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| Writer/director Erich von Stroheim |
BLIND HUSBANDS B USA (92 mi) 1919 d: Erich von Stroheim Austrian version 99 mi
In the Alps there is no sin. —embroidered sign hanging on the wall of one of the hotel rooms
When von Stroheim arrived in America from Austria at the age of 24 in 1909, he claimed to be the son of a German Baroness and an Austrian Count, and a decorated graduate from the Austrian Military Academy at Wiener Neustadt. In reality, he was the son of Johanna and Benno Stroheim, a middle class Jewish hat maker and manufacturer. So right from the start, he existed in a fictitiously created alternate reality, so he seemed destined to work in the world of cinema, claiming in his early biographies that his family had a long history in the Austrian cavalry, entering the Hollywood film industry in 1914 as an extra and horse handler, working in blackface for D.W. Griffith’s BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) as a recently freed slave, eventually working as an uncredited assistant director on the film, and a production assistant on INTOLERANCE (1916). It was there that he became impressed by Griffith’s attention to detail, his insistence on character development, and his sense of realism, the same things that would eventually make von Stroheim legendary in his own quest for a place in filmmaking history, far ahead of his time in terms of his modernity, and his refusal to compromise his artistic vision. In his early roles, he developed a reputation for playing the well-mannered, sophisticated European that American audiences loved to hate, but with the outbreak of WWI, with America fighting against Germany, Hollywood was anxious about anyone that might resemble the enemy on the battlefield, so his named was dropped from the credits and he was blacklisted by the industry. However, after the war, the studios turned to pro-American and anti-German propaganda films, where they needed actors who could convincingly portray Prussian military officers, and von Stroheim fit the bill, becoming an expert in German military uniforms and paraphernalia. Comfortably back in the business, he took the opportunity to write his own screenplay for his script-in-progress entitled The Pinnacle, going so far as to camp out on the grounds of the home of Universal studio head Carl Laemmle, a fellow German-Jewish émigré who was known for producing low-budget movies, as opposed to the big budget, star-driven Paramount pictures. The ploy apparently worked as he was given the opportunity to direct his own script about adultery lurking in a mountain setting, but Laemmle changed the title to BLIND HUSBANDS. As a child, his family often vacationed in the Tyrolean Alps, drawing on personal experience when he envisioned the story. Essentially a mountain film, featuring daring climbing scenes, it presents protagonists who flee the hustle and bustle of their daily lives seeking solitude or a higher purpose in the mountains, which represent a sacred place. Using a color scheme where sepia was used for the evening scenes, blue for the night scenes, and black and white for the day scenes, what stands out in his debut feature at the age of 33 is the director’s willingness to explore human frailty, romantic intrigue, and the darker aspects of human nature, contrasting the majesty of the natural world and the perversity of toxic desire. Of interest, in 1982 a version was discovered by the Austrian Film Archives that was seven minutes longer than existing Hollywood prints.
Biographer Richard Koszarski called BLIND HUSBANDS “the most impressive and significant debut film in Hollywood history” before the coming of Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941), with both von Stroheim and Orson Welles, dominant personalities, sharing remarkably similar career paths, as each made a name for themselves as a performer before making their first films, receiving success and adulation before the studios would turn against them, basically exiling them from Hollywood. While this is simpler and less elaborate than his later films, von Stroheim developed a reputation for perfectionism and overspending, abandoning all shooting schedules, leading to legendary conflicts with producers, which is the primary reason why all his films after this one were drastically cut by his producers, yet his films caused both outrage and admiration. He blended the working methods of Griffith with the literary influences of European modernism, becoming the prime creator in Hollywood of witty, risqué, European-like sex-triangle comedy-dramas, where his initial successes in the early 1920’s were characterized by subtle acting touches and complex sophistication in visual storytelling that impressed American audiences as essentially European and fascinatingly decadent. While it’s one of the earliest films to realistically portray female desire, the unmistakable eroticism is quite contained, featuring the fetishistic framing of a woman’s legs and ankles. The maker of Greed (1924) and The Great Gabbo (1929), yet perhaps best known for his onscreen portrayal of Captain Von Rauffenstein in Jean Renoir’s THE GRAND ILLUSION (1937), he was a cynical romantic, concerned with destroying an idealized romanticism that promoted righteousness and redemption, where the upper classes were no more models of perfection than the lower classes beacons of hardworking respectability. His worldview was decidedly darker, filled with exploiters and exploited of all classes, with a devotion to grim realism. Beneath the veneer of pre-World War I, imperial Europe was a void of immorality as ugly as the surface was pretty. In von Stroheim’s eye, no one was exempt from the depravity, as it was all-consuming. Even in a somewhat imperfect film, where none of the characters (outside of the director) are particularly interesting, the director’s remarkable flair for visual drama is already evident, though the story lags in parts, seemingly conventional by today’s standards, lacking the tragic scale of his later films, though the point of view is extremely unconventional, as von Stroheim uses dreams and omens to reveal the most intimate feelings of the characters. Avoiding wordy intertitles, the title card near the beginning informs us that a husband who neglects his wife is more deserving of our contempt than “the other man” who steps in, though society is quick to condemn the intruder, failing to examine the husband’s culpability. The film explores an overarching, symbolic message, but rather than celebrate traditional human values like loyalty and sacrifice, the emphasis lies in ambiguity and ambivalence, casting himself as an aberrant male seducer, embodying von Stroheim’s perverse masculinity, the prototype of a character who would appear again in subsequent von Stroheim films such as FOOLISH WIVES (1922) and THE WEDDING MARCH (1928). After the German defeat in the war, the outcome affected the director, making films that tackled issues of male virility, where a mountain climber is viewed as the pinnacle of rugged strength.
The story of an inattentive husband, Dr. Robert Armstrong (Sam De Grasse, from D.W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE), an overly intrusive Austrian cavalry officer, Lieutenant Eric Von Steuben (Erich von Stroheim), and the neglected wife, Margaret Armstrong (Francelia Billington) who finds herself in between. Curiously dedicated to Sepp Innerkofler, world-famous mountain guide (Gibson Gowland, who would later play McTeague in Greed), we find ourselves in a small yet forbidding Alpine village on the Austro-Italian frontier free of cars or any signs of modernity, known today as the Italian Dolomites (the director avoids national affiliation). Meticulously reconstructing a European setting within a U.S. film studio, an American couple spend their holiday in the Alps in what is ostensibly a love triangle, as the film goes to great lengths to show an aloof Dr. Armstrong reading a newspaper, talking to other people, not responding to her questions, or just generally disregarding his wife, who appears bored, which the constantly smoking Lieutenant, well-groomed and perfectly dressed in full military attire, notices. By ascertaining that there’s a certain emotional distance between them, the Lieutenant thinks that he can exploit the situation to his own ends, so he fills the void by offering compliments and gifts, as well as attentiveness and affection, which she initially appreciates, expressing a desire for any kind of attention, producing a mixture of thrill and terror. Seriously contemplating an extramarital affair until he forces himself in her room and basically manhandles her, so much of this film takes place in her imagination, producing a nightmare in which von Steuben’s face, with a demonic smirk, hovers as if suspended in air, like a disembodied object of German Expressionist horror, so she is quick to keep him at arm’s length afterwards, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to seduce her. The embodiment of a sexual predator, he takes great pleasure in romancing the waitress (Fay Holderness), who has an erotic fascination with his uniform, and a local woman he meets (A Village Blossom, Ruby Kendrick), though the real object of his desire is Margaret, using the exact same poetic lines with each one of them, “This wonderful night is ours - - yours and mine - - and even the good old moon seems to give us her blessing,” suggesting he’s a bit of a Don Juan character, with an appreciation for “wine, women, and song.” All this takes place under the observant eyes of Sepp, the morally upright mountain guide (and his everpresent St. Bernard dog), who is a friend of Dr. Armstrong, repeatedly getting in the way of von Steuben’s intentions, with Margaret renouncing the Lieutenant’s erotic advances, though her husband aptly remains clueless. A missing scene found in the Austrian print has von Steuben and Margaret visiting a local chapel, leading her to the top of the bell tower where he then kisses her. A dramatic showdown ensues between the rival men on a dangerous mountain ascent, intercut with scenes of a distraught Margaret waiting in a state of guilt-ridden panic in an enclosed interior space, while outdoors there’s a struggle for dominance, which exposes each of them for their own shortcomings, ending in disaster. The characters are never identified by name, listing them instead as the Husband, the Wife, and the Other Man, essentially stripping them of any individualization. While it plays out like a morality play, they are reduced to base instincts, morally corrupt, and driven by desire. Dr. Armstrong represents the Puritanical American dedicated to his work, which causes him to overlook his wife, while the Lieutenant is a caricature of a superficially polite and educated European aristocrat and officer, ultimately exposed as a braggart and womanizer. While there are elements of a traditional melodrama, von Stroheim avoids exaggeration, preferring to use wit and irony and easily recognizable characters, while encouraging naturalistic acting instead of the broad gestures of silent film, though his obsession with realism caused him to reshoot scenes over and over again in a mad attempt to get it right, searching for a perfect ideal, frustrating both the cast and the crew, which then required laborious sifting through the extensive footage shot to mold a completed film. While it’s nowhere near his best, this is the only film von Stroheim made as he intended, without producer interference, making it unique in that regard, as he was never again able to maintain artistic control of his films, so it holds a special significance.
Note
The mountain inn features a happy honeymooning couple, offering a sharp contrast to the more complacent protagonists. Of interest, the woman, Valerie Germonprez, married the director a year after the film was released.
Blind Husbands | Full Classic Silent Film | Restored HD ... YouTube (1:32:19)
