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

From where I’m standing, 1929 looks like it was a pretty weak year at the movies. In all likelihood everyone’s minds were elsewhere. Everyone in a capitalist country, that is—over in the USSR, Vertov came out with the all-time greatest documentary that year. And before the…

n10lovejoy

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

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

I spoke with author, critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson about her up-coming book The Curse of Queen Kelly (Sticking Place Books, 2026), her work on the new Flicker Alley Focus on Louise Brooks Blu-ray set, the origins of her website Silent London, her work…

Marya E. Gates