Release and Reception
Vendetta was finally released in 1950, premiering in New York City on 25 December, over four years from when filming had begun. The film had been made at the estimated expenditure of over $4 million, an extraordinary amount for the time for a film that had no big stars and was not epic in scale. United Artists had originally been contracted to distribute the film, but after Hughes bought RKO Radio Pictures in the middle of 1948, he paid UA $600,000 for the rights to Vendetta, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock and The Outlaw, and announced he would distribute them through RKO. The film was marketed with the taglines "She lives by the code of the vendetta!" and "Love is wild - life is violent - death is cheap!"
In the course of production on Vendetta, there had been no significant problems with the censors at the Hays Office, although chief censor Joseph Breen had complained in August 1949 about the overtones of "unholy love" (i.e. incest) in the film, referring to the relationship between "Colomba" and "Orso", and after the film was released, conservative publisher Martin Quigley made the same complaint. The censors also objected to the ad campaign for the film, which, like the campaign for Hughes' The Outlaw, featured Domergue's exposed cleavage. Despite these concerns, no states banned or cut the film.
It is not known what percentage of the final released film can be ascribed to the various directors who worked on it. News reports at the time claimed that little of what either Ophüls or Sturges shot was retained in the film; perhaps no more than a couple of minutes. Heisler's footage apparently makes up less than two-thirds of the finished film; although it was reported that Hughes had agreed to give Heisler a screen credit, only Mel Ferrer is credited on the released film.
Preston Sturges later wrote that Vendetta was the best adaptation he had ever done, but how much of his script was used in the final film is not known – little enough that his autobiography lists his script for the film as being "unproduced".
Vendetta was a major critical and box office flop.
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