Erich von Stroheim

Boots and High Heels

The world of Erich von Stroheim, in the films he directed and in the films he appeared in and influenced, is a fetishistic world alert to underwear, boots, high-heeled slippers, and the pleasures of voyeurism. The above shot of the Von in Jean Delannoy’s Macao, Gambling Hell (1942) expresses his melancholy when it comes to sex, his stiff, near-dignified chagrin over it.

The handful of fragmented films he made as a director in the silent era, which are mainly potent ruins of what they might have been, are studded with glimpses like the POV shot of the heroine’s foot in a high-heeled shoe and heavy black stockings in Blind Husbands (1919), his first film as a director and the only one that was released in much the form he wanted.

It should be remembered that the charm of a well-turned foot was often all that was available to voyeuristic men in the 1910s, so foot fetishism was likely more pronounced. Theda Bara only has to display her ankle in A Fool There Was (1915) to ensnare her next victim.

Yet the most memorable shots in Blind Husbands are of the neglected heroine Margaret Armstrong (Francelia Billington), harshly backlit, filled with longing. The Von is pledged to the ugliest realism, but he does have a bit of heart, which he is usually careful to hide.

The Von experiments here with a romantic fantasy Margaret has while staring into a mirror…she fantasizes about a time when her husband was still ardent.

In the lavish Foolish Wives (1922), which was extensively cut by its producer Irving Thalberg, the Von lavishes attention on his own luscious leather boots and also on the footwear of his leading lady, who is billed as Miss Dupont. Here it is all about the bottom of the shoe.

In The Merry Widow (1925), his most commercial film, the Von amuses himself with all sorts of foot foolery. There is a shot under a table of a footwear ménage à trois that results in chance homoerotic contact between male boots.

The Von also treats us to extra-gross close-ups of enflamed foot fetishist Tully Marshall staring at the feet of chorus girl Mae Murray.

The Von has progressed here in The Merry Widow to fetishism of the shoe itself, which somehow seems more attractive than the foot inside it, and this means that fantasy is winning out and romance is out the window, even if he will attempt to insist on it in The Wedding March (1928), where he is forced to marry princess ZaSu Pitts, who has a crippled foot. (Her father makes corn plasters for callused feet!)

By the time of the sound era, the Von was no longer given directorial assignments and made do with writing and acting work instead. This shot from 1949, the year before he played the loyal ex-husband butler to Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard (1950), shows that the Von was not averse to showing a little leg and foot himself (note the sock garters).