Foolish Wives is a 1922 American erotic silent drama film produced and distributed by Universal Pictures under their Super-Jewel banner and written and directed by Erich von Stroheim.

[3] Foolish Wives, and the fulsome media coverage that added to its “sensational notoriety”, elevated von Stroheim into the ranks of preeminent directors of the early 1920s.

Karamzin also has his eye on two other women, Maruschka, a maid at the hotel, and Marietta, the mentally disabled daughter of one of his criminal associates, seeing them both as easy sexual prey.

Cast notes When von Stroheim prepared to embark on his third project with Universal Pictures, he was basking in the accolades earned from his back-to-back successes with Blind Husbands (1919) and The Devil's Pass Key (1920).

[8] Universal's most “lavish and ambitious project” to date, Foolish Wives was conceived by Carl Laemmle and reflected an industry-wide trend toward elaborate productions in a bid to lure moviegoers with “spectacle, melodrama and sex.” [9] The working title for the picture was Monte Carlo, referring to Europe's gambling mecca and the setting for von Stroheim's “clash of American and European ideals in post-war Europe” revisiting his themes from previous films.

[10] “The production history of Foolish Wives was a nightmare without precedent, a bad dream from which von Stroheim never fully recovered.” - Biographer Richard Koszarski [11] Universal built enormous facade-facsimiles of the French Riviera’s most exclusive casino and entertainment complex.

A separate set was constructed on the Monterey Peninsula, located 300 miles north of Universal Studios, providing panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean that resembled the Mediterranean coast along the French Riviera.

[13] Thalberg, an able administrator and skilled at taking the measure of movie directors, presented von Stroheim with a scheme to expedite the completion of the film, reminding him he was contractually bound to submit to the production manager directives.

One true story demonstrates the director's penchant for realistic artifacts, in which facsimile 1000 franc notes used in the casino sequences had been ordered manufactured by photoengrave technique—a counterfeiting method.

[15] The extravagant spending on Foolish Wives proceeded unabated when von Stroheim travelled to Point Lopus to shoot the coastal scenes and those requiring continuity linkage with shots made at Universal's backlot.

When von Stroheim proposed a major reshooting of the film with Christians’ look-alike stand-in Robert Edeson, Thalberg emphatically rejected it and ordered that camera and equipment be collected and returned to the studio.

An outraged Stroheim protested, demanding that the 17,000 foot work be released as is, but shown on two consecutive nights, Universal summarily removed him from any further role in the editing.

Foolish Wives shows the cost – in the sets, beautiful backgrounds and massive interiors that carry a complete suggestion of the atmosphere of Monte Carlo, the locale of the story.

Obviously intended to be a sensational sex melodrama, Foolish Wives is at the same time frankly salacious ... Erich von Stroheim wrote the script, directed, and is the featured player.

Playing a fraudulent aristocrat, in a touch that echoed his own biography, Von Stroheim dupes the gullible, lusts after a retarded teenager, and attempts to undo an innocent American.