Another director who, along with Griffith and De Mille (see September 10) contributed to the flourishing American film narrative circa 1920 was the French director Maurice Tourneur, who worked in Hollywood from 1914 to 1927. “Foolish Matrons is an invaluable document of the style and mores of different classes in New York City in the early twenties. The print is a superb original, so that the extensive use of New York locations can be appreciated in themselves, and for the revealing scenes of backgrounds and types no longer in existence. The story is a surprisingly mature narrative of three marriages which are compared, contrasted, and in the case of two of them, inter-woven in the plot. Taking the female angle, the film shows that some women marry for love, some out of ambition, some ‘just to have a husband.' Sex is not ignored in the treatment, especially as one of the women becomes a high-class courtesan. Two settings are brilliantly accomplished--a lively à la mode restaurant with lavish art nouveau-ish trappings and perched cockatoos, and a typical working-person's boarding house of the period.” Treasures from the Eastman House (PFA publication, 1972)