Vendetta (1950)

Interesting facts

Vendetta is a 1950 American crime film based on the 1840 novella Colomba by Prosper Mérimée, about a young Corsican girl who pushes her brother to kill to avenge their father's murder.

Production

The saga of the making of Vendetta, which had the working titles of "Colomba" and "Our Lady of the Doves", is extensive. In 1944, after ten years, writer/director Preston Sturges left Paramount Pictures, where he made his most popular and successful films, including the runaway hit The Lady Eve (1941), and joined in a partnership with eccentric millionaire aviator Howard Hughes to create California Pictures.

By July 1946, German director Max Ophüls had been announced as the director, in what would be his American debut. Ophüls had been trying for four years to get a directing job in Hollywood, and Sturges hired him so that he could concentrate on completing ...Harold Diddlebock.

After only a week of shooting, Hughes, who was recuperating from the crash of an experimental reconnaissance plane, complained to Sturges about the slowness of Ophüls' shooting pace and the way he handled Domergue. Saying that he did not want "foreigners" working for California Pictures, he forced Sturges to fire Ophüls; the German director later made the film Caught (1949) about his experience with Hughes.

At this point, Hughes was still unhappy with the footage produced, so Sturges either quit the film or was fired, and his partnership with Hughes was dissolved, with both of the company's films, Vendetta and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, seriously overbudget.

Principal photography began again on 8 November with Heisler directing, and with George Dolenz and Donald Buka as the new co-stars, but paused again for about 10 days near the end of the month for the script to be re-written. Filming started up again, with some new cast members, on 2 December and proceeded until 15 March 1947. During this time, writers W. R.

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