ShangLuda
Admirable film.
AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Anthony Dolphin (santasprees)
'Foolish Wives' is the 'Smile' (Brian Wilson, sandpits, fire engines) of world cinema. What wonders might reside in the lost reels when such sumptuous detail and glorious framing fill all that remains? It is as over ripe and decadent as the novels of Huysmans, with Von Stroheim, an amoral Count that drinks oxblood for breakfast, giving one of the most richly-textured variations on villainy ever seen on film.For all its director's notorious largesse it is the intimate particulars and distillation of atmosphere that enchant: a sea breeze disturbing the drapes and dresses on a sunlit terrace, the Count's tortuously coy dance of seduction in front of the hotel, the interior of a garlanded boat in a bay illuminated by lanterns.
Mart Sander
Sure thing, you can smell the big bucks, but that's not a thing to automatically make a good film. The location shots are great and the story is mildly interesting, but... there are no likable characters or even characters you could identify with. Stroheim could have been seductive and sexy, but bluntly he's too ugly to really pass as a notorious heart breaker. He doesn't look noble, seductive or gallant, but just plain arrogant and fake. (Let's not forget that just like this character, the real "von Stroheim" was quite a similar fake in real life.) It's hard to imagine why any woman would fall for him, even when the woman in question is as dull and uninteresting as Miss Dupont. It's all on the surface: the characters are even more black and white than the film, and even though most of them act sensibly, there is no real depth written into the script. Thank God we only have the 108 minutes version instead of the original (reported) 6 + hours! I doubt if there was any significant character development there. The story is highly moralizing, even though this could have been something that Hollywood producers threw in at some point. Not a bad film, but something that keeps you at a distance and never allows to really become part of it. Probably one of the first films to fixate the enduring Hollywoodian image of Russians as the bad guys.
guy-bellinger
Lots has been written on the subject and like many others I highly enjoyed the beautiful cinematography, the reconstitution ( both impressive and accurate to the minutest details ), the wit of the titles. However, what actually carried me away is the recurrence of weird finds. In what other movie indeed can you find details like these : - a countess pinching the arm of her maid - a man drinking a calf's blood cocktail first thing in the morning - a US special envoy having trouble in taking off his gloves in front of a prince - a disaster-movie summer storm preventing two would-be sinners from going beyond the point of no return - a wicked hypocrite shedding tears of...TEA ?Stroheim is really the prince of eccentrics ( and not a bogus one ! ) and we love him for that
Dockelektro
I liked this movie for a reason: when I saw it I got a glimpse of some shots and found that Stroheim was really ahead of his time where it concerned his shots. There are some really amazing views in this movie, which almost scream "widescreen me!". I saw this one in my film school and I enjoyed, in spite of being a little laughable in some parts, much due to the fast movement of the actors caused by the camera, which reminds us some of the movies by Buster Keaton. But a really nice movie altogether.
