IMDb user comments for
The Wedding March (1928)

advertisement

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 2:

[1] [2]

Index

11 comments in total

---

8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Erich Von Stroheim's stylized elegy for Pre-War Vienna, 22 March 2006

Author: wmorrow59 from Tarrytown, NY

"Let others make films about gay old Vienna," announced filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim, "I will make films about sad old Vienna, not because Vienna is sadder than any other city but because the world is sad." During his brilliant, erratic, maddening career as a director in Hollywood Stroheim twice attempted to make a movie about the city where he was born, a city devastated and changed forever by the Great War of 1914-18. His first attempt, MERRY-GO-ROUND, was taken out of his hands and finished by studio hacks, whereas production on the second, THE WEDDING MARCH, was halted before the filming was complete. The film that exists now is only a portion of the epic he planned. Still, it's a beautiful and stirring piece of work that conveys at least a glimmer of what its creator intended: an elegiac work that is, paradoxically, both nostalgic for a lost world yet unsentimental about that world's injustices.

Given the man's grandiose and tragic vision, his belief in the power of cinematic art and his uncompromising temperament, it's no surprise that Stroheim ran into so much difficulty with the moguls who controlled Hollywood, who fired him repeatedly and butchered his work; the surprise is that he was ever granted any creative leeway at all. Then as now, Hollywood preferred escapism, straightforward plotting and happy endings. There was little tolerance for such an exacting artist as Stroheim, who wrote, directed and usually acted in downbeat and sometimes sordid films that were unlike those of anyone else. Still, for about ten years beginning in 1919 he was permitted a limited amount of artistic freedom and was able to give the world a tantalizing hint of his talent in several of these films, although not one of them survives in the form he intended. In 1926, fresh from the box office success of his biggest hit, THE MERRY WIDOW, Stroheim worked out a deal with producer Pat Powers to produce an epic set in Vienna just before the First World War. Stroheim believed he could complete the film for $300,000, a reasonable budget for the time and only slightly more than his previous film had cost.

THE WEDDING MARCH as it survives today tells only about one-third of the story Stroheim wrote. The action takes place during the spring and summer of 1914, and concerns a "noble" family, the Wildeliebe-Rauffenbergs, who have a title, property, servants, and a dissolute son --but no money. Stroheim does not bother with nuanced characterizations in this film, preferring to draw his figures with broad strokes. Our first sight of the parents, awakening to face the new day, is appalling: the Princess Maria wears a chin strap and her face is slathered with cold cream, while Prince Ottokar is bleary-eyed and obese. They bicker immediately. Their son Prince Nicki (played by the director) at first seems little better, stealing kisses from the servants and hitting up his parents for cash. Nicki appears to be the decadent product of a decadent line, itself the product of a decadent society. But today marks a turning point for the wastrel heir: it's Corpus Christi, a major holiday of religious and political significance, and while he is on maneuvers with the other soldiers at the Cathedral Nicki sees a girl in the crowd who has a profound impact on him.

The girl is Mitzi, played by 19 year-old Fay Wray in her first major role, and it's easy to see why she turns his head. (Seen here with her natural brunette hair, Fay Wray is as pretty as any woman who ever graced the screen.) Mitzi comes from a working class background and is being shoved by her mother into a relationship with a coarse butcher, Schani, whom she detests. The flirtation between Nicki and Mitzi quickly grows into a genuine passion. Unbeknownst to Nicki, his own parents are meanwhile arranging a match for him with a shy, club-footed girl, Cecelia (ZaSu Pitts), heiress to a corn-plaster fortune, a match as inappropriate as the one Mitzi is resisting. Both sets of parents care only about money, while Mitzi and Nicki seem to be the last persons in Vienna who believe in love. Ultimately, they are each forced to abandon the relationship and marry against their wishes.

It's not the story but the manner of its telling that makes all the difference. In bare outline the plot sounds as melodramatic as a paperback romance, but what makes the movie special are the director's bold and beautifully stylized flourishes: the ornate detail of the Wildeliebe-Rauffenberg town house; the pageantry of the Corpus Christi processional (filmed partly in two-strip Technicolor); the abandoned carriage where Nicki and Mitzi meet for their assignations, and where a steady supply of apple blossoms tumble onto their shoulders. These love scenes, certainly the most romantic the director ever made, are brutally inter-cut with the wildest orgy sequence of the silent screen. And only this director could get away with such motifs as the mythic Iron Man who carries off maenads from the Danube (a vision that is said to portend tragedy), or the unforgettable sight of the organist's hands turning skeletal at the keyboard as Nicki and his club-footed bride, Cecilia, make their way down the aisle at their grim wedding.

This last image was meant to foreshadow events in the second part, "The Honeymoon," but this portion of the story was never completed and no longer exists in any form. After seven months of filming Stroheim had spent almost $700,000 and wasn't done yet. Producer Powers pulled the plug and had the many hours of footage winnowed down to the film that now remains. Once again, Stroheim's vision was thwarted, but at least the fragment that survives tells a complete story and concludes on a satisfying (albeit painfully dark) note. Even in truncated form THE WEDDING MARCH is a triumph, one of the great silent dramas and a testament to the unique talent of its creator.

---

7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent morality tale - one of the silent screen's finest achievements., 27 March 2001

Author: Arne Andersen (aandersen@landmarkcollege.org) from Putney, VT

This is one of von Stroheim's finest works and one of the crowning glories of the silent screen. It is worthy of being cited among the ten or twenty best silent films ever made. The story is simple. Impoverished Prince agrees to marry for money but meanwhile falls in love. He is forced to enter a loveless marriage as is she - the clear message that marriage without love is a sacrilege is beautifully presented. Fay Wray and von Stroheim in the leads are quite fine. Zasu Pitts in the small role of the wealthy woman he marries is sweet and sympathetic, though on screen for only a few scenes. If there had been an Academy then, this surely would have been nominated for Best Film, Direction, Cinematography and Editing. In these departments the film shows itself quite extraordinary and superbly realized. There is even a short early Technicolor sequence (reds, blues and browns) detailing a Corpus Christi procession in 1914 Vienna. The organ score of the video release is accompanied by orchestral parts and sound effects. All in all, very worth seeing. Masterfully conceived and executed.

---

6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A stately affair, 26 February 2003
Author: tom.hamilton

History paints Erich Von Stroheim as the great misunderstood genius, the `footage fetishist' whose grandiose films were too ahead of their time & too ambitious for producers with their `nickel and dime' mentalities. Irving Thalberg emerges as a major villain in this saga, sacking him first from Universal in the midst of shooting Merry Go Round, then hacking apart his masterpiece Greed over at MGM before sacking him again from The Merry Widow. By 26/7 Von Stroheim was running out of major studios to work for. Fortunately Merry Widow was a hit and he won backing from Pat Powers at Paramount for a two part epic critique of royalty. Only the first part survives, an executive changeover at Paramount occurred and new boss, B.P. Schulberg, took fright at the expense and failure of Part 1 and quickly dumped Part 2 on the European market where it vanished permanently. Von Stroheim was ostracized by the major studios and after two further abortive projects (Queen Kelly and Walking Down Broadway) he never directed again.

Whilst it's impossible not to feel sympathy with a man whose vision was too much for the industry of his time, the films themselves are often overloaded with details and appear stiff and pedantic when compared with the contemporary work of Vidor, Murnau, Lubitsch, Von Sternberg or DeMille. A good example of this is the scene where Fay Wray first sees Von Stroheim's prince. Partly filmed in 2-color Technicolor, this is a pleasure on the eyes, but an incident which should play out in 3 or 4 minutes is here stretched out to about 15. That would be fine if it was an isolated incidence or a dramatic high point, but this is the pacing Von Stroheim employs throughout. Whilst the result is impressive and strangely hypnotic, `Von Stroheim' time feels much slower than real time and the two hours of this film felt closer to three. Mannered as this is in a silent film, this style would've been painful indeed if attempted in sound.

Von Stroheim's direction reminds me of the theatrical producer Gordon Craig who in the early 20th century attempted to reproduce realism on stage with fully plumbed and working interior sets, real trees, gravel and soil for outside settings etc, even utilising giant tanks of water in which to stage shipboard scenes. Real objects are on stage, yes. but doesn't this miss the point of an audience engaging with players and text to create their own realism? Another result of this is an oddly dehumanizing one, as our attention is distracted from the interplay of characters by the piling on of detail. That for me is the basic problem with Von Stroheim Not to say Von Stroheim wasn't a great film maker, as Greed definitely proves. But I can't help feeling the cutting helped Greed more than hurt it. The recent TCM restoration, while fascinating and something to be grateful for, only serves to illustrate this, and in Wedding March we see just how indulgent the Von could become.

Choosing himself as leading man didn't help either. In The Merry Widow, John Gilbert was able to engage the audience through his charm and charisma. However here, Von Stroheim's impoverished Prince looks rather villainous and appears both cold hearted and kinky - not an endearing combination. He mostly gives a statue-like performance and only Fay Wray, vibrantly fresh and beautiful, engages us emotionally.

Admittedly the story becomes more gripping in the last half hour or so, and the ending (a surprisingly bitter one) made me wish the 2nd Part had survived.

It's definitely worth seeing, both as cinema and for what it tells us of this fascinating figure, but once is enough.

---

5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A Fine Example of Good Melodrama, 19 August 2002

Author: Shelly_Servo3000 from Wisconsin

Erich Von Stroheim is known for his iron-clad grip on his productions. "The Wedding March" is no exception. But his desire for perfection is one reason this movie is so wonderful. For those of you who only know him as Max von Mayerling in "Sunset Blvd." and Fay Wray as King Kong's "girlfriend", you need to do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It's touchingly beautiful and doesn't end quite the way you'd think it would.

---

2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Good performances, excellent movie, 20 April 2006

Author: Trilby06

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Von Stroheim uses time as a way to isolate the surrounding events (even what surrounds the spectator) in order to fix our eyes and get mesmerized by the story. It's kind of hypnotic. European movies have a tendency to show movements and soul motions in a slower way. This is no change with Stroheim who, for example uses many minutes to show us a "coup de foudre" a "love at first sight". But the thing is, Von Stroheim didn't perhaps want only to appear dull, but he wanted to get dull with the situation then to understand the decadence of his situation, the impossibility to move and talk, being on horseback, keeping stern the way a militar does but having a Fay Wray moving her head and eyes so sweetly it makes a complete change in motion in this movie scene. Perhaps Stroheim aimed too much the detail. I think this is what makes his movies so different and personal. And the fetishist, arrogant examples in this movie indeed explain the complexity of his way to see and feel something like Love. How people kiss each other without feeling it and how the European Decadence caused so much pain in young hearts.

---

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com, 3 May 2006

Author: rdjeffers from Seattle

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Among the handful of films directed by Erich von Stroheim, the finest individual performance may be that of Fay Wray in The Wedding March. A young Viennese prince, Nicki von Wildeliebe-Rauffenburg (von Stroheim) falls in love with Mitzi (Wray), the daughter of an innkeeper. With his family fortune depleted, Nicki is forced to marry a wealthy commoner and is resigned to the life of a loveless marriage. Mitzi agrees to marry Schani (Matthew Betz), the brutal and uncouth butcher she hates, when he threatens to murder the prince out of jealousy. Imperial Austria is on full display in a beautifully placed two-color Technicolor sequence of the military procession where Nicki and Mitzi first meet amid the red tunics and white horses. When the prince seeks Mitzi out he finds her playing a harp in her family's beer garden amid the apple trees. This setting is the singly most significant of the film. Covered with blossoms, the swaying branches seem to glow against a dark background as the prince climbs a ladder to Mitzi's room for a midnight rendezvous. The scene is among the most beautiful in all of silent film. As the two lovers kiss on an old buggy, apple blossoms fill the air, a drowsy owl hoots and the moonlight peeks through the passing clouds. Mitzi's torment and misery in the final scene is heartbreaking as her tears mix with the rain while Schani laughs. Wray's performance of a sweet young girl consumed by love, menaced by a suitor she despises and destroyed by the tragic outcome defines sorrow itself.

---

A Wedding in Vienna, 24 April 2008

Author: zolaaar from Berlin, GER

Once more Von Stroheim formulates a sharp rejectance towards the declined empire of the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, where marriages for financial reasons are discussed in whorehouses, where noble lovers disdainfully seduce and then leave simple girls from the commons. The dramaturgic constellation is sentimentally done, but the staging is all the more furious and aggressive. The humiliations of the socially inferior class depicted in this film (i.e. Mitzi has to help at the preparations for the wedding of her lost love) cannot be seen as emotional insertions, but as an evidence for the commonly thoughtless brutality of the nobleness, which is not only facing people of the lower classes, but women in general at that time. It's a good, highly artistic, socially involved film, hacked to pieces by the studio bosses - the fate of every monstrous work by this incredibly visionary director, Von Stroheim.

---

Love and sorrow, 21 April 2008

Author: Petri Pelkonen (petri_pelkonen@hotmail.com) from Finland

Erich von Stroheim directs himself in the lead in this silent film from 1928.The Wedding March tells about Prince Nicki (von Stroheim) who has to marry money.That is his parents' order.Cecelia Schweisser (Zasu Pitts) is one with money so he ought to marry her.But Nicki has fell in love with someone else.That someone is inn-keeper's daughter Mitzi Schrammell (Fay Wray).And she ought to marry the nasty butcher Schani (Matthew Betz).Who gets who in the end? Watch the movie and find out.Erich von Stroheim knew how to make good movies.As a filmmaker he was a perfectionist so maybe that's the reason why the result was so good.The lovely leading lady is the gorgeous Fay Wray who went on and starred King Kong five years later.This was her first starring role.Matthew Betz makes a great villain.Zasu Pitts gives a very touching performance as the limping Cecelia.One interesting detail about the film is that it contains an early Technicolor episode at the Corpus Christi festival.This melodrama from 80 years back is a fine example of movie-making at its finest.These romantic movies that are made today have often got the lack of magic.That wasn't the case in the silent era.

---

In Apple Blossom Time, 19 April 2008

Author: wesconnorsehny from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

In Vienna, before The Great War (aka World War I), dashing Erich von Stroheim (as Nicki) is a Prince with little family money; therefore, parents George Fawcett and Maude George (as Prince and Princess von Wildeliebe-Rauffenburg) want their son to wed the wealthy, but crippled, Zasu Pitts (as Cecelia). Mr. von Stroheim seems game; though, obviously, he plans to continue bedding maids and other girlies. However, attending the "Corpus Christi" celebration, he meets impoverished beauty Fay Wray (as Mitzi). And, for von Stroheim and Ms. Wray, it's love at first sight. As if matters weren't complicated enough for the mutually attracted pair, Wray has been promised to spitting butcher Mathew Betz (as Schani). Will von Stroheim marry for love, or money?

"The Wedding March" is a very well-produced film, but Stroheim miscasts himself as the romantic young "love child"; and, he takes more than a little getting used to. When Wray falls in love with him, Stroheim recalls, all decked out, the cruel "Iron Man" knight which helps open the film. By the end, this appears to have been intentional. The film is, also, way too lengthy; while possessing some lovely images, it drowns itself in a sea of apple blossoms. The soft focus lens is unnecessarily excessive on Wray's beautiful, young face. The actresses perform very well (Wray, Pitts and George); and the photography, including a color segment by Ray Rennahan, is luxurious.

---

2 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Whatever happened to Fay Wray?, 26 April 1999
Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom

A sweet, sweet film full of apple blossoms, parades, and Miss Wray's delight at being bought a box of chocolates ... absolutely wonderful ... despite Nicki and Mitzi being perhaps the oddest odd couple you could find, it somehow works. Lingers in the mind a long time after viewing. Highly recommended.

---

---

Page 1 of 2:

[1] [2]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	Awards
External reviews	Plot keywords	Main details
Your user comments	Your vote history