And when the last scene will have been written and filmed, and the ink will have crusted on the pen-point, and the film will have turned brittle and the emulsion dried to cracking…and the money-changers will continue to run clashing after “new men”…I will be thinking of the grim long grind of the years of my life that I have put behind me, and of my work…that I have built up, reel by reel…sincere work…holding to it with clutched hands and clenched teeth. I shall be able to say: “I never bargained…and I never took off my hat to convention nor fashion…and held it out for pennies… I have always told them the truth as I saw it…They liked it or they did not like it… But it was the truth anyway…as I saw it… And that clear conscience is my reward…”

In 1985 when Kino International (with Dennis Doros as the neophyte archivist) released the first “new” edition of Queen Kelly, it was promoted as a “restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s lost masterwork.” Recognizing that the restoration of a film never completed is an impossibility, the 2025 release of Queen Kelly is an improved re-imagining of what von Stroheim’s film could have looked like. We are grateful for the participation of George Eastman Museum, the LoC National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, the Harry Ransom Center, the Margaret Herrick Library, Paramount Pictures, and the Kennedy Presidential Library for providing their original materials to create this new version. Thank you to Metropolis Post in New York for their great efforts to digitally time, stabilize, and remove dust and scratches. We are hopeful that this edition is an improved effort that will better reveal von Stroheim’s cinematic genius.