A good movie

Since this movie is included in the ‘They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’ list, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, to be honest, it didn’t turn out to be an easy watch after all. Indeed, even if it was supposed to be a ‘restored’ version, it was probably one of the nastiest versions I have seen on YouTube so far. Furthermore, for some long stretches, nothing much really happened after all. I mean, basically, it is a very simple story and you might wonder if it really needed almost 2 hrs of running time but Erich von Stroheim has always been rather notorious for overindulging himself (that some people would love to watch a 8 hrs version of ‘Greed’ remains rather bewildering to me). However, there is no doubt that von Stroheim was basically born to play such characters, even if he was probably too old to play this character (I was not surprised to find out that Maude George, who played his mother in this movie, was actually three years younger than him). On top of that, I have to admit that I was actually really caught by surprise by the ending. Indeed, even though most of the movie was really romantic, there were 2 scenes that really stood out. First of all, even though Nicky seemed to be head over heels for Mitzy, he still went to a brothel spending hours with countless prostitutes which wasn’t exactly what you would expect from such a romantic feature. However, it actually did fit the character after all. Even more surprising was the ending though. Indeed, I was so sure that Nicky would dump Cecilia to end up with Mitzi but, no, he actually went for the money which was so dark and cynical but that’s actually how people worked (and probably still do) and it was such a strong ending. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t completely work, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.