Directed by Erich von Stroheim

Position on the list (at time of viewing): 648

This is another difficult film to rate. It’s got another completely unlikable protagonist, another challenging runtime (2.5 hours, cut down from Stroheim’s original cut of 5.5 hours), and a lot of the standard difficulties of films from this period. The acting is definitely a bit stilted, and many scenes outstay their welcome, driving their point into the ground without much subtlety.

Despite those weaknesses, though, the one thing this film has going for it is von Stroheim himself, who is the film’s central character and is an actor of great skill. In fact, later, he will act in one of the greatest films of all time–La Grande Illusion–and he will still be amazing there. Perhaps the reason that film is so much higher on the list is because it didn’t have von Stroheim at the helm. That feels like a mean thing to say, but I came away from this not liking him very much. He’s a perfectly adequate silent film director, but his reach always exceeds his grasp in pretty much all of his movies, and he never quite attains the prestige as a filmmaker that he so obviously desired. Many movies he made, especially early in his career like this one, broke records for the amount of money spent, the number of extras hired, or other indicators of a director who wanted more and more, or to be more and more from film to film.

The plot largely concerns a con-man (Erich von Stroheim) who uses the persona of the famous Count Karamzin in order to seduce and rob women. He has a pair of co-conspirators in “Princess” Vera Petchnikoff (Mae Busch) and “Her Highness” Olga Petchnikoff (Maude George). The two are described as his cousins, and may also be romantically involved with him, although the movie is very fuzzy on the details (and may have been more explicit in its original, longer cut). The trio set their sights on one of the foolish wives of the title–a young American woman (Miss DuPont) visiting Monte Carlo with her husband. The “Count” is an incredibly unpleasant character from the first moment of the movie, also targeting a young maid and a mentally handicapped girl as easy sexual prey (in case his seduction of a married woman wasn’t convincing enough). I’m not usually turned off by disagreeable protagonists, but it was really hard to spend two and a half hours with this despicable human being, seemingly without any remorse, introspection, or nuance in order to make him more bearable.

In addition to its difficult protagonist, this film has a rather hateful opinion of women that suffuses the entire picture. Although I think the theme is about justice coming to the wicked, it takes so long to get there and spends so much time with the villain successful that it’s hard to see that moral while watching the movie. I’m not sure if von Stroheim was a misogynist, but it would be easy to mistake him for one as the writer, director, and star of this movie. It is not enough to have justice eventually delivered if the entire movie is predicated upon the idiocy and shallowness of women. In addition to this basic premise, there are no women who take any real meaningful action. They are only responsive to male action throughout. This can’t simply be written off as an element of the times, either, because there are plenty of other films which, while not necessarily bastions of female representation, at least allow their women to *do* things. None of the women get to seek justice for themselves; it is only evaded or delivered by the hands of men (even insignificant ones with relatively tiny amounts of screen time).

All of that being said, there are still some good things about this movie to note. The production is insanely lavish–when it was made it was the most expensive movie ever made, and it shows. The film features a near-total backlot recreation of Monte Carlo, complete with almost everything actually working. There were supposedly as many as 15000 extras in order to make the scenes look fully populated. It is truly ridiculous. Also, some of the action scenes are greater and more spectacular than anything previously filmed–a particular scene of a burning building is legitimately terrifying. As a final note, one of the things that this film is best known for is a weird little twist involving a book that some people consider to be one of the first ever metafictional flourishes in film, and others (myself included) think is just a bit of self-important posing on the part of the director. I don’t know if watching the movie is worth it just to see on which side of that debate you fall, but feel free to give it a shot if you’d like. There are some good performances, a legitimately surprising conclusion to the plot, and some truly impressive set design. I just don’t know if all of that adds up to a film I’d ever really like to watch again.

Overall: