Foolish Wives

Stroheim counters the cinema of unambiguous boundaries with the aphrodisiac poison of ambiguity. Stone by stone, he has the gigantic backdrop of Monte Carlo built in California and, detail by detail, he reconstructs with obsessive love the epoch that is favoured to be called the beautiful one - in order to unfold it with mockery, satirical coldness and unrelenting precision and then consign it to the abyss. He himself plays the impostor, gambler and seducer Count Karamzin, decadent to the hilt, dazzling, sensual, monkey-like and tight, a puppet among others in a world that is unhappy and terrible behind its pomp. As in gangster and vampire films, the beast fails, a sardonic hero who can be sure of the audience's indignant rapture. Stroheim films with a realism like no director before or after him, dry, precise, with monumental sharpness. The characters appear like insects under a magnifying glass, inspected with alienated, brusque curiosity. A cinematic style of incorruptibility. (H.T.)

We are showing Foolish Wives, which for a long time was only available in a heavily abridged version, in the magnificent restoration of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York) and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, of which we had a copy made for our collection by Haghefilm in Amsterdam.

Free admission for supporting members on 5 September 2024

On the piano: Elaine Loebenstein (on both dates)

Foto: Österreichisches Filmmuseum