An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Erich von Stroheim and since it was available on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, like all the movies directed by von Stroheim, there was something terribly decadent and yet fascinating about this movie. Indeed, from a technical point of view, the damned thing was really well made, especially when you think that it came out about 100 years ago. Still, even though von Stroheim was a strong director and even though John Gilbert and Mae Murray both gave some solid performances, I still struggled to really care about this movie though. First of all, von Stroheim always had a tendency to overstretch his directorial efforts (his previous movie, the classic ‘Greed’, was supposed to be 4 hrs long for crying out loud) and this movie was not an exception, I’m afraid. I mean, it was basically some kind of vintage romantic-comedy, nothing wrong with that but it certainly didn’t require more than 2hrs of running time. Furthermore, it is always striking to me that, even though the leads did have some charisma and did have some chemistry together, I was actually wondering why they actually fell in love with each other. Especially in this case, Prince Danilo had such a predatory behavior during the 1st half, seriously, I think he did molest Sally at least twice which was, to be honest, rather distressing to behold.  Sure, this movie was made about 100 years ago but still. Then, during the 2nd half, nothing much really happened after all, the fact that we all knew all along that the characters actually belonged to each other and would eventually end up with each other obviously didn’t help. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a decent watch though and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

6/10