The Wedding March

Erich von Stroheim's lavish romance set in Vienna on the eve of the First World War, in which a penniless aristocrat falls for a brewer's daughter but is pushed into an arranged marriage for money. Stroheim directed and starred, and the production was as extravagant as everything he touched: real period uniforms, a full-scale carnival sequence, and a budget that ran far over what Paramount had agreed to. The studio cut the film down sharply, and the version that survives is only the first half of Stroheim's intended two-part story; the second half, The Honeymoon, is largely lost. Fay Wray, a year before King Kong, plays the girl he cannot marry. What remains is a film of extraordinary visual density and a director's refusal to compromise. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.