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The Wedding March

Screening on Film
Directed by Erich von Stroheim.
With Erich von Stroheim, Fay Wray, ZaSu Pitts.
US, 1927, 16mm, black & white, silent, 109 min.
Print source: HFA

F is for Forbidden Love

An impoverished Viennese aristocrat with a playboy past (von Stroheim himself) falls for a poor girl (Wray), much to the dismay of his family, who have arranged for him to marry the crippled daughter of a business tycoon (Pitts). Like many of the director’s masterworks, the complete version of The Wedding March no longer exists: a nervous studio executive destroyed the second half of the film. Even as it stands, this abbreviated version provides great resonance, thanks to von Stroheim’s trademark flourishes evoking the decadence of pre–World War I imperial Austria.

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