The Wedding March

The Wedding March is a 1928 American silent film directed by Erich von Stroheim, set in Vienna in 1914, following an impoverished prince and cavalry officer who falls in love with an innkeeper's daughter but is pressed by his family's finances into marrying a wealthy industrialist's daughter instead, with tragic consequences following from the arranged match. Von Stroheim's notorious perfectionism drove the production far over its original budget and schedule, shooting more than 200,000 feet of film across six months, and the film was a box office failure on release. Its reputation grew substantially after von Stroheim's death, and it was added to the National Film Registry in 2003 as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, a late high point of silent film craft made just as synchronized sound was beginning to displace it.