Silent Movie – Foolish Wives (1922)
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Maynooth Silents presents a rare screening of Erich von Stroheim’s 1922 Foolish Wives with live accompaniment by silent film maestro Stephen Horne.
Also taking the lead role in monocle and military uniform, Stroheim is at his most iconically diabolical as the leader of a trio of scam artists masquerading as Russian aristocrats preying on the high-society revellers in Monte Carlo, which is recreated on the California coast in all the opulence we might expect from a director renowned for his attention to detail and disregard for Hollywood budgets. Universal studios made a virtue of this reputation by advertising the film as “the first real million-dollar picture.”
Butchered by the new Irish Free State censor when first shown here in 1924, we can enjoy it a century later in a beautiful recent restoration by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and with a world-class example of musical accompaniment from Stephen Horne.
Find out more about the restoration and about Stephen on their websites, https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/ and http://stephenhorne.co.uk/biography/.
Duration: 2 Hours 20 Minutes (includes introductory overview and questions from the audience at the end).