Thursday, July 11, 2024

NFR Project: 'The Wedding March' (1928)


The Wedding March

Dir: Erich von Storheim

Scr: Harry Carr

Pho: Roy H. Klaffki, Ray Rennahan, William C. McGann, Hal Mohr, Ben F. Reynolds, Harris Thorpe

Ed: Frank E. Hull, Josef von Sternberg

Premiere: October 6, 1928

113 min.

The stereotype of the movie director as dictatorial, extravagant, and egotistical is based on the life and career of Erich von Stroheim. He was an excellent director during the silent era, ranked with Griffith and de Mille. However, he was an exacting one. He obsessed over the details of every production he helmed, spending vast amounts of the studio’s money to get the effects he wanted just right. He brooked no interference from anyone.

Naturally, this did not make him beloved in Hollywood boardrooms. Though all his films are of excellent quality, when they started losing money at the box office, the studio started interfering. This is the case with The Wedding March, which was chopped and changed beyond recognition – and still it survives as the last Stroheim movie he would have at least some creative control over.

It's a romantic tragedy, set in Vienna before World War I. Stroheim himself plays Nicki, a good-hearted but impoverished Austrian cavalry officer whose grotesque parents want him to marry for money. By chance he meets a tender young musician, Mitzi (Fay Wray), and the two fall in love. However, Fate has other plans. Nicki proceeds to marry the rich cripple Cecilia (ZaSu Pitts), while Mitzi’s jealous brute of a butcher boyfriend Schani (Matthew Betz) threatens to murder him after the ceremony.

Stroheim spared no expense. He built huge sets, including an apple orchard with the blossoms fabricated and tied on individually to each branch. All of the period costumes w3ere correct in every detail. The budget was set down at $300,000; by the time Stroheim has spent $1,250,000, the project was shut down.

Wedding March was intended to be the first of two films on the same subject. However, Stroheim cut all the footage he took into a four-and-a-half-hour cut, and said he could cut no more. Paramount promptly hired director Josef von Sternberg to cut the film, which he did, down to its present length. It took a year. Stroheim was not happy.

Eventually, the second film was made, but has been lost to time (the last known copy was destroyed in a fire in 1959). Evidently, in it Schani tries to kill Nicki yet again, but his wife Cecilia throws herself in front of him, dying by blocking the bullet. Schani becomes a fugitive. Mitzi goes into a convent. Nicki joins the war and is killed. Yep, nothing like some good old German gloominess to darken your day.

Stroheim’s tyrannical approach worked for a short time, but the studio system soon brought him to heel. He ended up as a character actor, playing Nazis and the like. Never again would he be allowed to pursue his visions on film.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Wind.

 


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