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Foolish Wives

A con artist masquerades as Russian nobility and attempts to seduce the wife of an American diplomat.

Top Cast

  • Erich von Stroheim

    Erich von Stroheim

    Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin

  • Rudolph Christians

    Rudolph Christians

    Andrew J. Hughes

  • Miss DuPont

    Miss DuPont

    Helen Hughes

  • Maude George

    Maude George

    Princess Olga Petchnikoff

  • Mae Busch

    Mae Busch

    Princess Vera Petchnikoff

  • Dale Fuller

    Dale Fuller

    Maruschka

  • Cesare Gravina

    Cesare Gravina

    Cesare Ventucci

  • Malvina Polo

    Malvina Polo

    Marietta

  • Albert Edmondson

    Albert Edmondson

    Pavel Pavlich

Overview

A con artist masquerades as Russian nobility and attempts to seduce the wife of an American diplomat.

Rating

6.5 / 10
106 Reviews
0 Popular

1 Reviews

  • CinemaSerf
    CinemaSerf
    6 Jul 6, 2022

    It's a soap. Despite all the associated history of cuts, recuts and restoration it is still just a beautifully photographed soap opera. Erich von Stroheim did just about everything in this entertaining, if a little too cyclical, tale of a cad. That cad "Count Sergius Karanzim" (EVS) parades around the Côte D'Azur luring unsuspecting (wealthy) women to his rented villa in which he, with his two "cousins" (Maude George & Mae Busch as the Princesses "Petchnikoff") fleeces them relentlessly. For quite a while his charm, wit and guile provides them with a good living until he aims a little too high with the wife of an American diplomat in Monte Carlo. "Mrs. Hughes" (Miss Dupont) and her husband (Rudolph Christians) may well be about to put a spoke in the wheel of these confidence tricksters. It's good fun, this, with Von Stroheim eminently convincing as the con man and DuPont equally effective as his ditzy mark. The production is maybe a bit static, but at 100 years old, it is still delivered in a fashion that shows off the Mediterranean scenery whilst aiming one squarely between the eyes of the vacuous, riche, clientele who assumed their excesses of funds were adequate compensation for their gullibility, stupidity and naivety. It sags from time to time, so I am not hugely shocked that this original 21 reeler was scaled back somewhat. What we have here, though, still have flows well enough with succinct inter titles that are, at times, quite witty too. I am not sure I would ever bother to watch it again, but I am glad that I did. You can see here the template for so many films that followed.

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