Produced by MoMA and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF), the latest restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1922) has screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato recently, after the premiere at San Francisco. Robert Byrne (SFSFF) and Dave Kehr (MoMA) attended the festival to talk about the case.
The length of the film was at 14 reels for its New York premiere on 11 January 1922. The film was cut to 10 reels for theatrical release and further edits were made due to censorship. In 1928, Universal re-edited the film for a planned-but-never-happened re-release with a soundtrack. Fortunately, a nitrate copy of the Italian release was found. The print served as an important reference of how the original American theatrical release looked like.
This version contains no previously unseen footage, but returns scenes to their original order, replaces the intertitles with the original texts, and recreates the colour effects.
Photo: Still of Foolish Wives
Case Study: Restoring Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives: https://youtu.be/-wnQ6Nb__Qk
