Having finally seen this picture (famously used to provide Norma Desmond's 'home movie' sequence in "Sunset Boulevard"), I have to say I'm not at all surprised that von Stroheim was sacked from filming. I'm no fan of his "Greed", and this displays all the same faults: over-lengthy scenes composed of over-lengthy shots, a sadistic pleasure in grotesquerie, wild-eyed acting from the principals, and a budget-breaking obsession with set-dressing and minutiae. But the worst problem with "Queen Kelly" is the jaw-droppingly unconvincing plot, for which von Stroheim himself must apparently take full credit. It's not only lurid, but beggars belief: the principals are written as so cardboard that I found their romance completely without sympathy and in fact found myself more on the side of the 'mad' queen.
The scene in which they meet (her knickers fall down!-- oh, so funny!) is supposed, I think, to be a case of the feisty Irish colleen enchanting the dissolute nobleman with her spirited rebuff while falling in love with his good looks. If this sounds like something from a Mills & Boon novel... in practice, it's rather less romantic. Or believable.
This has to be the only film I've seen where the hero breaks into a convent, sets a fire to create a diversion, and kidnaps the heroine before taking away her clothes -- and yet we're expected to cheer him on during the process. Isn't this more usually a villain's role? Then the virginal heroine goes to live in an African brothel; not out of any white-slave abduction, but simply because the business is in the family, apparently. Meanwhile the alleged hero is quickly packed off out of the story, with a perfunctory gesture at plot explanation...
But it's not just that I found the story both unattractive and unconvincing. Stroheim seems to have operated on the principle that more was better in every sphere: more emoting, more make-up, more extras, longer takes. Apparently his departure from MGM had failed to deliver a short, sharp shock of reality. As a result, "Queen Kelly" is verging on ludicrous: Swanson was desperate to release it in order to recoup at least some of the money devoured by the production costs, but I'm not sure that wider exposure of the result would have done her reputation either as leading lady or producer any good.
Meanwhile, the film's 'suppressed' status has done wonders for von Stroheim's myth: once it's finally dragged out into the light of day, it proves a rather tawdry abortion of a piece, and no credit to its maverick director. My chief reaction, leaving the cinema, was to feel that the film's original fate had been richly deserved: now we know just why Gloria Swanson felt impelled to take such drastic action.
The scene in which they meet (her knickers fall down!-- oh, so funny!) is supposed, I think, to be a case of the feisty Irish colleen enchanting the dissolute nobleman with her spirited rebuff while falling in love with his good looks. If this sounds like something from a Mills & Boon novel... in practice, it's rather less romantic. Or believable.
This has to be the only film I've seen where the hero breaks into a convent, sets a fire to create a diversion, and kidnaps the heroine before taking away her clothes -- and yet we're expected to cheer him on during the process. Isn't this more usually a villain's role? Then the virginal heroine goes to live in an African brothel; not out of any white-slave abduction, but simply because the business is in the family, apparently. Meanwhile the alleged hero is quickly packed off out of the story, with a perfunctory gesture at plot explanation...
But it's not just that I found the story both unattractive and unconvincing. Stroheim seems to have operated on the principle that more was better in every sphere: more emoting, more make-up, more extras, longer takes. Apparently his departure from MGM had failed to deliver a short, sharp shock of reality. As a result, "Queen Kelly" is verging on ludicrous: Swanson was desperate to release it in order to recoup at least some of the money devoured by the production costs, but I'm not sure that wider exposure of the result would have done her reputation either as leading lady or producer any good.
Meanwhile, the film's 'suppressed' status has done wonders for von Stroheim's myth: once it's finally dragged out into the light of day, it proves a rather tawdry abortion of a piece, and no credit to its maverick director. My chief reaction, leaving the cinema, was to feel that the film's original fate had been richly deserved: now we know just why Gloria Swanson felt impelled to take such drastic action.