Queen Kelly: Cinema Rediscovered

“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.” – Pamela Hutchinson, The Guardian

This special screening of this lavish late silent masterpiece is part of Cinema Rediscovered’s 10th Anniversary programme.

Doors open at 12pm, before the screening at 1pm resident Cinema Organist, Bernie Brown, will give us an introduction to the history of cinema organ, playing the Curzon’s Christie organ before the film is introduced by critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson (author of The Curse of 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, 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.

The great silent film star Gloria 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 partnership with South West Silents as part of Cinema Rediscovered and Other Ways of Seeing, supported by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery: a Watershed project in association with Wiper & True and collaboration with principal sponsors Park Circus and StudioCanal.With support from BFI Audience Projects Fund awarding National Lottery funding.