Black Comedy & Post-War Attitudes in "FOOLISH WIVES"

When speaking of a "post-war ethos" in popular cinema, one typically refers to the split in the twentieth century caused by the second World War and the art arising in its aftermath. In general terms, one can speak of a "Postwar Japanese Cinema" or a "Postwar French Cinema" with the understanding that these movements developed in the late forties and early fifties. Perhaps the best post-WWII film of all, and also one of the most perfect films of all time, is Charles Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, which is as much a dark but optimistic reconciliation with contemporary malaise as it is a testament to the struggles of his own Jewish Identity. "It is a ruthless world, and one must be ruthless to cope with it" he states, mostly ironically, but the sentiment presented is still at times palpably felt. Foolish Wives presents, on the surface, two similarities to Monsieur Verdoux. Most obviously, it is another black comic tale of men scamming women out of large sums of money, and it also presents a sort of Post-War Ethos. 

But Erich von Stroheim's silent masterpiece was not a Post-WWII piece, but rather followed the first World War in 1922, a period which yet still produced a great amount of work critical of the times, albeit now overshadowed by the modernist post-war forties. The film depicts the ruthless Count Karamzin, who plans to trick a young, innocent, mentally deficient woman into a relationship so he can procure a little wealth for him and his cousins. Stroheim’s Foolish Wives is then, by consequence, an unusually international picture. The main object of desire for his European Count Karamzin, who he plays as well as directs, is a young and gullible pair of Americans, one of which is a young retarded girl who he attempts to woo for money. He lies with the deposed aristocrats of pre-revolutionary Russia, and his vampiric tendencies target not only the wealthy but the poor, like the housemaid he’s promised to marry but never does. The film is centered largely on its view of European-American relations, less political and more social. The American envoy arrives with such a spectacular display that it feels like a tongue-in-cheek joke about the nature of the American spirit. Stroheim here indulges us with his love for tradition and process as well as spectacle, with the ship “Salem” firing cannons as the first crew members dock in Monaco. It is only through this immediate characterization that the scene where scoffs at Karamzin while also looking him up in down seems to make sense. What seems like a natural opposition to his heinous figure is mitigated by his appearance of importance, by the affected status of his image.

These proclivities are so mercilessly displayed by Stroheim that it’s rather easy to identify with the count based solely on the perceived shallowness of his targets, that anyone daft, shallow, or self-destructive enough to fall for his scams probably deserves the fate they receive. However, Karamzin is not only focused on his American targets but more vulnerable ones as well. Consider the plight of the housemaid, who may very well stand in for the proletariat in general. He promises to marry her, lies to her to secure a loan, and drives her to suicide over his infidelities. Foolish Wives is a fair companion piece to Stroheim’s later Greed in the sense that it’s hard to find a legitimate positive character. Each one is beholden to their vices, all of which stem from an insatiable desire to have more, either to continue to uphold one's appearance as important or for material wealth. Where Greed plays as tragedy, Foolish Wives plays as farce, perhaps even black comedy. Stroheim’s camera seems to take a perverse pleasure in watching Karamzin laugh after having procured the last remaining funds from a housemaid by lying about his service. All of this a demonstration of his vision of the post-War West, ravaged not just by avarice but direct malice. A very real hatred for human beings seems to precede many of the actions of Stroheim’s intolerable characters, and perhaps it’s the nature of his critique that points to no existing moral soul that contributed to the unfortunate misreading at the time of release. 

Stroheim’s bleak vision was infamously decried by many critics in what can only be described as an episode of moral panic. Photoplay called it an “insult to American ideals and womanhood”, Kinematograph Weekly had said “A more pointless exhibition of picturized pornography has never been seen on screen” and claimed the film pandered to “the worst elements in film audiences”. If the film is as narcissistic as many have claimed, it certainly doesn’t show up in Stroheim’s characterization of Karamzin. We have, years later, discovered that Erich von Stroheim, much like the similarly named Josef von Sternberg, had no connection to the aristocracy of his home nation, and had taken the title in America for its potential usefulness in winning over people, and in his case, studio executives. So Stroheim here is a fake count who had duped a number of wealthy Americans playing a fake count who hopes to dupe a number of wealthy Americans; perhaps his critique was valid after all. But Karamzin isn’t the hero of Foolish Wives, and, in fact, the advertising for the film seem to bill not only Karamzin but Stroheim himself as “the man you love to hate”.  

If critics are trying to argue Stroheim is wrong for suggesting Americans aren’t privy to a fancy title and easily won over with spectacle, then Stroheim having even been able to make Foolish Wives proves it demonstrably untrue. Focusing one’s attention solely on the portrayal of Americans in the film will surely reveal Stroheim’s mindset, but it does injustice to the reading to not consider the internal elements of his critique as well as the external. Foolish Wives is surely political, but in an odd sense, it’s also self-reflexive.