Legendary silent director Erich von Stroheim and legendary silent movie star Gloria Swanson made almost one movie together. Production on the ill fated Queen Kelly was halted only one third of the way through the script. The sudden popularity of talkies added to the mounting expenses caused by the extravagance of the eccentric filmmaker led the producers, Joseph Kennedy and Swanson herself, to abandon the project midway.

What remains today is an incomplete masterpiece. The attention to lavish detail is truly amazing. Like other von Stroheim vehicles this one would have run very long, nearly five hours in fact. Only about 100 minutes of film exist today.

Queen Kelly tells the story of a young convent girl who meets Prince Wolfram von Hohenberg Falsenstein the consort of the mad Queen Regina V of Kronberg. He meets her walking along a country rode with the other nuns in the convent. When he points out, with a laugh, that her unmentionables have fallen around her ankles, she angrily takes them off and throws them in his face. He is instantly smitten by her charms. So much so that later that night, after the Queen has announced that their wedding shall take place the very next day, he sneaks out of the castle, goes to the convent, abducts the sleeping girl and stupidly, brings her back to the palace. In the midst of falling in love they are interrupted by the Queen. In a rage she sends the Prince to prison and mercilessly whips the young girl with a riding crop.

From here the story jumps to Kelly being sent to Africa to take care of her dying Aunt. Kelly quickly learns that 'missionary' was just a front for 'whorehouse' and that she is now in the clutches of wicked people. Only a small bit of this section of the movie was completed. Through sub-titles we learn that the Prince eventually gets out of prison, learns of Kelly's whereabouts and comes to her rescue. By now she is the ruling Madame, known as Queen Kelly because of her regal arrogance (Alas, no actual film survives of Gloria in her whore get-up, only a few stills). In a Hollywood twist the Prince forgives her and when they learn that the Queen has been assassinated they return together in glory to take over the throne.

When Norma Desmond says her famous line “We had faces then." in Sunset Boulevard it is a scene from Queen Kelly that she is watching. Even more ironically, von Stroheim as Max is running the movie projector.

Thankfully today we have at least part of this flawed yet intriguing movie in a newly restored version.

Did you enjoy Patrick's review? +3 -0

Seena Owen and Gloria Swanson in Queen Kelly

Patrick is right, the attention to lavish detail is truly amazing.  The dinner scene where Prince Wolfram learns he is to marry Queen Regina the next day is packed with people, candles and ornate tableware.  Stroheim certainly had an eye for elaborate set decoration.  This sometimes created fascinating scenes but it also helped to slow the movie to a crawl.

One of the first scenes is also one of the most memorable.  A naked blonde Queen Regina sits on her bed before walking to the balcony holding her cat against her bosom.   Madonna would film similar scenes for her Express Yourself video some sixty years later.

Gloria Swanson was thirty years old when she made this film and she looks it, especially in her first scene where we are to believe that she is an innocent orphan living in a convent.  She looks  better, and a bit younger in the scene where the Prince tries to seduce her in his room.  

In these early scenes it is Seena Owen as Queen Regina, who out emotes and out shines Swanson.  She goes berserk chasing Kelly out of the palace, whipping her with a riding crop yelling such lines as, "You think you can share the Queen's bed?"

Although the scenes of Kelly at the whorehouse are incomplete, they are some of the more entertaining.  When Kelly first arrives a title card describes one sickly girl as, "...unmistakably a lady of the horizontal profession."  With only stares and glances between an incredibly creepy crippled guy, Kelly and her madam aunt, Kelly learns what is to become of her, and it is not good.

I got the impression that Swanson's best scenes were yet to come in the unfinished movie.   The stills showing her made up as a madam are a nice contrast to her convent days.   Swanson made a better vamp than she did a virgin.  She likely would have shined in those later scenes, but we will never know.   

Did you enjoy Eric's review? +2 -0