Queen Kelly (1929)

Exquisite. Bittersweet to see what was lost from the original vision but cinema is for the dreamers anyway.

KYK

One star for each time a cat is thrown and an extra star for the whip action.

Robert Daniels

It should have been a dream collaboration: a glamorous world-famous movie star (Gloria Swanson) and her financier lover (Joseph P. Kennedy) hire the most celebrated director of the time (Erich von Stroheim) to make a groundbreaking independent film. Instead, Queen Kelly was…

theironcupcake

Enjoyable film with Gloria Swanson in the leading role. This was the film that Ms. Swanson quit before finishing it because the director, Erich von Stroheim, was spending too much (of her) money and filming scenes that would end up getting censored, because they were too…

caterwauls

Queen Kelly had the potential to be a great silent film at the end of the silent era, but unfortunately, it feels unfinished because it truly is. It was supposed to be nearly 5 hours long, but due to financial constraints, the most complete version anyone can watch is only…

✯ Miloš⑬ 💀↯

Simultaneously exhilarating and saddening. Famously Stroheim's last film was shut down mid-way through production, leaving almost two hours worth of the Queen Kelly's exorbitant narrative entirely unseen - in this way it's difficult to look at the film objectively, what…

Luke McCarthy

New restoration is gorgeous. Forgot how weird the last section in Africa is. I know Queen Regina is a ~villain~ but her style was fly as hell and she’s got the best cats.

Marya E. Gates

As this is the most distinctly 'unfinished' of Stroheim's remaining works, it's a testament to his ability as an artist that so much of this constitutes a film in itself, even though we barely get anything past the second act. One of the foremost historians on Stroheim,…

Neil Bahadur

Somehow, this catastrophic failure of a production isn't what finally killed off Erich von Stroheim's directorial career, but it was a suitably acrimonious nightmare for all involved that it feels right to call it his grand finale anyways. There were constant wars with…

Tim Brayton