Confessions of a Queen

Victor Sjöström's third feature for MGM has Lewis Stone as King of Illyria. He's a high-living man whose mistress, Helena D'Algy, has him brand her the evening before his wedding to Alice Terry. She's a high-minded woman who seems to have sex once with the King in order to get him an heir. But politics ensue, and so does revolution, and he abdicates. They move to Paris.

Only 41 minutes of the original 64 survive. Among the missing sections are part of their escape through Miss D'Algy's house, and much of the end. The surviving footage looks like it's from Daudet's novel, with little of Sjöström's usual technique on display. Miss Terry spends much of his time looking angry and disdainful; Stone seems jovial in an insincere manner. If there's much subtext to the story, it seems that it likely resides in the missing portions.

CONFESSIONS OF A QUEEN exists in part, at least, as about 35m turned up on YouTube a while back. The first section is, in the main, in splendid condition. There is a short jump, and then a few more minutes. The rest is taken up with a photo of Ellen Terry, with comments on (I presume) the missing footage. My rating is not a realistic one as one can't really judge the film, even on so substantial a fragment.

The surviving reels of CONFESSIONS OF A QUEEN do not suggest some lost masterpiece, but they do seem to indicate this was melodramatic fluff of the highest order. Jazz Age Hollywood was fascinated by the inherent drama of the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs. The complicated history and political reality behind it, not so much. This film is more interested in the romantic lives of the royals and the revolution seems to only be a deciding factor in the love triangle between the lovely Alice Terry (in one of her few appearances in a film not directed by her husband Rex Ingram), Lewis Stone, and John Bowers.