Kelly (Swanson), an innocent convent girl, falls in love with a playboy prince (Bryon) who is engaged to a mad and powerful queen (Owen). When her love goes unfulfilled, Kelly departs for Africa and ends up the mistress of a brothel. Although von Stroheim planned the film on an epic scale, with a running time of five hours, it was shut down by producer Joseph P. Kennedy when Swanson became unhappy with the director’s notorious excesses, essentially ending von Stroheim’s directorial career in Hollywood. Long available in an incoherent truncated form, this restored version fills in some of the missing pieces of the director’s bold, unique vision.