Milestone

[Stefan Andersson]

The Humming Bird (1924) w/ Gloria Swanson in the works:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36773

[Peacock]

Dennis hints that it may be paired with another Swanson film… please let it be the Queen Kelly he has been working on!

He also made a shout out in the linked thread asking if anyone had high rez stills from The Humming Bird to help reconstruct the missing sequences, so if any members here do… let Dennis know please!

[Saturnome]

Sidney Olcott made quite a few pictures featuring crossdressing. 6 of the 8 Olcott films I've seen feature crossdressing (and I haven't seen The Hummingbird! I certainly will when it's out), though it probably mean nothing out of the 100 films he made.

[andyli]

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life presented by Milestone in a new 4K restoration over at Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Restored in 4K in 2024 by Milestone Films with the collaboration of MoMA – Museum of Modern Art and Library of Congress, from the lone surviving but incomplete 35mm tinted and toned nitrate print preserved by Library of Congress, and from the internegative preserved by Paramount Pictures and scanned at MoMA laboratory, which was used as the main source for the missing frames

[drdoros]

"Made in New Jersey: Films From Fort Lee," released by Milestone Film & Video...features 14 films and two documentaries made in Fort Lee and across North Jersey; a visual history lesson of the early days of cinema. Richard Koszarski... curated the titles in the two-disc package. https://www.northjersey.com/story/enter ... 328535007/

[drdoros]

La Biennale di Venezia announces the World Premiere of
Milestone’s new 4K Reconstruction of
Erich von Stroheim’s legendary unfinished 1929 masterpiece
Queen Kelly
starring Gloria Swanson for the Pre-Opening Night of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival
Tuesday August 26, 2025 at Sala Darsena (Lido di Venezia) with a live performance of Eli Denson’s new orchestral score by the Syntax Ensemble

Queen Kelly (1929), the legendary unfinished masterpiece by Erich von Stroheim, the great director (Foolish Wives, Greed) and actor (The Grand Illusion, Sunset Boulevard), was produced by and starred the era’s most glamorous film actress, Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard). The world premiere of a gorgeous new 4K reconstruction Queen Kelly has been chosen for the Pre-Opening Night — Tuesday August 26th 2025 — of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival (27 August–6 September) of La Biennale di Venezia. The screening will be held in Sala Darsena (Palazzo del Cinema) on the Lido.

In 1985, Dennis Doros created a “completed” version of Queen Kelly that played at the 42nd Venice International Film Festival — and around the world in 35mm to great acclaim. Exactly forty years later, Doros has returned to Queen Kelly and — thanks to new research, access to original nitrate materials, and the tools of digital restoration — he has created a gorgeous new reimagining of this lost masterpiece.

The Pre-Opening Night premiere of Queen Kelly, on Tuesday August 26, 2025 at Sala Darsena, will be accompanied by a new original score by Eli Denson, performed live by the Syntax Ensemble — clarinets: Marco Ignoti, Riccardo Acciarino; harp: Elena Gorna; percussion: Dario Savron; cellos: Fernando Caida Greco, Martina Rudic, Arianna Di Martino, Luca Colardo; director: Pasquale Corrado.

Queen Kelly should have been a dream collaboration — a glamorous world-famous movie star (Gloria Swanson) and her financier lover (Joseph P. Kennedy) hire the most celebrated director of the time (Erich von Stroheim) to make a groundbreaking independent film. Instead, Queen Kelly was canceled mid-production. The movie — which was shot in sequence — was shut down by Swanson after just a few of the scandalous African sequences were filmed. The unfinished Queen Kelly — like Erich von Stroheim’s desecrated Greed — became Hollywood legend. Basing his reconstruction on von Stroheim’s original scripts, Dennis Doros has employed multiple techniques to recreate the film’s dénouement.

Synopsis

Queen Kelly opens in the imaginary European country of Cobourg-Nassau, sometime before the first World War, where the vain and cruel Queen Regina V (Seena Owen) obsesses over her feckless fiancé, “Wild” Prince Wolfram (Walter Byron). When the dissolute prince encounters an innocent but flirtatious convent girl, Patricia Kelly (Gloria Swanson), he falls in love. Desperate to see her before his upcoming wedding to the Queen, Wolfram kidnaps Kelly and brings her to his rooms in the palace. When the Queen discovers the lovers, she whips the young girl and throws her out into the night, clad only in her night gown. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Kelly returns to the convent, where she receives a telegram summoning her to the bedside of her dying aunt (Florence Gibson) in Dar-es-Salaam, German East Africa. There, the innocent girl is shocked to find herself in a seedy bordello. On her deathbed, Kelly’s aunt begs her niece to wed the brothel’s syphilitic owner, Jan Vryheid (Tully
Marshall).

Queen Kelly in 2025

In 1985, when Kino International (with Dennis Doros as the novice archivist) released the first “new” edition of Queen Kelly, it was promoted as a “restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s lost masterwork.” Recognizing that the restoration of a film that was never completed is an impossibility, Doros calls his 2025 work on Queen Kelly, a “reconstruction” — an improved re-imagining of what von Stroheim’s completed film could have looked like.

Milestone is grateful for the participation of George Eastman Museum (primary source), the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, the Harry Ransom Center, the Margaret Herrick Library, Paramount Pictures, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for providing the original nitrate 35mm materials, photographs, and papers to used create this new version. Newly created intertitles are identified (“Milestone”). Milestone also thanks Metropolis Post in New York for digitally timing, stabilizing, and removing dust and scratches.

Director Erich von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim (1885–1957) was one of cinema’s most controversial figures — celebrated for his audacity, perfectionism, and excesses. Born Erich Oswald Stroheim in Vienna, he immigrated to the United States around 1909, rebranding himself with the aristocratic-sounding “von” and crafting a persona of a former Austro-Hungarian officer. His reinvention played well in World War I America, where he appeared onscreen as Teutonic villains (billed as “The Man You Loved To Hate”) in films like Hearts of the World (1918) and The Hun Within (1918).

Von Stroheim transitioned to directing, developing a reputation as a visionary auteur with a meticulous eye for detail. His debut, Blind Husbands (1919), was a commercial and critical success. It marked the beginning of his recurring themes — lust, cruelty, obsession, and the hypocrisy and decadence of the upper class. His most ambitious project, Greed (1924), based on Frank Norris’s novel McTeague, originally ran over nine hours before MGM drastically cut it to just over two. The mutilated final release was a commercial failure, but Greed remains a touchstone of cinematic realism and moral intensity.

Von Stroheim’s perfectionism often clashed with studio executives. He demanded authentic sets; period-correct costumes; complex, often sordid, character portrayals; and multiple takes. When von Stroheim explained to Irving Thalberg that one of his characters had a foot fetish, the studio executive responded, “And you have a fetish for footage!” His next films, including The Merry Widow (1925) and The Wedding March (1928), continued Von Stroheim’s pattern of artistic brilliance, undermined by budget overruns and studio interference. His unfinished project Queen Kelly (1929), starring Gloria Swanson and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, was halted mid-production due to clashes over content and vision, effectively ending his Hollywood directing career.

In the 1930s and 1940s, von Stroheim reinvented himself as a character actor in America and Europe, frequently playing aristocrats and villains, often copied from his own earlier persona. In 1937, he was magnificent as Captain von Rauffenstein in Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion. His most memorable role came as the butler Max von Mayerling in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), a haunting self-reflection on faded glory that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Erich von Stroheim died of cancer in 1957 in France. Though his directorial output was limited, his influence on cinematic realism, narrative structure, and auteur theory remains profound.

Producer and Star Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson (1899–1983) was a pioneering American actress and producer, best known as one of the most glamorous stars of Hollywood’s silent era. She began her film career with Essanay Studios in 1914 and rose to fame acting in Cecil B. DeMille’s lavish dramas such as Male and Female (1919). Swanson became a fashion icon and one of the highest-paid actresses of the 1920s. In 1928, she produced and starred in Sadie Thompson, earning an Academy Award nomination. Her ambitious collaboration with Erich von Stroheim on Queen Kelly (1929) was shelved due to its controversial content. Though she found fewer roles in the sound era, she staged a triumphant comeback in 1950 as the aging silent film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, earning her a second Oscar nomination. Swanson was a health advocate and businesswoman. Her resilience and artistry helped define early Hollywood stardom and its enduring mythology.

Milestone Films

In 1990, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller co-founded Milestone Films. Working with film archives and labs around the world, they have restored and distributed movies outside the mainstream, including works by Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Kathleen Collins, Erich von Stroheim, Ayoka Chenzira, Margot Benacerraf, Bridgett M. Davis, and Nancy Savoca. Milestone’s motto is “We like to challenge the canon.” Doros served two terms as the President of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and on the Board of the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations. In 2022, Heller and Doros helped cofound Missing Movies (http://www.missingmovies.org), an organization to help filmmakers clear rights and find their original materials to films that are no longer available.

“Milestone Films is a small but mighty distribution company dedicated to discovering works that have been lost to history.” — Derrick Bryon Taylor, New York Times, May 12, 2025

“They care and they love movies.” — Martin Scorsese

Composer Eli Denson

Eli Denson is an award-winning, LA-based composer, conductor, and orchestrator for film and television. His extensive musical training and deep wealth of cinematic language enables him to actualize the artistic visions of his collaborators. Grounded in these passions, Denson has a compositional style that pushes musical boundaries while maintaining its roots in traditional scoring modalities. He is currently working with renowned composer Kevin Kiner on projects such as Dark Winds, House of David, NCIS: Origins, and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld. In March 2025, his acclaimed score for the film #1 Bad Dad was premiered at the Director’s Guild of America as a part of his fellowship in Film Independent’s prestigious Project Involve program. Denson is also currently serving as music editor on the upcoming Lucasfilm Animation series Maul: Shadow Lord. His most recent project, a horror film entitled Laid Bare, received multiple nominations at the Pasadena International Film Festival. In 2024
he was awarded the Jon Vickers Scoring Award where he was tasked with creating a new original score for Milestone Film’s restoration of the Erich von Stroheim film Queen Kelly. Denson received his graduate degree in Music Scoring for Visual Media from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and his undergraduate degree in choral music education at Mississippi State University.

Erich von Stroheim Quotes

“And when the last scene will have been written and filmed, and the ink will have crusted on the pen-point, and the film will have turned brittle and the emulsion dried to cracking…and the money-changers will continue to run clashing after ‘new men’… I will be thinking of the grim long grind of the years of my life that I have put behind me, and of my work…that I have built up, reel by reel … sincere work … holding to it with clutched hands and clenched teeth. I shall be able to say: ‘I never bargained … and I never took off my hat to convention nor fashion … and held it out for pennie s… I have always told them the truth as I saw it …They liked it or they did not like it … But it was the truth anyway … as I saw it … And that clear conscience is my reward …’”

_____________________________________________________

“If you live in France and you have written one good book, or painted one good picture, or directed one outstanding film, 50 years ago, and nothing ever since, you are still recognized as an artist and honored accordingly ... In Hollywood — in Hollywood, you're as good as your last picture. If you didn’t have one in production in the last three months, you’re forgotten, no matter what you have achieved ’ere this. It is that terrific, unfortunately necessary, egotism in the makeup of the people who make the cinema, it is the continuous endeavor for recognition, that continuous struggle for survival and supremacy, among the newcomers, that relegates the old-timers to the ashcan.”

_____________________________________________________

“The relations between Gloria and myself were before the picture, during the making and afterwards, and are still the most intimate and friendly ones. We never had the slightest arguments and all I can say is that she was the most charming and pliable star I ever had to work with.”

______________________________________________________

“I recognize that, in those days, as now, I had my faults, and made my mistakes. Everybody does. Among my weaknesses from the studio’s point of view you might have reckoned my enthusiasm, my sincerity, and my thoroughness. I could not take up any subject with which I was not completely enthused, and when I did start on a job I became utterly absorbed in it until I had finished it in my own way. My sincerity demanded that I follow my own line of inspiration in whatever I might undertake. Call it pig-headedness if you like — others have done so — but I maintain that was my personal sincerity and a determination that, unless I could put my very best into any particular film, I wouldn’t touch it at any price. I never once worked for salary and salary alone. I should have enjoyed working equally hard. without being paid — if it had been possible for me to live in that way.”

_____________________________________________________

“The showing of Al Jolson’s first sound film stopped production on Queen Kelly. There was no other reason. Any stories of friction between myself and Gloria Swanson are entirely fictitious. We were them and have remained very good friends. We worked most amicably together recently in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, and Gloria was kind enough to lend me her New York apartment during my stay there in 1949. We are still the best of friends, and the fact that the film had to be abandoned was neither her fault or mine, but merely one of them any unhappy aspects of the invention of talking films. May I add that a score of other silent pictures were similarly stopped in the middle of production.”

_____________________________________________________

The 82nd Venice International Film Festival
Directed by Alberto Barbera
will take place at the Lido
August 27th to September 6th 2025

[domino harvey]

Nice! I think it’s EVS’ best film. Some truly inspired images in the later portions of the movie that still retain their shock value

[Peacock]

Congratulations Dennis! The world can’t wait to see you what you have put together.

Feel free to share some sneak peeks

[Balthazar]

Very exciting news. Look forward to it coming to London in due course.

[Saturnome]

Queen Kelly have to be the most famous (surviving!) silent film I've still haven't seen. It's thrilling to know it will be sooner than later, and in a fresh restoration.

[hearthesilence]

Awesome, congratulations Dennis, this is definitely at the top of my list for most anticipated films this year (both new and old).

[Stefan Andersson]

Podcast - Dennis Doros on Queen Kelly and more:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=37617

https://queenkelly.net/

[hearthesilence]

I thought I posted this earlier, but IFC Center in NYC has been screening a selection from Milestone's catalog every Monday this month, all from 35mm prints in celebration of its 35th anniversary. Amy and Dennis will be introducing Michael Powell's The Edge of the World in about 40 minutes, and next week George Nierenberg will appear for a Q&A after a screening of his great gospel film Say Amen, Somebody. Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason will close out the month the following Monday.

[Peacock]

The Guardian on the new resto of Queen Kelly

[Stefan Andersson]

Queen Kelly, new restoration press kit:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0150/ ... 1756202905

Restoration information starts on p. 42.

[drdoros]

https://thefilmverdict.com/venice-2025- ... e-opening/

Venice 2025: A Royal Pre-Opening

Queen Kelly
© Milestone Films
VERDICT: The new reconstruction of ‘Queen Kelly’ was an appetizer for things to come at Venice 2025, the 82nd edition of the festival.
Max Borg

August 27th, 2025

“My wife Amy says the restoration is my work. I maintain we did it together. It’s the rare time in the history of our marriage that I’m right.” Thus spoke Dennis Doros while introducing the pre-opening event of Venice 2025, a special screening that, as per tradition, occurred the night before the official start of proceedings. For this 82nd edition of the world’s oldest film festival, the appetizer, so to speak, was a blast from the past in more ways than one: Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly.
Originally shot in 1928, the movie was never completed due to a falling out between star/producer Gloria Swanson and Stroheim, whose ambitions clashed with hers (he was fired with only about half the script actually filmed). She eventually tried to salvage the already shot material and, thanks to a reshot ending, managed to have the film distributed in Europe and South America in 1932. Eighteen years later, a clip from Queen Kelly was featured in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, to represent the silent era career of Norma Desmond, played by Swanson (while Stroheim was cast as Norma’s director and husband turned butler).

An early attempt to reconstruct the version Stroheim intended to release was made in 1985, and Dennis Doros supervised that work, which screened at Venice that year. 40 years later, a new 4K version, with the final stretch recreated via photos and outtakes, with the original script as a reference. This material also led to the writing of new intertitles, clearly marked as such – the logo of the distributor Milestone Films appears at the bottom of the screen – to distinguish them from the original texts.

“Ironically, a film that was never finished marked the beginning of my career,” said Doros in front of the Sala Darsena screen, while also pointing out the festival said “yes” to the proposal of screening the new cut of Queen Kelly about ten minutes after he’d sent the email. It’s a bit of a swansong for him, as he’s about to retire and entrust Milestone, the company he founded with his wife Amy Heller, to Maya Cade, the creator of the great curatorial resource that is the Black Film Archive.

And what a swansong it was, with spectacular live music accompaniment by the Venetian group Syntax Ensemble, who performed the brand new score composed by Eli Denson. “We are tremendously grateful to Venice for this opportunity,” Doros told TFV via email ahead of the screening. “It’s a chance for cinephiles (including a number of important filmmakers) to again see the genius of Erich von Stroheim and Gloria Swanson. [It] is also a chance to see the future by introducing the world to the brilliant young composer Eli Denson.” Indeed, there were at least two major directors among the attendees: jury president Alexander Payne, who will be spending his downtime watching rediscovered gems, and Francis Ford Coppola, who arrived in Venice to present the honorary Golden Lion to Werner Herzog.

Doros also talked to us about the person to whom the reconstruction pays tribute in the credits: “This 2025 version of Queen Kelly is dedicated to Donald Krim, my former boss at Kino International, because he was the one who introduced the film to me in 1984. He took a huge financial and artistic risk to give his 27-year-old nontheatrical salesman the chance to put together the great unfinished film. And without Queen Kelly, I would not have been able to go on and restore the works of Charles Burnett, Kathleen Collins, Lois Weber, Shirley Clarke, Mikhail Kalatozov, etc. I was the pebble Don threw in the pond and the ripples continue to this day.”

The magnitude of such an event also speaks to the importance of Venice Classics, the section Alberto Barbera inaugurated in 2012, replacing the more traditional themed retrospectives. Inspired by the work his peer and friend Thierry Frémaux who did the equivalent programming strand in Cannes, Barbera devised Venice Classics to be a showcase for new restorations of films both celebrated and obscure, as well as documentaries about cinema (like last year’s Chain Reactions, which won one of the section’s two prizes).

Such is its significance that, when the 2020 edition had to deal with Covid restrictions, the festival came up with an ingenious plan to salvage the lineup. Due to reduced capacity in the theaters, every film in the Official Selection had more screenings than usual (generally up to five, not including the last day reruns for award winners). To accommodate those extra screenings, the Classics selection was exceptionally hosted by Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, which had moved its dates from the end of June to right before Venice.

Things have since returned to normal, and in addition to the various world premieres in competition and in the other sections, Venice attendees can also enjoy new versions of films by the likes of Manoel de Oliveira, Stanley Kubrick, Marcel Carné and Pedro Almodóvar, as well as documentaries on topics ranging from the oeuvre of Guillermo del Toro to the mad undertaking that was John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic.

As such, The Film Verdict would also like to take the opportunity to say that, after our Cannes Classics write-up in May, this intends to be a further example of how we aim to expand our festival coverage going forward, making room for retrospectives and archival work, at regular events as well as those who specialize in restorations and rediscoveries. We hope you will be along for the ride.

[domino harvey]

Double feature of Grass and Chang (nominated for the precursor to Best Picture) coming as a double feature Blu in November. Chang has a commentary of Brownlow interviewing Merian C Cooper

[ryannichols7]

Double feature of Grass and Chang (nominated for the precursor to Best Picture) coming as a double feature Blu in November. Chang has a commentary of Brownlow interviewing Merian C Cooper

hell yeah. that's a terrific release, I assume via Kino of course since we know Criterion don't do silent nowadays

[domino harvey]

Yep, via Kino!

[brundlefly]

Queen Kelly restoration trailer.

[Peacock]

God it looks incredible! Well done Dennis, and thank you.

[tenia]

I doubt (because who am I ?) that Richard Lorber, whom I met in october at Lyon where he was to present this new restoration, forwarded to Dennis my congrats for the work done on the restoration and the reconstruction, but yes, it is very nice looking, so bravo to all involved (can't say I liked the movie though, but that's another story).

[domino harvey]

(can't say I liked the movie though, but that's another story).

Sorry to hear that. I enjoy most of his films but this is the only EVS film that seemed to earn its masterpiece status for me, and those incredible sequences of vulgarity and grotesque despair in the back end are phenomenal and still pack a punch

[drdoros]

I doubt (because who am I ?) that Richard Lorber, whom I met in october at Lyon where he was to present this new restoration, forwarded to Dennis my congrats for the work done on the restoration and the reconstruction, but yes, it is very nice looking, so bravo to all involved (can't say I liked the movie though, but that's another story).

You are correct, but I am very grateful to hear it here. As for not liking the movie, that's completely understandable. For a number of people, it's not satisfying by its very incomplete nature. I distribute a large number of films I will insist you like, however.

Dennis
Milestone

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, Jem Cohen moderated a recent talk with Charlie Kaufman and Eva H.D. on their new short, and not only did they praise Killer of Sheep, Eva even gave a shout out to both Milestone and Dennis. (Jem was basically trying to remember who was the actual rights holder even though it was reissued by Criterion, and that was Eva's immediate answer.)