The Wedding March (1928 film)

The Honeymoon depicts the honeymoon of Prince Nicki in the Alps, and the wedding of Mitzi and Schani. Mitzi still loves Nicki, and jealous Schani decides once again to kill the prince. Schani shoots at Nicki, but Cecilia throws herself in front of Nicki. Schani becomes a fugitive and goes into hiding. Nicki and Mitzi meet one last time, where Mitzi tells Nicki that she will go to a convent. Nicki goes off to war, where he is killed.

Erich von Stroheim and Fay Wray on the set of the film The Wedding March

Shortly after completing The Merry Widow and having had a bad working experience at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Stroheim met independent film producer Pat Powers and convinced Powers to finance The Wedding March.[5] Stroheim's script was completed by March 1926 and was 154 pages long. The currently available version of the film depicts the first 67 pages of the original script.[6]

As was often the case with films directed by Stroheim, the film's accuracy resulted in high expenses and production value. Stroheim rebuilt huge sets for St. Stephen's Cathedral, the streets surrounding it, various palatial rooms and an entire apple orchard with thousands of blossoms individually tied to the trees. Stroheim defended his elaborate set choices by stating “They say I give them sewers — and dead cats! This time I am giving them beauty. Beauty — and apple blossoms! More than they can stand!”.[7]

Shooting began in June 1926 and lasted until Stroheim was finally shut down by Powers in January 1927. A reporter allowed onto the film's set reported Stroheim's perfectionism and indifference to time and money, and stated that Stroheim once told his cast and crew that if necessary they would film 24,000 takes of a scene until they got it right.[7] Over the six months of filming, Stroheim shot over 200,000 feet of film.[8] The film's original budget was an estimated at $300,000 ($4,959,000 today). By the time Pat Powers shut down production, the budget had risen to $1,250,000 ($21,058,000 today).[1]

In January 1927, Stroheim screened the footage for Powers and began to edit the film, wanting to release two separate films to be shown on consecutive nights. His initial cut of part 1 was 25,795 feet long (a little over four-and-a-half hours), after which he refused to cut the film further. Powers took control of the film. Powers had convinced Paramount Studios to distribute the film and, after not being sure how to release it after twelve months of editing, they finished a shorter cut of the entire two-part film in January 1928. Paramount hired film director Josef von Sternberg to re-edit the film to a more manageable length. Studio records show that Stroheim approved of Sternberg, but Stroheim later partially blamed Sternberg for the film's re-cutting.[9] Stroheim's first cut of part two was 22,484 feet. He then cut it down to between 15,000 and 20,000 feet before the studio and Sternberg made their cut. Only 4,500 feet of Stroheim's original cut were used in the final film.[10] In 1947, Stroheim claimed that he had finished editing the first part of the film, but never completed the second part after it was given to Sternberg. He also said that the film's final budget was $900,000 and that Powers and Paramount made a profit from the film, while he was denied his contractual 25% of the film's gross.[11] This statement is untrue and the film's final budget, taking two years of interest, the film's color sequences, and creating sound disks for the release into account, was well over a million dollars.[9]

The Wedding March was previewed at the Egyptian Theater in Long Beach, California the following March.[12] After the disastrous preview, Paramount decided to release The Wedding March as two films after all, with part two being re-titled The Honeymoon. The Wedding March was 14 reels long and The Honeymoon was eight reels long. The first three reels of The Honeymoon was footage from The Wedding March that was used as exposition. Only five reels of Stroheim's original footage of the second half of The Wedding March was used, which amounted to approximately 50 minutes and was only one fifth of Stroheim's original cut.[11]