Mae Busch, desireable pickpocket of The Unholy Three). They’re introduced in Monte Carlo being shitty to the maid, then the girls meet the counterfeiter (Cesare Gravina, the junkman in Greed) from whom they buy their false fortune while Stroheim tries to hit on the guy’s not-quite-right daughter.


Oops, I forgot which is which.

On to the main plot: a couple of important American diplomats are in town, and the wicked trio plots to befriend them in order to ensure their own status among the suspicious locals. Or that’s what the plot was supposed to be, but soon Stroheim goes full-on Blind Husbands trying to seduce the wife (and later rob her, after she wins a fortune at the casino).

EvS picks up Mrs. Hughes at the palace, getting himself introduced himself by paying somebody to page him, then takes the couple out shooting to show off, and soon enough takes her alone for a walk and gets “accidentally” lost in a storm, having to spend the night in a cabin. Fortunately for Mrs. Hughes, a monk comes along and gives EvS the stinkeye just as he was about to rape her in her sleep.

Meanwhile, EvS is also defrauding his own maid, getting her to hand over her life savings while promising to marry her. And diplomat Andrew Hughes is suspiciously keeping his back turned to camera in most of his scenes, because the actor died in the middle of production. It’s funny that Stroheim was obsessed with accuracy, dressing sets the camera would never see, using real caviar and buying silk underpants for all the actors, but when a main character died he just worked around that.

fake Monte Carlo:

All this deception catches up with the fake royalty. The cops bust the women, but EvS gives himself a more dramatic ending. The maid (Dale Fuller, also played crazy in Greed) sees EvS trying to seduce Mrs. Hughes so locks them both in the house and sets it aflame before throwing herself into the sea. Stroheim thinks he’s escaped a public scandal after jumping from the burning balcony first and leaving poor Mrs. Hughes to defend for herself, but her blind husband finally catches onto EvS’s game and knocks him down in public. Stroheim thinks of one last woman he can try to destroy and runs to the counterfeiter’s house (actually I think this was a different man), where he’s stabbed to death then dropped down a manhole.

The maid goes crazy:

I watched the first two thirds with Kino’s generic music before remembering that I control my own destiny and turning on the ol’ standby for silent movies, John Zorn’s Filmworks Anthology, which worked brilliantly as it always does.

A few seconds after Stroheim’s character is introduced, he fires a gun straight into the camera, making sure he’s immediately recognized as a villain (though he’s smiling a second later).

Mrs. Hughes spends the whole movie reading a novel: Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim

My favorite subplot: Mrs. Hughes is offended by a porter (played by silent star Harrison Ford) who never picks up the stuff that she drops, until one night she sees his cloak fallen at his feet and realizes he has no hands.

Also watched a Stroheim doc on the disc. I guess no Stroheim “director’s cut” exists of any of his films. It doesn’t get into the details of cuts made to them, but Blind Husbands title was forcibly changed from The Pinnacle, The Devil’s Passkey is lost (reviewers said it was better than Blind Husbands), Greed was drastically cut, Foolish Wives became “a national scandal,” he was fired from Merry-Go-Round, Merry Widow was a big hit, Wedding March was shut down in middle of filming then cobbled together for release, Queen Kelly also shut down/fired, and Walking Down Broadway was recut into Hello, Sister! after a disastrous premiere. It also says that Stroheim declined both roles offered him for Grand Illusion, then invented the idea that they’d be the same man (before and after getting injured) in order to give himself a larger part.

by ·Comments Off on Blind Husbands (1919, Erich von Stroheim)

Stroheim’s directorial debut, a very straightforward movie, with prominent mountain-climbing scenes (cuz you can take the filmmaker out of Austria, but you can’t take a love for mountain-climbing movies out of an Austrian filmmaker) along with tassels, feathers, pipes, silly hats and monocles.

The director’s grinning, monocled death’s head:

A single travelling shot at the end (at least I didn’t notice any camera movement before that). Some great edits (from 3 mountain climbers to 3 crosses), a great mirror shot, a few flashbacks. Divided into acts, which are announced by title cards that usually appear right in the middle of a conversation, weird.

Dr. Armstrong (Sam De Grasse, Prince John in the Fairbanks Robin Hood) and his pretty wife Francelia Billington are on a mountain vacation, and womanizer/fraud Stroheim tags along, plots to steal away Francelia for himself. To prove his villainy, Stroheim seduces the waitress at their inn along the way.

Hero and wife:

Silent Sepp:

Armstrong sets off with his mountain buddy Silent Sepp (Gibson Gowland, star of Greed) to rescue a couple of imperiled climbers, even though this is supposed to be Armstrong’s vacation, and Stroheim makes his move, is rebuffed. But that night F. ponders how her husband pays her no attention, and when Stroheim tries it again during their climactic climb to the peak, she reconsiders. Husband responds by hurling Stroheim off the cliff.

Not even detail-oriented Stroheim could control the birds: when Francelia tries to play with this white bird, to show her playful innocence, the bird clearly wants nothing to do with her:

Francelia “sees” a happy young married couple in her mirror, while her neglectful husband lies asleep:

by ·Comments Off on Grand Illusion (1937, Jean Renoir)

A weird sort of (anti-)war film in that the opposing sides (mostly French vs. German) are extremely nice to each other. The great Jean Gabin (between The Lower Depths and La Bete Humaine) is pilot Marechal, flying the right proper monocle-wearing Captain Boldieu (Pierre Fresnay, star of Le Corbeau and Duvivier’s Phantom Carriage remake) when they’re shot down by the right proper monocle-wearing Erich von Stroheim – who shakes their hands and invites them to dinner.

The next section is the source of many comic/dramatic prison camp films, but without the grit and terror of many of them (although Gabin is painfully placed in solitary confinement after provoking a celebration over Germany losing a battle), since WWII forever changed the face of prison camps. The men are stationed with a series of characters digging an escape tunnel beneath their barracks, including three major Rules of the Game actors: The Engineer (jealous husband Gaston Modot), The Actor (Julien Carette, Gaston’s poacher nemesis) and Rosenthal (Marcel Dallo, the marquis), along with Jean Daste (a brush-mustached vegetarian).

That’s Daste at upper-right, and his L’Age d’Or-starring engineer companion over his shoulder:

Before they can use the tunnel, our initial two Frenchman plus Rosenthal (a rich jew who receives lavish care packages from home) are transferred to a new camp – one run by a stiffly strict Stroheim (is there any other kind of Stroheim?), now in a back/neck brace from an injury. They immediately set about planning their escape again. Boldieu causes a distraction while the other two climb down a handmade rope. Stroheim is extremely depressed to have to shoot down Boldieu, a man he considered too respectful to break the prison rules.

Gabin and Dallo on the run:

Finally, a section that proved unexpectedly resonant with Essential Killing – a prisoner on the run encounters a woman living alone (the lead actress of the film, not appearing until the last fifteen minutes) who brings him in and cares for him. Rosenthal has a leg injury, but overall the guys are in better shape than Vincent Gallo was, and Gabin falls for the lovely Dita Parlo (Renoir was always casting actors from L’Atalante), a German civilian with a young son, whose husband and brothers have all died in the war. The men walk off through Switzerland, Gabin hoping to return. But Renoir obviously doesn’t believe he will.

P. Cowie on the audio commentary:

“War is a great illusion,” said Renoir on another occasion, “with its hopes unfulfilled, its promises never kept.” Of course the interesting thing is that [Marechal and Rosenthal] say farewell to each other with no plans to meet, whereas in the original scenario, Bazin claims that the two fugitives had arranged a rendezvous at Maxime’s in Paris for the first Christmas Eve after the war, and the last shot would show “December 24, 1918,” and their table, reserved but empty in the midst of the busy restaurant, as though even their friendship had been an illusion. . . . Many years later, when Renoir was asked about war films and their effectiveness, he replied soberly, “In 1936 I made a picture named Grand Illusion in which I tried to express all my deep feelings for the cause of peace. This film was very successful. Three years later, the war broke out.”

by ·Comments Off on Greed (1924, Erich von Stroheim)

Watched the four-hour TCM reconstructed version over a few days. Liked it pretty well. Excellent intro to McTeague’s character: finds an injured bird while mining and picks it up… another miner knocks it out of his hand, so McTeague hurls the guy down a hill. Oh, and the slang between McTeague and Marcus is fun. The elderly neighbors and junk dealers provide nice counterpoints to McTeague’s relationship with his wife, and the movie keeps coming back to the heavy-handed theme of greed. I’d wondered if it had just been a four-hour movie in 1924 that Stroheim had edited himself whether anyone would talk about it half as much today. Is it THAT important a film, or is the fact that most of the footage was destroyed by the studio the thing that makes it important? Anyway, cool movie, glad I saw it. Not quite as nice as Sunrise (but what is?) and the story’s a bit of a bummer. Appropriate ending, anyway (and nicely tinted desert scenes).