Erich von Stroheim's Spectacular Art Is Back

"The new version provides the fullest view yet of what might have been, of the mighty vision destined to remain stranded in its script, and it suggests a whole lost future of movies that Stroheim never got to make. It's also a reminder that he is one of the great first-person filmmakers-the peer of Buster Keaton and Orson Welles, to name two other greats whose careers were similarly stifled by industry meddling and rejection."

"The release of a new reconstruction and restoration by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, of Milestone Films, (opening at Film Forum on January 16th) is, therefore, a major event. Doros (who produced a previous restoration of the film in 1985) and Heller have found additional unseen footage and used Stroheim's original script to give a sense of what the film's dénouement might have looked like had shooting been completed."

Erich von Stroheim's career was curtailed when producers halted his 1929 film Queen Kelly midway through shooting, ending a ten-year run of influential silent films. Budgets expanded as directors' ambitions grew, prompting producers to exert control and evaluate directors by commercial results. New reconstruction and restoration work by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller at Milestone Films recovered unseen footage and used Stroheim's original script to suggest the film's intended dénouement. The restoration offers the fullest view yet of Stroheim's uncompleted vision and implies a lost cinematic future he never realized. Stroheim's unified direction, writing, and performances exemplify first-person filmmaking on par with Keaton and Welles.

Read at The New Yorker