Stroheim by Lennig Arthur;

Author:Lennig, Arthur;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

11

The

honeymoon

The honeymoon is a difficult film to assess for the simple reason that the sole remaining print was destroyed in 1957. The Devil’s Pass Key suffered a similar fate, but this loss is the greater tragedy, for it was a portion of one of Stroheim’s greatest works. Fortunately, we can draw upon written and photographic material to convey at least some of its substance and effect. The Wedding March establishes the plot and also acquaints us with the faces and personalities of the principal characters. Furthermore, we have a carefully delineated scenario as well as a cutting continuity that describes every shot in terms of its length and the camera’s placement (long shot, medium shot, or close-up). In addition, there are a good number of stills to provide us with the look of the scenes. These aids are by no means an adequate substitute for the lost footage, but they can help show what Stroheim had intended. As a result, the film may be gone, but it is not entirely lost.

Although The Wedding March was severely cut, its second part, The Honeymoon, sustained even more drastic excision. In terms of the scenario, the second section of the film ran longer than the first, consuming 87 pages of the 154-page script. Despite Stroheim’s later assertion that he did not finish putting the second part “together correctly,” he had taken its approximately 30,000 feet of unrepeated material and made a rough cut and, according to Herman G. Weinberg (not, I am afraid, an always reliable source in such matters), reduced it to 22,484 feet,1 a little over four hours at sound speed. Even Stroheim acknowledged that the second part was too long, and he may have compressed it to between 15,000 and 20,000 feet (running about three hours). When he found himself incapable of trimming it further, the studio brought less gentle hands to bear. After much wrangling and, finally, wholesale butchery, all that remained of this footage was about 4,500 feet, approximately fifty minutes.

The story of The Honeymoon has hitherto been summarized in only a few paragraphs by other writers. Drawing upon the original scenario and the cutting continuity, I shall attempt to convey not only its content but, in some ways, its artistry.

At the conclusion of The Wedding March, Mitzi promised to marry Schani so that he would not kill her beloved Nicki at his wedding with Cecelia. The second part of the script begins with the title,“—Of all tales ‘tis the saddest,” adding that it is “more sad—because it makes us smile!—” The following scene shows an extremely unhappy Mitzi being measured for her wedding dress by a shriveled, hunchbacked seamstress, while Schani, in turn, is being measured by an extraordinarily skinny tailor. Shortly after, the families of the couple celebrate by opening some bottles of wine and toasting one another. Schani’s vigorous slap on Mitzi’s back causes her to drop her wine glass on the floor and break it. This is the first of many bad omens.

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