UK Premiere: Queen Kelly (1929): South West Silents

It should have been a dream collaboration: a glamorous world-famous movie star (Gloria Swanson) and her financier lover (Joseph P. Kennedy) hire a celebrated director (Erich von Stroheim) to make a groundbreaking independent film. Instead, the making of the film was rife with controversy and became the most infamous unfinished film in cinema history.

Set in an imaginary European country, von Stroheim tells the story of a prince, the orphan girl he falls in love with, and a vain and cruel queen whose jealousy wreaks havoc on everyone involved. Swanson plays the orphan girl whose life is turned upside down when the prince (Walter Byron) becomes obsessed with her, angering his betrothed queen.

Basing his reconstruction on von Stroheim’s original scripts, Milestone Films’ Dennis Doros and Amy Heller employed multiple techniques to recreate the film’s lurid dénouement. This vital new digital reconstruction, overseen by Milestone Films’ Dennis Doros and Amy…