Unfinished empathy? Queen Kelly (1929), BFI with Neil Brand and Pamela Hutchinson

 

A work of barbaric splendour…

LA Times

 

Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum and I don’t just mean Ed Sheeran here. There was a bleak strand of early twentieth century art that contended not just with unprecedented global tragedy but also the loss of faith in Gods and governments: godlessness is next to heartlessness and so it goes. As ever you could escape to fantasy but there were some pointing straight into the heart of darkness even as they did so. This was not so much Victorian gothic as post-war-punk with stories showing that the sun will, in all probability, not come out tomorrow as things brewed in what proved to be merely the long halftime between wars to end all wars.

 

As Pamela Hutchinson suggested in her excellent introduction, Queen Kelly was possibly part of one of these strands, the theatre of the cruelty, certainly in style if not deliberate intent. Erich von Stroheim was developing his cinema whilst, at the same time as in Europe, Antonin Artaud was evolving his Manifeste du théâtre de la cruauté. Here Artaud detailed the aims of evoking a visceral reaction from his audience by means of presenting a wordless humiliation for his characters. Empathy would be our weakness as we engage with the basest levels of humanity through the look of degradation. Or, to put it another way, be repulsed by Tully Marshall’s gurning face as the revolting Jan Vryheid, as he licks his lips in anticipation of marrying Gloria Swanson’s help-less Patricia “Kitty” Kelly with whom we couldn’t sympathise more.

 

After a failed romance with a very handsome prince, Kitty is called to Poto-Poto, an area of a town in Tanzania, to visit her dying aunt. Now, such contact, normally signals an unexpected windfall, but this is not Hollywood as we know it, it’s Von’s version and Kitty’s aunt has summoned her with the strangest notion that she should marry her nightmarish protector and Tully surely never worked so hard to be so thoroughly unlovely. Kitty has not just loved and lost, she has been physically abused and driven to the point of attempted suicide. Now, after hope is offered, it is not just pulled away but replaced with a Tully worse than death. Cruel and absurd.

 

How did Kitty end up so far away from the good grace with which she started the film and her promising love match…? Queen Kelly is a confounding film in every respect and so much so that it is not surprising that it was never properly finished let alone released: it was too much for its star and its producer not to mention the looming approbation of the all to easily offended Will H. Hays. Had he had to pass the film after the introduction of the 1934 code he couldn’t as he surely would have fainted in the first few minutes of screentime for an over-exposed Seena Owen as mad Queen Regina V.

 

 

The full story of this film is well beyond the terms of reference established by the “editorial board” of this blog – partially-informed hot-takes won’t cut it and it is also such a complex and un-historied part of cinema history that you’d need a whole book and a mass of library time to do it justice. Luckily esteemed film writer, historian and programmer Pamela Hutchinson has provided just that and it is a page-turning joy with eye-popping revelations that connect three most interesting characters in ways that haven’t been done before. On the Writers on Film podcast, Pamela says that there’s a Netflix biopic of Joe Kennedy due which start in the early thirties. Well, they really ought to revisit the script as this book would itself make a great film. Hollywood has never been that great about filming itself but maybe it’s been short on real stories? Here’s one!

 

 

Pamela was on hand to introduce the film and to explain how her painstaking research was similar to that informing the team from Milestone, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller: Swanson’s extensive archive including von Stroheim’s original script as well as a surprising amount of materials retained (given their general business practice of the time) by Joe Kennedy. A 4k restoration has been produced and was premiered last year in Venice, some parts are still missing – not everything was filmed for a start – and so there are new intertitles and gaps filled by recycling footage and stills which gives the flavour of the full film which now runs at an hour and three quarters. The Great Footage Fetishist (a marvellous pun from Von Stroheim’s nemesis, Irving Thalberg) would have had it at three times that length but you can’t always get what you want Erich… as you well knew by this point. And yet, still you tried…

Gloria Swanson and Walter Byron at the peak of Kiity and the Prince's romance

 

Reviewing the films of Erich or “Von” as he was abbreviated by close friends and enemies, you encounter the rich irony of a man who claimed to be of Austrian noble/military background (opinions vary) and yet who wanted to capture reality on screen like no other. Watching Greed, you feel the lunatic urge to acquire money tipped over the edge until it dooms the main characters in that classic ending. Blind Husbands (1919) in which he starred showed again the unlimited cruelty of humanity whilst Merry-go-Round, a film he was unable to complete due to Thalberg sacking him, still carries his mark as all manner of cruel horrors are inflicted on poor Mary Philbin’s character.

 

That Swanson chose Von for this project showed she wanted his skills if not his budgetary control. She had just had a hit with the then almost unfilmable Sadie Thompson – a story of prostitution which other studios tried to stop for tactical reason* but which allowed her to play a more mature role. It was a success and it’s hard to believe she was still just 28, somewhere between Sadie Sink and Sydney Sweeney in today’s money but a star in ways that have no contemporary equivalent.

 

Kitty is a nun as the film opens, an innocent but playful novice in the mid-European country of Kronberg which is of no fixed period as per the conventions of the time. It is ruled over by the mad Queen Regina V – is there any other kind? – who seethes with clothes-less rage in her boudoir with only her pet do for coverage. She may be the boss but she cannot quite control her intended consort, Prince Wolfram (handsome Leicester-born Walter Byron) who spends his time acting like a bachelor rather than a fiancé.

 

Seena Owen: nothing says "mad Queen" so much as a cat in the bath...

He does at least take his military duties seriously and out leading his troop across the country roads he encounters Kitty who catches his eye when her bloomers fall down. I’m no expert but I wasn’t sure that nuns ever wore bloomers but in Kronberg apparently they do and the results lead to Wolfram putting them in his saddle bag – the sure way to any girl’s heart. It’s a funny sequence and shows how Von was adept at the sweet as well as the sour: military progress halted by the stirrings of the heart. We know he’s setting us up for a fall but the higher fly the hearts of the Prince and his increasingly lapsing nun, the harder they will fall.

 

So, it proves as, after finally finding her clothes, Regina V starts making arrangements, moving the date of her marriage forwards and otherwise closing down Wolfram’s room to manoeuvre. Everything comes to a head with the most sadistic twist as she chases Kitty away with her whip, spittle flying from her face of fury as she shows no mercy. The movements of the film are slow but symphonically structured so that when such twists occur the audience is dragged down with them.

 

Most of the existing film is set in Kronberg and there is proportionately less in Africa partly because Swanson, having realised that her character’s taking over management of her aunt’s “hotel” actually meant brothel and this was so well presented as such by Von that she called him a madman and asked Joe Kennedy to fire him. On budget alone this was justified as with only less than half the film completed – it was supposed to run to five hours – Von was already overbudget for the whole thing.

Here's Tully!!

The new Milestone Film’s “reimagining” improves on their previous efforts with the inclusion of some new materials and new title cards based on Von’s scripts. We see enough of Poto-Poto to really feel Kitty’s fall to the ultimate depths in no small part due to Tully Marshall’s exuberant evil. It is at this point that we’re almost without hope, we are in the Cruelty sweet spot exactly as Von intended and that is the biggest compliment you can pay to the work of Milestones’ Doros and Heller. They also bring out the full flavour of what is an extraordinary and powerful performance from Swanson and the role she fought so hard to see preserved in some way. It’s here Gloria.

 

Neil Brand, so steeped in the musical language of Hollywood composition, was the perfect accompaniment to the grand statement in its need for an emotional anchor as well as expression. How do you add flavour to the intensity on show, how do you not over-play when the going gets Tully and when The Faces are so loud and expressive? Neil knows and this was a masterclass of composed improvisation and quicksilver composition supporting and glorying in Swanson!

 

I want to watch it all over again.

 

*The Curse of Queen Kelly, Pamela Hutchinson Sticking Place Books (2026)

 

You can order the book direct from the publishers here where you’ll also find more information and wonderful reviews, it is sincerely one of the best books on film of recent years.

 

Von directed some very relaxed performances too!

NB These screen grabs are from the new trailer for the restoration which give some idea of how good the results now look! 

The English Job… The Girl with the Pistol (1968), BFI Monica Vitti: Creative Force

This highly entertaining film was screening as part of the BFI’s season Monica Vitti: Creative Force which gives some of us Antonioni obsessives the chance to see the actor’s broader work, and here we see the gift for comedy which is hinted at in parts of L’Eclisse perhaps but here is given full rein in what is now a period drama of swinging London and a Sicily nursing a Victorian hangover with a Cosa Nostra side-salad. I was sat next to an Italian family who got all of the jokes before the punchlines but overall, the packed NFT1 audience had a hoot – laughing at us then and us now, Monica’s sardonic star power eternally self-aware and simply cool.

It was a treat to see this modish diva playing amongst fabulous locations from moist Georgian blocks of Edinburgh then on to a grimy Sheffield still choking on the smoke of large-scale steel manufacture. A good portion of the film I set in Bath, as ornate as many an Italian city, then to London and then Brighton with the old pier still standing. We also had a rollcall of leading men for Monica to play with including Tony Booth (Cheri’s father), Johnny Briggs, Corin Redgrave and Stanley Baker – guess which one ends up with the girl?

Given all this, it’s surprising that Mario Monicelli's film wasn’t released in the UK but it did very well in Italy and Vitti won the Accademia del Cinema Italiano David di Donatello for Best Actress whilst the film was nominated for the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars. Having seen so many British comedies of this period, it’s altogether more coherent in tone and fundamentally ridiculous rather than just trying to fit in current cultural references. In this way it reminded me of Tinto Brass’ Col Cuore in Gola (1967) which was partly filmed at the legendary International Times fundraising 24 Hour Technicolour Dream at Alexandra Palace (John Lennon was there, Syd’s Floyd, Soft Machine et al). Counter-cultural history, right there in the background… Brass caught the moment when almost no one else did and his compadriot catches the background hum of a country yet to realise what is happening to it below the top-leve glamour of the moment.

Ultimately it’s a film of liberation for Vitti’s character, Assunta Patanè whose traditional Sicilian situation – family, men, an imagined and real, Greek Chorus of disappointment – weigh too ludicrously heavy on her ability to grow up. Director Mario Monicelli creates a mood not unlike Almodóvar’s early sexual farces with the same logical illogic as found in Vincente Aranda’s early work in a Spain still ruled by Franco’s censorship. The Italians had no such restriction and, whilst this is a joke at Sicily’s expense, it does have the general messaging about men and women’s role in (Catholic?) society.

This latter point is not made lightly and it was only in 1965 that the case of young Sicilian Franca Viola had been in the news after she refused a matrimonio riparatore with the man who had raped her and kidnapped her when she was just 17. This would have left her as a dishonoured woman who, having had sex out of marriage, was supposed to marry her assailant. It sounds mad because it is and it is worth reading up on this instance which had a huge impact on Italian law as well as the lives of those involved.

 

This cause celebre informs the seemingly incomprehensible opening when Assunta is kidnapped by mistake and then seduced by Vincenzo Macaluso (the excellent Carlo Giuffrè) who really wanted her cousin but makes do with what has been “delivered”. At the start there is the seemingly ridiculous sight of a group of men dancing together on a village rooftop as Assunta and her friends watch from a room across the way… dancing before marriage being almost as much of a crime as sex?

 

It’s useless, you look at me with dead fish eyes… I’m an honest woman!

After the deed is done Assunta finds that Vincenzo has fled to England leaving her and her family dishonoured. Her fiancé can not marry her and she cannot be a part of society until she has righted the wrong and, as there are no men in her family she is given a gun and sent to track down and assassinate the man who did her wrong.

Only now do we get the title sequence as the train departs, the ferry crosses and we’re whizzing through the British countryside up to Edinburgh where Vincenzo is to be found. It’s a long way from Polignano a Mare in Apulia where the initial scenes were shot to Waverley Station and the Scottish capitol’s stone streets have barely changed. Assunta approaches a woman in a pink coat who is looking for a housekeeper – “mi scusi, Mister…” (Vitti’s Itanglish is a delight throughout) and asks her the location of the Capri Restaurant where her target is working. And then we have it, MONICA VITTI walking around Edinburgh including some unsuspecting by-standers.

There’s a man, dressed as a woman…

She stops at the junction of Upper Bow and Johnson Terrace before spotting the Capri. Vincenzo is too quick for her and takes his leave … and this is very much the way as our heroine begins an educative journey across the country to find herself as well as her man. Travelling Britain doesn’t always work this way but Assunta’s contact with the welcoming intellectuals of the Sullivan family is the beginning of her sentimental education. She works as a maid for them and encounters The Kilt for the first time at their party, running off to the kitchen to burst out laughing. It was a different time.

Vincenzo calls from Sheffield in the middle of the party and as Assunta passionately remonstrates with him in the living room, Mrs Sullivan translates her half of the conversation as their guests sit aghast.

So to the Steel City, absolutely covered in industrial grime, where she finds a man called John (Booth) wearing fine Italian shoes and ill-advised white jeans and working on his E-Type Jaguar – the symbol of Swinging Sixties success. Luckily John speaks some Italian and takes her to a disco where they ask about Vincenzo and, after Johnny Briggs get’s too fresh she insists on her new English man giving him a hiding. They go to John’s terraced house – they’re all black, says Assunta – agreeing on separate rooms then watching rugby on TV.

What sort of a man are you? I don’t understand. You look. TV. Two hours…

A rugby match takes them to Bristol where Assunta sees the object of her murderous attention as an ambulance man. She finds out which hospital he works at and is off to “Barts” in Bath… where she encounters handsome Dr Osborne (Stanley Baker) and a man called Frank (Corin Redgrave) who has just tried to take his own life. Assunta gives him some of her blood and she listens as he drives her around Bath about his unfaithful lover and the reasons for his broken heart…

The same skills of emotional control and almost burying her thoughts in drama films also allow Vitti to hit the mark with so many punchlines… for this level of farce to work you just have to take it seriously and she’s within the unreality and without the need to labour the points which – perhaps with the quicker reaction times of my Italian neighbours to each zinger – makes them funnier.

Her conversion to an English-speaking, liberated woman by the last section of the film, allows her effortless sophistication to counter-balance Vincenzo’s old school thinking as he attempts to woo her back as his “property” … it’s fascinating watching her in character work these scenes on two levels… is she reverting back to old certainties or planning moral revenge?

 

We saw a sparklingly digital copy of a new 4k restoration which brought Monica and Swinging Sicily to life and really brought out the contrast between sun-drenched Mediterranean starch and Great British grey days. Some fabulous pubs and cars were also involved and I particularly liked Stanley Baker’s Rover and Booth’s E-Type Jaguar – he always was a flash get!

 

 

12,000 mm under the sea… Wonders of the Sea (1922), Horne and Bockius, Bonn Silent Film Festival 2026

J.E. Williamson's career is emblematic of a period in filmmaking, long past, when pioneers were part-scientist, part-showman and part-promoter on endeavours that involved as much adventure as technology.

Brian Taves, Ph.D., University of Southern California

 

John Ernest Williamson was born in Liverpool in 1881 making him yet another Silent Scouser although he was not related to the Mr Williamson who laid out Williamson Square in 1745. No, his father was Captain Charles Williamson, a seafarer from Norfolk, Virginia who patented his "Apparatus for Submarine Work” in December 1903. This was a three-foot diameter tube, made of a series of interlocking iron rings covered with a mix of canvas and rubber and provided a waterproof connection between the surface and the sea below.

 

Originally designed for underwater repair work, salvage and so on, John adapted this to incorporate a six-by-ten feet diving bell with a large, reinforced, window which enabled him to film in actual underwater locations. This “Photosphere” enabled him to not only be the first man to take a picture underwater from a submarine but also to create a series of stunning films starting in 1914 when he took his device onboard his ship, the Jules Verne, to the Bahamas, where sunlight shines deep into the sea.

 

An observation chamber made entirely of metal, weighing three tons and equipped with a crystal window four centimetres  thick…

 

Moving Picture World proclaimed that “Jules Verne is vindicated at last… the panorama is as entrancing as it is new.” Whilst The Evening Standard (23 July 1914) suggested that the photosphere “has amazed the scientists and diplomats…” although I’m not quite sure why the latter were notable? His most famous film is probably 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which aligned his technique with a purely fictional subject and included a mechanical octopus to match his imagined giant creature. He was clearly as inspired as any schoolboy by undersea adventure and creatures of the depths.

 

This sparkling new restoration from the Austrian Film Museum, combines archive fragments found across Europe and Australia to recreate this extraordinary documentary/adventure from 1922 but it’s not without modern day quibbles.

 

It may not have been widely known at the time but Octopuses, whether in their garden or not, are rarely dangerous to humans normally avoiding their pathetically four limbed fellow creatures rather than engaging in arm-wrestling or injecting them with poison (although some are venomous). Mr Williamson preferred to suggest that they were “formidable monsters” and at one point we even see a supposed victim of a savage cephalopod execution with a bit of skeleton next to a divers’ helmet… pull the other one John lad.

JE Williamson, Dick, Lulu and "painter" in the underwater studio

 

Similarly, whilst Conger Eels can look after themselves alright, the one we see proposed as such a danger to the divers - so much so that they ask for a spear to be lowered – just wants to be left alone rather than prodded by the intrepid explorers. The eels can grow over two metres and will attack if left with no other escape but this one’s a juvenile and unfairly pulled into the action. I’ve seen more frightening scenarios in a Georges Méliès’. Also, the barracuda is not “the most ferocious of all sharks” and it’s not even a shark.

 

Consider yourself told John Ernest, at least from the point of view of 2026. But this was all part of the “blended reality” of his films and this stretches back to his earliest films one of which featured him attacking a shark lured by a horse carcass into the sea. To most of the audiences of the time this would have been an exciting part of this window into an unknown world… and was very much inline with a whole raft of ethnographic documentaries then and in the decades to follow.

 

The premise involves a collection of colourful characters off to explore the seas around the Bahamas specifically “Treasure Island” whose reefs have claimed so many ships carrying riches… and around which we find the monsters. Sir Williamson is accompanied by master diver, Jack Gardner, ship’s Captain Ross and his mischievous son Dick who provides comic relief during the journey out to the island. Also included is “a talented painter” and his “niece” Lulu McGrath… It’s all very Jules Verne and in the spirit of his great adventurers.

 

Lulu is there for a number of reasons but mostly to look very good in a swimming costume. She was runner-up in the first Miss America beauty pageant but equally importantly she can swim well and smile at the same time bringing glamour to the proceedings and diving to a depth of 12 metres with the aid of a 8 kg led weight which gave her more time to swim around in front of the submerged “studio” and she dives so well that Williamson repeats the shots in slow motion. A proper diving belle… although some will also be impressed with the muscular “local” who dives to retrieve the weight and swim it strongly to the surface.

 

Is this not a dreamlike spectacle, the vision of a new world?

 

The shots from the sea floor are indeed wondrous and it would be interesting to compare the coral and aquatic life now with then. We are so used to underwater photography that it’s difficult to imagine how mind-blowing this footage would have seemed at the time. A landscape as alien as Mars and about which we are still learning more with every year.

 

Lulu makes a bigger splash!

Next up are the divers who descend in search of treasure after they have bothered a few innocent fish. It’s still an awesome sight and they are operating two different breathing systems: one fed by a line from the surface and the other using carbon blocks to recycle the air. Both braver than me and a proxy for the audience’s adventure into this unknown.

 

We are also treated to a rare glimpse of the famous land mammal, inventor Alexander Graham Bell who descends in the photosphere just as you’d expect even for a pioneer in his 75^th year.

 

Talking of pioneers, this submersive treat was made all the more immersive by the singular talents of Frank Bockius on percussion and Stephen Horne on piano and everything else. They really pushed the boat out in combining to create new moods to connect with the old feelings and elevated the adventure in the most visceral of fashions. We need to see them play it under-water next in the spirit of The Williamson Technique and his approach to health and safety! Totally inside their depth and well played!

 

Bonn delivering yet another fascinating restoration.