Foolish Wives feels like cake. It's extra luxurious, with lavish settings, costumes, and flourishes and feels extremely superficial, with very little substance. This lack of core substance makes sense given the fact that the film is about a fortune hunter who goes around seducing and conning wealthy women so naturally the atmosphere and production would follow suit. But it feels superficial beyond that level. The storyline feels superficial and almost self-indulgent on the part of Erich Von Stroheim, the Actor-Director-Artist/Madman. He got in to serious trouble with the studio while making this film for going over budget, over schedule and demanding that they foot the bill for everything because he was an artist.
This is the first movie on the list that seems detached from reality, or at least the reality of the majority of people on earth. We definitely get a glimpse at the high-life of the roaring twenties and the universe of those at the very top. Which is interesting because I was previously saying how films like Birth of A Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms cut through to the direct, brutal truth of what the woes of life are really like. So with Foolish Wives we're now jumping to the opposite end of the spectrum and seeing the possibility of film to be "escapist" in a sense. It allows the poor masses to indulge with the self-indulgent artist and characters onscreen in what it must be like to be wealthy for an hour or two.
I think this really starts the conversation of the role film is to play in the lives of the moviegoers. Does it provide an escape, should it provide that escape and allow poor people to wash away their troubles for a moment by pretending to be high-class and worry free, or does it reflect reality back to you in cold honest truth for you to feel and be moved and affected by the story that touches you on a personal level?
We'll see this concept fluctuate throughout the decades and I think is an important barometer to note where the world is, especially America, throughout the 20th century.
The story itself though is relatively entertaining despite it being fluff and has a good narrative arc, following the main character attempt his goal, fail, and then finally succeed and Eric Von Stroheim is definitely captivating even though he does come across as an ass.