“They say I give them sewers — and dead cats! This time I am giving them beauty. Beauty — and apple blossoms! More than they can stand!” - Stroheim

1928: already Stroheim gives us a work which unmasks the history of cinema as a history of consumable fairy tales and illusions. For me, this is the greatest of all silent films, the seminal work of this proto-Brechtian director who is more class-conscious than the Soviets. All but one of Stroheim’s existent films remain truncated - and it’s interesting that the least sophisticated (Blind Husbands, a film which is certainly not unsophisticated) is the only one that remains in Stroheim’s intended version. Yet these works are like Greek statues - cinema…

Stroheim is cinema's first true modernist: this bit by Hanns G. Lustig upon the release is a great summation of what this film is about - "a colored fairy tale. But the colors are poisonous. Stroheim is a hard man. But his toughness shows the memory of the tender falsehood of dreams. And his melancholy revenge for their existence is brutal cartoons." Like Queen Kelly, this is really a kind of fairy tale gone awry, but unlike that following work, these ideas are incorporated in nuances and sublties, making it seem even more sophisticated than that later full-blown assault. A real tragedy - because it's about the illusory nature of romanticism - everytime we see the most beautiful moments of…

The Wedding March is a silent romantic drama film written by Harry Carr and directed by Erich von Stroheim.

Set in Vienna in 1914, Prince Nicki is the descendant of a ruined noble family and is the commander of a cavalry regiment. During a parade in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Nicki notices that the innkeeper's beautiful daughter, Mitzi, is among the crowd. He and Mitzi flirt during the parade.

Nicki visits Mitzi at the pub where she works as a harpist and soon they start dating and fall in love. Unfortunately Nicki is approached by a wealthy factory owner into marrying his daughter Cecilia, Nicki initially refuses, but eventually agrees to marry Cecilia, which creates an obstacle and puts…

Stroheim gets everything right with this film and if one gets the feeling of incompleteness, it might has more to do with the fact that life is imperfect in every possible way.

Of course there are material reasons for that too as the cut we see here isn't the way Stroheim originally intended this film (as well) but this curse hasn't brought him down because the film is so deeply detailed and ambiguous. Because every image is planned to its fullest potential, there is no way to really separate the characters from their contexts - at least it seems so and I'm not using this space to start arguing that further right now (I can't either, I'm too overwhelmed). They…

The story is ostensibly a simple love triangle in Vienna, but it’s elevated considerably by director Erich von Stroheim via his biting commentary on men and marriage. Fay Wray plays an innkeeper’s daughter who is dating a crude butcher (Matthew Betz) when she sees and begins flirting with a cavalry officer (von Stroheim). Unfortunately the officer is from a family with financial troubles, and his pragmatic, cynical parents want him to marry the daughter of a factory owner (ZaSu Pitts). We see animalistic behavior from the butcher, duplicity from the nobleman, and marriage unions that are certainly not formed out of love. This seems to be von Stroheim’s main point, as the opening intertitle tells us “O Love – without…

Erich von Stroheim wished to create the cinematic equivalency of the epic tome novel. Unfortunately, he was constantly at odds with producers for being undisciplined and always way over budget. The Wedding March was originally eleven hours. The producers released it as two chapters, each two hours long. The second half has been lost to time. This makes it all the more remarkable that The Wedding March stands on its own as an exhilarating film. Stroheim stars as a prince whose father warns him of his lavish lifestyle. The family is going broke, the only solution being an arranged marriage between Stroheim and the wealthy, physically handicapped Zasu Pitts. However, he falls in love with penniless innkeeper’s daughter Fay Wray.…

The Wedding March is a silent romantic drama film written by Harry Carr and directed by Erich von Stroheim.

Set in Vienna in 1914, Prince Nicki is the descendant of a ruined noble family and is the commander of a cavalry regiment. During a parade in front of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Nicki notices that the innkeeper's beautiful daughter, Mitzi, is among the crowd. He and Mitzi flirt during the parade.

Nicki visits Mitzi at the pub where she works as a harpist and soon they start dating and fall in love. Unfortunately Nicki is approached by a wealthy factory owner into marrying his daughter Cecilia, Nicki initially refuses, but eventually agrees to marry Cecilia, which creates an obstacle and puts…

miłosne opętanie w święto boskiego ciała (Bożego Ciała), nikt inny potem nie uwiódł tak kobiety [He dedicated the film to “true lovers of the world.”], majstersztyk romansu tragicznego, --top-- [Erich von Stroheim’s most personal film], krytyka elit, kolorowe zdjęcia paradokumentalne, jak zwykle film trawjący godziny (tutaj: 9 godzin ), nakręcony z nadrobniejszymi szczegółami, niezwykle kosztowny, --last-- ostatni wielki i --top-- najbardziej dojrzały film Ericha von Stroheim, NFR...

Erich von Stroheim's stately drama;

“The Wedding March” was von Stroheim’s --1st-- first and --only- release through Paramount.

Stroheim’s script was completed by March 1926 and was 154 pages long. The currently available version of the film depicts the first 67 pages of the original script.

Over the six months of filming, Stroheim…