Erich Von Stroheim directs and plays Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin (Capt. 3rd Hussars Imper. Russian Army). He is very much in love with his dashing persona that is best described as an acquired taste, I think it would have been much more effective to have that much footage on a really talented actor that is also good looking,but that is just a detail. The film is a good film, the characters are interesting and well developed and the scenes are beautifully filmed.
The problem, and it is a problem no matter how much talent we may think Von Stronheim had as a director, is the timing. It is an unnecessarily long movie, period. I can totally understand how this became a real challenge later as he thought longer was better and the more expensive the production, the better too. Neither one of these is necessarily true as we know from other great directors. In all fairness, the length of time has always been endemic to German cultural productions, it is actually one of its most salient characteristics and can be traced all the way back to Goethe's Faust and Wagner's Operas, though I dare say it probably started out from the very beginning in their medieval dramas. The problem usually starts with confusing and melding two different things which creates a third which is neither. For example with Wagner's operas, there is no question the music is great quality. The problem begins when throwing that content into the structure of a performance: 4 or five hours without interruption is not the usual amount of time people can sit without a bathroom or refreshment break. As far as this perspective is concerned if you can't take four hours to say it, then it is not worth bothering with, and I for one could not disagree more.
Here for example at the very beginning of the film we see the characters in a villa endlessly having breakfast. I mean you have all the time in the world to count the patterns of silk on Count Sergius' silk robe, which I also found overly done and a bit ridiculous. Then there is the walk he takes with the wife of the American envoy to Monaco (Miss DuPont) that turns into a total nightmare as they hit a rain storm and when it is raining the hardest Count Sergius takes her into a boat and decides to go across the lake to some hut, where a witch like hag lives with her goats. This entire scene, which is endless, is totally unnecessary, we get to see several long shots of the goats too, as if they were major characters, and of the hag sleeping. In the midst of this a monk stops by and stays with them too, another twenty minutes going nowhere.
The film finally takes off when he tells the American wife to meet him at his villa, where his cousins Maude George as Princess Olga Petchnikoff and Mae Busch as Princess Vera Petchnikoff, who look like Weimar trans-gender women, run a mini casino where they clear Cesare Ventucci, (Cesare Gravina) a Counterfeiter's bills that he makes for them on a regular basis. The permanently depressed and abused maid Marushka (Dale Fuller) however has been having an affair with the Count as well, she has even given him her life savings after he has a crocodile tear scene asking her for money, which she consents to do thinking of his (false) promise of marriage. As one of the first vengeful neurotic lovers in film, she sees them through the keyhole and decides to set the place on fire and throw herself to the sea from a cliff later. Both scenes are shown in exhausting detail. I can totally understand why this movie was heavily edited, but can not begin to comprehend how it could have possibly been longer than this. Supposedly one of the 'great' ideas was that it reproduced Montecarlo on a Hollywood back lot. Unless they were going to do a series on the Riviera, it would have been better to go there.
I now can see why Von Sronheim ran into problems with "Queen Kelly" and Gloria Swanson as that story started to 'grow'. The word 'cut' must be very difficult to pronounce, or to put in mind in German, which is a shame for there is no question there are great qualities here as well as a lot of talent. I have hear that the original length of his 'masterpiece' "Greed" was 9 hours, even cutting it down to two viewings of 4 and 5 hours each is difficult to envision. Who had that much time for a movie then? or now?
