Queen Kelly

Queen Kelly is an unfinished film from 1929, story and direction by Erich von Stroheim, produced by and starring Gloria Swanson (also produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, father of JFK). It's unfinished because Swanson fired von Stroheim while shooting scenes for the film's final act. She objected to both her role in the material, as the madam of a brothel, and to von Stroheim's treatment of the material, e.g., requesting that an actor drool tobacco juice on her during a wedding scene.

If I understand correctly, and if my information is true, the film was not released in America in its time, owing to clauses in von Stroheim's contract. In 1931 Swanson directed scenes that ended the movie before the final East Africa sequences, and Queen Kelly, with its truncated 'Swanson ending,' photographed by Gregg Toland, was released overseas in 1932. Queen Kelly was, with perhaps some exceptions, not shown in America until after Sunset Boulevard had reached an esteemed place in movie culture, and then it, Queen Kelly, was shown on television, in the 60s.

The Kino version of Queen Kelly I saw used stills to piece together von Stroheim's intended ending, similar to their technique for Swanson and Raoul Walsh's Sadie Thompson. The difference is that Sadie Thompson was once complete. Large portions of Queen Kelly, intended by von Stroheim to be over four hours long, were never shot or performed, simply never had physical existences. Eighty years later I see the movie and wish they could have reconciled their differences and finished the film, somehow; and I wonder about the magnitude of the inner tolls that prohibited either Swanson or von Stroheim from compromising.

Queen Kelly is a silent psychosexual romantic tragedy period piece, among other things (e.g. wacky). It's a class act pre-code film: everything is powerful, memorable, and sensational, and no one looks back.

Queen Kelly's narrative flexibility and von Stroheim's attention to detail (the characteristics seem to compliment each other) are still relevant. The movie also has psychological material, i.e. character developments and insights, and, perhaps most impressively of all, von Stroheim fuses the interior with the exterior. This gives the film a tremendous scope, a richness of texture that's also very modern.

Von Stroheim paints his characters. He uses the sets, the art design, lights, and costumes: all things feel carefully considered. It feels, in every way, large. This bigness is like Josef von Sternberg; and there's a fluidity that's like Max Ophüls.

Von Stroheim creates sequences that unravel and captures feelings as they bloom. The meeting scene between Kitty Kelly (Swanson) and Prince Wolfram (Walter Byron) is graceful and charming. She throws underthings at him. He follows her on a horse. He's engaged to the queen. She's in a nunnery (she's out with the nuns during the scene). They flirt. They get to know each other. Von Stroheim captures the experience of two people from different worlds colliding, then conjoining. Our investment in their relationship is earned because we experience the sensations of its formation.