Now we know that two prints of a silent film are – usually – different. Nevertheless Foolish Wives is definitely a peculiar case. The discovery of the Italian version, a coloured nitrate print at the Cineteca Italiana di Milano convinced us to show this version as the closing event of Il Cinema Ritrovato 1995.

The italian version is very damaged, undoubtedly is shorter than the American version, nevertheless the impressions written by Jacques Rivette 40 years ago – that we publish here – are still fascinating.

 Jacques Rivette and the Italian version of Foolish Wives

“In proposing the ‘problem’ of the two prints of Foolish wives to the Cinémathèque’s public, Henri Langlois left everyone free to draw their own conclusions: we are talking a hypothesis, which is therefore open to corrections. In the first place: the two copies are different, not only regarding the sequence order (and the meaning of the intertitles), but also in the editing of the shots inside the sequences themselves: shots in one are absent in another, their order is often modified, and the cuts and connections also seem to be different. Secondly, and more disconcertingly: some of the shots which are the same in the two versions, in reality turn out to be different ‘versions’ of the same shot, seeing as the scene is more articulated and the action more carefully dealt with in some rather than in others; the longest and most incisive shots always belong to the Italian print, whilst the American one makes do with a more anodyne version. Finally, a third order of data is provided by the photographic quality of the two versions: the Italian copy is scratched, cut and altered by wear in many parts, but it presents an incontestable homogeneity. The American one on the other hand presents big differences from one sequence to another: some have the quality of the copy directly from the negative, others the texture and greyness typical of the controtype. Furthermore, the first seems to me to correspond to the scenes which in the Italian copy present a different editing, while the second ones to those which are identical in two versions or absent from the second.

It is easy to realise what the conclusion is: the Italian version is an original copy, which is of course a victim of time and censorship, but in which the elements still existing correspond to Stroheim’s editing. The American one, on the other hand seems to have been edited by Universal, which was perhaps eager to speculate on the scandalous success of the original, presenting a shorter version – re-edited wherein the use of some scenes work as a controtype of the original version, and for other more audacious ones, throw outs or duplicates left unused at the time of the first editing. Furthermore, the Italian version, however much mutilated, retains a force, a Baroque-like frenzy, a ‘pre-Welles’, almost entirely lost in the American version, more fluid, but also more conventional (the pigeon shooting scene is missing for example): the latter could be the work of a film director of great talent, but the former could only be of an ingenious creator”. (Post-scriptum (II), in , n. 79, january 1958, page 24 (after Lotte H. Eisner, L’Enigme des deux Nosferatu).

A review from the time

Obviously intended to be a sensational melodrama, Foolish Wives is one of the funniest burlesque dramas ever screened. Mack Sennett at his best and never made a funnier one: unintentionally funny, Foolish Wives, however, is at the same time frankly salacious. […]

With its two principal American characters conceived as a pair of unadulterated asses by the author and the foreigners by contrast shown as smart slickers who make monkeys out of the Americans at every turn, Foolish Wives stands as a leering insult to Americans in general, and American womanhood in particular. If written by an American, it would be pretty rough, but when stuff like this is handed out by a foreigner (von Stroheim is Austrian), it’s aggravating”. (Bell, Variety, 20 gennaio 1922)