# Foolish Wives
**Foolish Wives** is a 1922 American silent drama film written, directed by, and starring [Erich von Stroheim](https://www.edgepedia.org/erich-von-stroheim), produced and distributed by Universal Film Manufacturing Company under its Super-Jewel banner. Set in [Monte Carlo](https://www.edgepedia.org/monte-carlo), it follows Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin, a fraudulent Russian aristocrat who, with two women posing as his cousins, schemes to seduce and swindle wealthy visitors, chiefly the wife of the American envoy to Monaco.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/foolish-wives) Universal advertised it as "the first million-dollar movie", and its production troubles, censorship battles, and mutilated surviving text have made it a central case study in silent-era film history.[3](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FoolishWives1922.html)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director, writer, star | Erich von Stroheim, his third film as director, after *Blind Husbands* (1919) and *The Devil's Passkey* (1920)[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) • [4](https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201782) |
| Production | Universal Film Manufacturing Co. (Universal-Jewel); produced under Carl Laemmle; cinematography by Ben Reynolds and William Daniels; music by Sigmund Romberg[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) |
| Cost | Between $735,000 (Stroheim's figure) and $1,103,736.38 (Universal publicity); a July 7, 1921 Universal memorandum recorded $1,053,290.80 spent to date, more than thirty times an average feature[3](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FoolishWives1922.html) • [5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf) |
| Release | New York premiere 11 January 1922 at the Central Theatre; general release 8 May 1922[3](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FoolishWives1922.html) |
| Shooting period | 12 July 1920 through 18 June 1921[3](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FoolishWives1922.html) |
| Cast | Erich von Stroheim (Count Sergius Karamzin), Miss DuPont (Helen Hughes), Rudolph Christians (Andrew J. Hughes), Maude George and Mae Busch (the "princesses"), Dale Fuller, Cesare Gravina[6](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Foolish_Wives) |
| Survival | No single complete copy of the release version survives; a 147-minute restoration by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and MoMA premiered in 2022[7](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot and characters
Three Russian con artists, Count Sergius Karamzin and the supposed princesses Olga and Vera Petchnikoff (Maude George and Mae Busch), lease the Villa Amorosa above Monte Carlo for the season and prey on wealthy visitors.[6](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Foolish_Wives) • [7](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/) Their working capital is counterfeit: a counterfeiter named Cesare Ventucci (Cesare Gravina) supplies them with fraudulent thousand-franc notes.[6](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Foolish_Wives) Karamzin's principal target is Helen Hughes (Miss DuPont), wife of Andrew J. Hughes (Rudolph Christians), the American special envoy to Monaco; the count means to compromise her and use the resulting leverage, and the counterfeit money, to finance his lifestyle.[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/foolish-wives) • [8](https://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/2022/09/01/foolish-wives/) Stroheim later complained that studio cuts weakened the story by removing the thread in which the count used the ambassador's wife to put the counterfeit money into circulation.[9](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/foolish-wives-1922/)
The film closes with a passage from a non-existent novel titled *Foolish Wives*, presented as a cautionary tale for American women against the old-world sophisticate, and the device is made explicit when Helen is shown reading a book credited to "Erich von Stroheim" as author.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) • [10](https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/interviews/restoring-erich-von-stroheim-foolish-wives)
## Production
After the commercial success of *Blind Husbands*, Stroheim offered Universal's Carl Laemmle another tale of seduction, this time set in Monte Carlo, and the title deliberately echoed the earlier film's.[5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf) Universal allotted a $250,000 budget; Stroheim spent far beyond it, and his previous film, budgeted at $25,000, had already cost ten times that amount.[11](https://silentfilm.org/foolish-wives/) Elaborate replicas of the Monte Carlo casino and plaza, a French village, a castle, and many interiors were built at Point Lobos on the Californian coast, with several hundred carpenters recreating the Riviera resort; the California coast stands in for Monaco throughout.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) • [7](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/) Richard Day, later a seven-time Oscar winner, made his debut as art director on the film.[11](https://silentfilm.org/foolish-wives/)
Stroheim originally envisaged a six-hour, Zola-like saga to play on consecutive nights.[10](https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/interviews/restoring-erich-von-stroheim-foolish-wives) • [11](https://silentfilm.org/foolish-wives/) Universal's production executive [Irving Thalberg](https://www.edgepedia.org/irving-thalberg) tried to rein him in, threatening to give the film to another director, and Universal eventually took the film away from him.[5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) One trade report says Stroheim began with 32 reels of film; he presented Universal with a fourteen-reel film and was ordered to cut it to ten or eleven.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) By general release it was down to ten reels, and still shorter versions followed.[5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf)
Production was also disrupted by death: Rudolph Christians, who played the American envoy, died of pneumonia on February 7, 1921, seven months into filming. For his remaining scenes Stroheim used actor Robert Edeson, shooting him from behind.[5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf)
## Publicity, reception, and censorship
Laemmle turned the overspend into publicity. A huge electric sign at Broadway and 44th Street in Manhattan displayed the mounting production cost, updated weekly with ceremony, and Universal hired composer Sigmund Romberg to write a score; scheduled tours let movie fans visit life-size re-creations of the Café de Paris, the Hotel de France, and the casino.[9](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/foolish-wives-1922/) • [5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf) Stroheim himself attributed the "first million-dollar picture" label to Universal's publicity vice-president R.H. Cochrane, who judged $735,000 close enough to a million to advertise.[3](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FoolishWives1922.html) The advertising tag line, illustrated with Stroheim's Count Karamzin, was "The Man You Will Love to Hate".[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography)
Contemporary response was divided. Reviews generally praised the photography and sets but felt there was "too much Von Stroheim".[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) *Photoplay* gave the film a special boxed review rather than a place in its regular section, and the Ohio State Censor Board rejected the film outright; Universal's appeal failed, the board stating it would "stand pat on its decision".[9](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/foolish-wives-1922/) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) The press denounced the film as an obscenity and an insult to the American public, even as it maintained Stroheim's reputation as a master filmmaker; the earlier *Blind Husbands* had been hailed as the debut of a genius, and *Foolish Wives* marked the point where his image crystallized into an indictment of degenerate immorality.[4](https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201782) The film nevertheless placed among the year's top ten performers, though it was too expensive to be profitable, and Stroheim never again enjoyed such creative freedom; Thalberg removed him from his next production, *The Merry-Go-Round* (1923).[5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf)
## Style and interpretation
The sets gave the film a verisimilitude many productions of the time lacked: actors worked in real spaces, wore clothes rather than costumes, and an actual ocean could be seen through set windows.[5](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf) Richard Brody, writing in *The New Yorker*, describes Stroheim's camera turning on the casinos of Monte Carlo and the backstreets of Monaco to strip away the illusion of civilized behavior, with colossal sets and an army of extras cut together with what he calls pre-Eisensteinian cunning.[12](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/foolish-wives)
The film scholar Elisabetta Girelli, of the [University of St Andrews](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-st-andrews), has argued that a Gothic framework best explains the film's subversive power: Karamzin is a staple Gothic figure, the aberrant "satanic" seducer who is both repulsive and an object of desire, and the film relies on Gothic tropes from sublime horror in its mise-en-scène to intimations of rape and sadism, locating Gothic sensibility in the unlikely setting of glamorous 1920s tourist Monte Carlo.[4](https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201782)
## Restoration and survival
No single complete copy of the release version survives.[7](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/) Two principal sources underlie the 2022 restoration: a tinted-and-toned 35mm nitrate print with Italian intertitles from the Cineteca Italiana in Milan, which contains the famous fire scene that closes the film, and a 35mm black-and-white print at MoMA of an unreleased 1928 re-edited, re-titled version Universal prepared for a never-realized sound release.[7](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/) • [10](https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/interviews/restoring-erich-von-stroheim-foolish-wives) Earlier, the scholar Arthur Lennig had combined American and European cuts into a fuller, though not complete, version.[13](https://notcoming.com/reviews/foolishwives/)
The restoration, led by Robert Byrne, president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, reconstructed sequencing and title content with the help of the script for an eight-reel version and Sigmund Romberg's piano score from the Library of Congress, whose musical cues guided the reconstruction; new intertitles followed the design of other Universal Super-Jewel releases, and the hand-colored effects were reproduced using contemporary reviews and a trade-press article by the original colorist, [Gustav Brock](https://www.edgepedia.org/gustav-brock).[7](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/) The 147-minute result, up from Universal's 117-minute cut, with hand-tinted color passages and a restored hand-colored fire sequence at the climax, opened the 2022 San Francisco Silent Film Festival on May 5, 2022 and received its New York premiere at MoMA that August.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) • [14](https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5503) Running times of surviving versions vary widely by source: the AFI Catalog lists 141 minutes for the release version, BFI lists 77 minutes, and Rotten Tomatoes lists 1 hour 40 minutes.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography) • [15](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/600bd090-64f6-5243-adf6-eea208654b7e/foolish-wives) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/foolish-wives)
## References
1. [Foolish Wives (1922), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/9149-FOOLISH-WIVES?cxt=filmography)
2. [Foolish Wives, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/foolish-wives)
3. [Foolish Wives (1922), Silent Era Progressive Silent Film List](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FoolishWives1922.html)
4. [Girelli, Elisabetta (2017). "Beauty in the lap of horror": the Gothic appeal of Erich von Stroheim in Blind Husbands (1919) and Foolish Wives (1922). Palgrave Communications 3.](https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201782)
5. [Eagan, Daniel. Film essay for Foolish Wives, National Film Preservation Board, Library of Congress](https://memory.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/foolish_wives.pdf)
6. [Foolish Wives (1922), film transcription, Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Foolish_Wives)
7. [Foolish Wives, About the Film and the Restoration, San Francisco Silent Film Festival](https://silentfilm.org/preservation/foolish-wives/)
8. [Foolish Wives, Chicago Film Society (2022)](https://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/2022/09/01/foolish-wives/)
9. [Foolish Wives (1922), film notes, Toronto Film Society](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/foolish-wives-1922/)
10. [Dixon, Bryony interviews Robert Byrne. The first million dollar movie: restoring Erich von Stroheim's monumental Foolish Wives, BFI London Film Festival (2022)](https://www.bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival/interviews/restoring-erich-von-stroheim-foolish-wives)
11. [Thomson, David. Foolish Wives, essay, San Francisco Silent Film Festival (2022)](https://silentfilm.org/foolish-wives/)
12. [Brody, Richard. Foolish Wives, The New Yorker (August 19, 2022)](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/foolish-wives)
13. [Foolish Wives review, Not Coming to a Theater Near You](https://notcoming.com/reviews/foolishwives/)
14. [Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives, MoMA (2022)](https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5503)
15. [Foolish Wives (1922), British Film Institute](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/600bd090-64f6-5243-adf6-eea208654b7e/foolish-wives)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Early and silent cinema › Silent feature films › Released 1914 to 1926*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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