Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

MissSimonetta As a director/writer, Erich von Stroheim is a bit of an acquired taste. A great deal of his work revels in the grotesque and in being rather long-winded, which is why Blind Husbands (1919) may be the most accessible of his films, along with The Merry Widow (1925).A meditative piece on love and fidelity, Blind Husbands follows the story of a marriage which has grown cold due to the husband's workaholic nature. As they vacation in the mountains, the wife is pursued by a lecherous lieutenant who, when unable to get her in bed, urges her that her husband does not love her and entices her to run away with him.It's the stuff of melodrama to be sure, but everything is so underplayed and von Stroheim engenders a great deal of atmosphere into the picture. The only flaw would be the finale, where everything is resolved much too cleanly and in the typical melodramatic fashion. It's a rather childish ending to an otherwise mature movie.

Michael_Elliott Blind Husbands (1919) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A doctor (Sam DeGrasse) and his wife (Francelia Billington) travel to the Dolemites in Northern Italy where their rocky marriage shows. The doctor pays very little attention to his beautiful wife, which an Austrian military officer (Erich von Stroheim) notices and decides to try and seduce her. After viewing this film I must admit that I was rather shocked about all the positive reviews it has received over the past several decades. Apparently the film was very popular when it was first released, which is shocking too because I found the film to be way too simple. Half way through I really started to think I was watching a film by D.W. Griffith due to how simple the story structure was. It's pretty simple as we have a lazy husband, a bored wife and a jerk who wants her. There's no problem in keeping all of this simple but the issue I had with the entire film is that I found all the characters to be under-written. We never learn why the doctor is so uninterested in his wife. We never learn why the wife puts up with it. She never mentions anything to the husband and instead just sits back doing nothing. We get a few hints at the type of person the military officer is but von Stroheim's story really doesn't give him too many details either. This type of simple storytelling can be effective but I found a lot of the 91-minutes here just to wonder on without anything either going for them or the scenes just leading to no where. Many of them just run on and on for no apparent reason so perhaps a good ten-minutes edited out would have helped the flow of the film. The issues with the story are the main problem and the rest is pretty good. The performances by the three leads make the film worth viewing and of course von Stroheim stands out as the creepy. You can tell he's having a good time playing this jerk and it looks rather effortless so perhaps he's just playing himself. The opening credits explain the situation of the film and it's written as if the director was trying to explain himself to many husbands out there. I found Billington to be extremely effective as well as she does a very good job at showing the character's boredom without going over the top. Another plus is the vision of the director as each scene has a very nice look and the cinematography really packs a nice punch. BLIND HUSBANDS is far from a bad movie but at the same time I just didn't think there was enough here to make it a classic or something that is a must see.

tedg I saw this "Mr Magorium's Wonderful Emporium" because I think this was the first to construct a story with the primary intent of creating a character for an actor. In this case the actor is the writer and director. He's a slight Jewish kid with poor education and working class background. For the international movie industry, he created an extremely well articulated story about himself as an Austrian nobleman, with bearing and art in the blood. He did so by extreme consistency in lies throughout his life, but he introduced himself, using films as the main truth. This is the first.The story is simple: he is traveling with a renown doctor and his supposedly beautiful wife to the Alps. While the doctor is away, he seduces the wife. The doctor confronts him on the mountain and he dies. It is told primitively: von Stroheim was for all his own story never a good storyteller. The mountains are significant of course, being something that references and defines the majesty of the Germanic soul. They would be exploited later in the service of Nazi identity, using much the same technique of imposing the unreal of the ideal on the real.Does it matter that he created this life for himself. It does for me, because I consider "Sunset Blvd." a touchstone and his placement in it an act of genius.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

MartinHafer Wow--is this the SAME director that was known for his obsessive need to film and re-film and re-film ad nauseum? Is this this the director who made GREED at over nine hours and insisted it not be cut any further? Is this the same director whose work was severely limited because the studios grew tired of his inflexibility and excessive spending? None of this appears to be the case when you watch this simple film, but all are amazingly true--just not evident in this film. Somehow, von Stroheim was able to complete a film that is simple, a reasonable length and well worth seeing. In fact, he also co-stars in this movie and does a fine job playing an adventurous cad.The plot is pretty simple. A husband has a tendency to take his wife for granted while on vacation to the Dolemites (a mountain range in Northern Italy). A soldier and adventurer, von Stroheim, sees this and slowly tries to seduce the lonely wife. How all this works out as well as the beautifully filmed conclusion I'll leave to you to figure out on your own. This is a morality play that for its day isn't too preachy and is sure to entertain.