Blind Husbands

Blind Husbands (1919)

An Austrian military officer and rogue attempts to seduce the wife of a surgeon. The two men confront each other in a test of abilities that ends surprisingly.

Date of release
1919-10-19
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (34)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Romance, Drama
Director
Erich von Stroheim

Casting

Interesting facts

Blind Husbands is a 1919 American silent drama film written and directed by Erich von Stroheim. The film is an adaptation of the story The Pinnacle by Stroheim.

Production

Like Griffith, von Stroheim was averse to hiring theater-trained actors and established screen “stars”, preferring to assemble a stock company from “untrained talent” whom he would mentor to achieve his cinematic goals. Actors Francelia Billington and Sam de Grasse would play the American couple on vacation in the Dolomite Alps, both who had been Mutual players.

An indication of Laemmle's determination to ensure a commercially impressive production, he provided von Stroheim with their top cinematographer Ben Reynolds, and assistant William Daniels. Both would serve with the director until he moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, when only Daniels accompanied him.

By the time shooting of Blind Husbands was completed on 12 June 1919, the costs had far exceeded the initial budget estimate. Combined film stock and advertising expenses had reached over $250,000. As such, Blind Husbands emerged as a critically important project. Universal's response was to deepen its commitment to the success of the production.

Promotional articles were planted in movie magazines that were careful to counter any residual anti-German prejudices. Von Stroheim's personal character was praised and readers were reminded of his American citizenship—a citizenship he would not possess for almost seven years. Press releases assured moviegoers that he had relinquished his royal title of Count and dropped the nobiliary particle “von” .

The methods von Stroheim used to extract impressive performances from his actors were effective, but they required immense amounts of raw footage. Key scenes were performed and re-performed again and again until an “ideal” was provoked, often at the price of frustrating the cast and crew. Von Stroheim was then confronted with the task of sifting through this dross-like footage to discover the gems he had elicited on the set.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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