Queen Kelly (1929)

This film, which traces one woman's passage from sheltered convent to brothel, has one of the most notorious production histories in all of cinema. Gloria Swanson stars as Kitty Kelly, a young woman who lives quietly in a convent and has her life disrupted when she attracts the attention of a prince; when curtsying to his majesty, her underwear falls down to her ankles! The amused royal kidnaps the girl, but the Queen disrupts the planned interlude, and angrily beats Kelly. Ashamed and upset, Kelly wishes to kill herself. She changes her mind upon receiving a note from her aunt who, unknown to Kitty, runs a whorehouse in East Africa. Kelly sails to Daar-es-Salaam to meet her relative. And that is just the start of a series of surreal adventures including her aunt's death, a marriage to an old and decrepit man, and the Prince's reentrance into her life.