UK Premiere: Queen Kelly

With a production almost as dramatic as its plot, this lavish late silent masterpiece by Erich von Stroheim can be fully experienced thanks to a vital new reconstruction by Milestones. In the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly… an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings…This new restoration may just be everything that Gloria Swanson dreamed of for her lovechild Queen Kelly. 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 Heller, brings von Stroheim's original script to life, and the result is Queen Kelly in its most complete and spectacular form to date. Presented in collaboration with South West Silents as part of Other Ways of Seeing, supported by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery. Reconstruction: Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, Milestone Film & Video, Harrington Park, NJ. Nitrate materials and stills courtesy of The George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. 4K digital stabilization, timing and cleanup by Metropolis Post, NYC. Colourist: Jason Crump. Digital restoration artist: Ian Bostick. Supervised by Milestone Films. With an introduction by critic, film historian author of The Curse of Queen Kelly Pamela Hutchinson.