Greed (1924) User Reviews (114)

I'd Like to See the Ten Hour Cut

[Polaris_DiB · 8/10 · 23 September 2005]

A film almost as powerful as it is famous, Greed is pretty straight-forward about its theme: Greed. And what it does to people.

This would not be a silent film known for its subtlety, but a large part of that is the fact that it's really only a tenth of the film it was supposed to be. Entire reels have been cut down to single cue-cards, entire years jump by that were obviously supposed to be shown. In terms of the general "rules" of narrative, it works out well enough that it's still a quite clear story that follows a reasonable pace, but the lack of a lot of the character development and the like is pretty apparent.

Still, the music used on the film and the general story itself is powerful enough, it's definitely worth your time.

A man and a woman marry. The man is a simpleton, the woman is a hoarder. When she wins a $5000 lottery, she vows never to spend a cent of it... something that sets her husband and their common friend at odds as they all want the cash... but not necessarily to spend it. Entire relationships and lives are ripped asunder as they all grapple for their rights to "their" property: their greed.

This movie has been praised for its realism, but that couldn't be further from the truth. This movie is romanticized to the level of absurdity, the characters are so full-blown they are often hard to relate to. This comes from the fact that 80% of their development has been lost in the final cut. I don't want this to seem like a bad thing: because of their incredible antics, the movie takes you to places almost entirely unheard of and definitely unexpected.

It's one deep thrill after the other, backed up by some very beautiful imagery and intense music. It's just unfortunately not what the director intended. Even back in the day, people just didn't have a big enough attention span, and I find that very tragic. I want to see the ten-hour version.

--PolarisDiB

Be patient

[Bored_Dragon · 7/10 · 13 October 2016]

It's pretty tiresome to watch four hours of a black and white silent movie, which was cut to two hours seventy years ago and then, in our time, restored to original length by using photos from shooting to replace lost material... But it is definitely worth your patience. In the beginning, it may seem too stretched and even boring, but as you watch for some time it starts to pull you in and all shortcomings slowly fade from sight until you are left with a strong impression.

7/10

The one great myth about this movie

[larcher-2 · 8/10 · 3 August 1999]

The one great myth about this movie is that it would have been better if it had been four time longer. It's extremely good, at it is highly unlikely that the "unmutilated" version would have been better. In all likelihood, it would simply have been boring. It's a matter of faith among the conventional cinema intellegentia that the studio bosses routinely butchered great films. Judging from the self-indulgent dreck pumped out by unleashed geniuses once the studio system broke down, this is untenable. Stroheim was doubly lucky that the studio cut this film; the cutting made it good and further gave rise to the legend that an even better movie lived in the director's cut.

A Classic Reconstructed

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 23 January 2000]

In January of 1924, director Erich von Stroheim gathered a small group of friends to view his magnum opus, a film which would become legendary. This was GREED & when the experience was over, all there agreed that they had just seen the greatest motion picture ever created. They were the only audience to see the film in its entirety.

Von Stroheim was, with Griffith & Chaplin, one of the authentic geniuses of the silent cinema. He had an unerring eye for what was visual and how to transfer mere words into astonishing images on the screen. He was also terribly adept at spending other people's money. A notorious stickler for the most authentic minute detail, he ignored concerns for time & financial budgets.

The original GREED ran somewhere between 8 and 9½ hours. While that would be fine for a modern TV miniseries, it is unworkable for a motion picture. The bosses at MGM had had difficulty with von Stroheim before and were in no mood to mess around. GREED was taken out of its director's control and hacked down to 140 minutes. All the excised footage was destroyed. This is the blackest spot on Irving Thalberg's memory. Von Stroheim mourned his lost masterpiece the rest of his life.

The story, although incredibly detailed, is fairly straightforward. The corrupting influence of wealth is examined through the lives of seven individuals. The tragic marriage of Mac, a fake dentist & Trina, an innocent young woman, is compared & contrasted to the equally horrific relationship between the mad Maria & Zerkow the Junkman; and to the beatific love between Old Grannis, owner of a dog hospital & Miss Baker, a sweet old lady. Shadowing Mac & Trina is her cousin Marcus, equally in love with her & the $5,000 she wins in a lottery.

The story of Mac & Trina is the main focus & it is utterly compelling. Seldom has the destruction of a marriage been seen in such detail. Certain scenes stay in the mind a long time: the picnic lunch on the sewer; their wedding, while a funeral procession marches by below; their final bloody confrontation.

The movie ends, as does the book it is based on, in Death Valley. Von Stroheim insisted on actually shooting there in summer. The heat was terrible & it shows on the faces of Gibson Gowland as Mac & Jean Hersholt as Marcus. The ending is as stark & unforgiving as the desert itself.

Mr. Gowland & ZaSu Pitts give the performances of their lives, magnificent in every way. Mr. Gowland shows us the full extent of a simple man being driven insane, while Miss Pitts' change from sweetness to a miserly shrew is truly frightening. Had the film not been butchered and their performances seen in their entirety, they surely would had ascended to the very heights of their profession. As it was, Gowland quickly descended back into obscurity, spending the rest of his career in mostly unbilled bit parts. Miss Pitts became a comedienne, whose vague manner & fluttery hands were seen in many comedies over the next 35 years. Von Stroheim continued with his excesses and finally met his directorial downfall a few years after GREED. He was able to continue on in films as a very good character actor, mostly in Europe.

In 1999, Turner Classic Movies had GREED reconstructed, using hundreds of still photographs taken during production, editing based on an original shooting script, an inspired use of color and tints & a new musical score. The result runs for 4 hours and is wonderful. At last we have a better understanding of Von Stroheim's blighted vision & wasted genius.

Masterful Cinema, At Any Length

[Snow Leopard · 15 March 2002]

You don't have to watch "Greed" for very long to become impressed with the masterful technique of von Stroheim and his cast. Sometimes it relies on fancy methods such as the occasional use of gold tinting (which must have demanded some painstaking work), and at other times it relies on flawless direction, carefully chosen details, and a keen understanding of what is happening in the characters' lives. The tense finale is especially memorable, a sequence you won't forget for a while.

The only real questions about "Greed" have to do with its length. Hardly anyone disputes the folly of the studio decision to chop the original down to a couple of hours. The restored version uses stills and title cards to fill in the most important scenes that were left out in the studio release, and from this you can also piece together what was actually included in the shorter version. Several significant secondary characters were almost completely eliminated, which took away some of the relationships that were supposed to serve as important comparisons with the central relationship between McTeague and his wife. Even if they had been right to cut the film to a quarter of its length, the choices they made left much to be desired.

Would it really have been better with several more hours of material? Although there is plenty of plot, there isn't anything in the story thematically that would require anything longer then the restored version. It's a gripping study of human flaws, especially greed, but goes no farther. It is admirable to see a director try to hold so closely to a novel, but the Frank Norris novel, while detailed, convincing, and well-conceived as far as it goes, doesn't have the depth or the multi-dimensional characters of the greatest novels. There is no doubt that the lost footage would have provided many more examples of fine film-making, but most of it would not have added very much to the story itself.

What would probably have been perfect is something close to the length of the restored version, with the actual (but now lost) footage instead of the patchwork reconstruction. Since that is impossible, we are very fortunate to have the restored version that includes all of the most important parts of the story and that gives new life to one of the fine classics of silent cinema.

Mutilated masterpiece

[funkyfry · 10/10 · 11 October 2002]

Heavily edited MGM release version of Stroheim's 8 hour epic satisfies at 2 and a half hours -- you have to wonder if any extra length would have made it a little better or a little worse. To be sure, Stroheim probably ran the thing pretty slow when he projected it. Authentic detail in locations adds another level of interest, as we get to see parts of San Francisco, Oakland, and Placer County in the early 20s. The story is dark and involved, detailing the love of two people destroyed by their compulsive greed and neuroses. There is no moment in its story where the viewpoint is not pessimistic, except the image of dual humanity presented in McTeague's birds. Exceptional.

Greatest Silent Drama

[jay4stein79-1 · 10/10 · 25 October 2004]

There was a time, and it was only a few years ago, when I found it difficult to sit through a silent film. The exaggerated movements and facial expressions and the over-bearing music, I believe, turned me off.

However, that changed drastically when I watched von Stroheim's Greed for the first time. The film, simply put, is immaculate. The portrayal of McTeague and Trina is fantastic. Pitts and Gowland, without using their voices mind you, create depth and allow the audience to sympathize with the characters. Silence often acted as a barrier between myself and the characters; here, that distance is bridged by the two actors and, I must assume, von Stroheim's masterful direction.

Yes, the direction is masterful. I believe describing it as such is entirely accurate. Innovative may go too far, but masterful just about covers it. The realism (which shooting on locations benefited) is something to behold. This is a story that Hollywood would balk at depicting in 2004; imagine the row that was had in 1924. Von Stroheim never backs away from his unrelentingly grim vision, reinforcing his theme (money is evil) throughout. And then there is the Death Valley sequence - one of the most marvelous series of scenes committed to celluloid.

All in all, this is truly a fantastic film - one that has aged, due to its ability to treat grim subject matter as it should, much better than many of its contemporaries. Also, it should be noted, that this represents a fine adaptation of Norris' novel McTeague. I was a fan of the novel before I saw the film and the film does not disappoint.

Von Stroheim ensured that the spirit, if not the word, of the novel was maintained.

10/10

Lost Classic

[eibon09 · 10/10 · 19 June 2001]

Greed(1925) was based on a novel that was in the tradition of great long novels like Crime and Punishment or War & Peace. The director, Erich Von Stroheim wanted to do a faithful adapation of the book McTeague because of his fascination with the theme of greed. He did do a faithful adaption but ended up paying a stiff price for his drive towards perfection. Marvelous film that is one of the 100 greatest films of all time. The acting is terrific and the story is compelling to follow.

Gibson Gowland does a convincing job in the role of Dr. McTeague. Like many of the director's early films, Greed(1925) was severely cut. Original running time of the movie was nine hours. Its a disgrace that we will never see the full cut ever resurface in the theaters or DVD. One of the best films from the 1920s(besides Metropolis) to suffer at ridiculus cuts at the hands of the censors and studios.

Perhaps the 42 reel version or the 24 reel version were brilliant--we'll never know. However, I have my doubts.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 30 September 2013]

"Greed" is a legendary film among old film buffs--the holy grail of silents. This is because the incredibly obsessive director, Erich von Stroheim, made a film of ridiculously large proportions. Reportedly, the original print ran 42 reels!! It would have taken the best part of your day to watch the film and von Stroheim envisioned it being shown on successive nights. Well, the studio wanted nothing to do with this an insisted he cut it. After some cuts (but not enough for the studio), executives took the project away from him and had it cut down to the version we have today. There are lots of stories (probably apocryphal) of the prints sitting in some vault somewhere--waiting to be discovered. And, reports (probably also apocryphal) are that the original film is some sort of work of genius that MUST be seen. Regardless, all we have now is about two and a half hours worth of film--and it's a film that also comes with a lot of hooplah. Folks claim that although its inferior due to the cutting, it's still a work of genius. Let me say that unlike the other reviewers, I was NOT that taken by this shortened version. I think the imagery is ridiculously unsubtle though the film still is worth seeing.

The film begins with McTeague (Gibson Gowland) leaving home to learn dentistry from an itinerant dentist. Years pass and now he has a dental practice of his own in San Francisco and he seems like a pretty decent sort of fellow. He meets a very shy lady, Trina (Zasu Pitts) and they soon marry. However, into their seemingly normal lives comes a problem. Trina wins the lottery and the prize is $5000. While this may not seem like much today, back then it was HUGE. But, soon Trina's heart is soured. She refuses to spend any of this money and slowly becomes a nasty miser. As for McTeague, he slowly begins to sour on his wife. She clearly has emasculated him and when he loses his job, she refuses to spend any of her fortune. They live on the edge--with barely enough to scrape by. And, full of bitterness, McTeague begins to drink and eventually lashes out at his tight-fisted wife. Then, he deserts her. Time passes and he returns--returns to claim what is his...ALL of the money.

At the same time, there is a subplot involving one of McTeague's friends, Marcus. Marcus, inflamed by jealousy, demands the money that is by no right his--and when he is refused, he sets out to destroy McTeague--though McTeague himself does an awfully good job of this himself. All this leads to a dandy confrontation scene--one of the best of the silent era.

As far as the plot goes, it's exceptional--full of great twists, irony and excitement. My problem is NOT with the story. My problem is with von Stroheim's manner of storytelling. He REPEATEDLY uses sledgehammer symbolism--symbolism that is not one bit subtle and he beats the audience with it again and again and again! To further beat this into the viewer, he even had portions of the film colorized golden in order to accentuate the greed aspects of the film. I have seen at least a thousand (probably MANY more) silents and this is among the least subtle I've ever seen. And, among the many films I have seen which have hand-colored elements, "Greed" is the sloppiest--with broad swaths of color instead of having it done in a more thorough fashion. Heck, the Pathe Brothers were doing FAR better jobs mass producing colorizing cels a decade of more before "Greed".

So what we have is a great story but poor storytelling. I know folks are sold on von Stroheim--just like von Stroheim was sold on von Stroheim! But, I think he really could have used someone to say "Erich, even by our standards today, this film lacks subtlety and you need to back off and let the story speak for itself". The bottom line is that I still give it a 7 but think the stories about the genius associated with the film are highly exaggerated. Even old school directors like D.W. Griffith wouldn't have pushed the imagery this far and this unsubtlely.

Stroheim's mutilated masterpiece still cuts to the bone....

[bukkiah-1 · 10/10 · 30 December 2009]

I hate to admit how long it took me to "get around to" renting this from the Facets crew in Chicago, in fact this was the 150th title (the previous 149 including some real dreck). Now that I finally have, I think it's a damn shame that Erich Von Stroheim couldn't have been around nowadays when this could've been a series on HBO. As you've all heard, the original nine-hour offering was mutilated in various stages down to a few hours; the resulting cinematic corpse must've been downright baffling for 1924 audiences. What I've seen is the 1999 239-minute reconstruction using a lot of still photos. The original gold tinting has been restored (for the giant tooth etc.) and some of the stills of the nice elderly couple are fully colored. There's also a new score which fits in pretty well.

I haven't read the Frank Norris novel on which this is based, but apparently Stroheim followed it faithfully, if not fanatically. Over a period of 15-20 years we follow a California miner named McTeague as he becomes an apprentice dentist, then practices on his own in San Francisco, then is forced to give that up and returns to being a miner after killing his increasingly crazy wife; fleeing the law he winds up in Death Valley handcuffed to a corpse. Two factors show how far "ahead of his time" Stroheim was: first the relentless grimness of his vision of humanity as slaves to their various weaknesses, and second his nuances in terms of the performances he gets from his actors and in his presentation of events. Most of you have probably seen at least a few silent films, you know how theatrically over the top most of the acting was (to be fair to the actors, of course they didn't have their voices available, plus that was the style of the day). But Stroheim gets some wonderful naturalism from his cast, principally from the "hero" Gibson Gowland, a big lug who lets his inner urges both toward kindness and cruelty seem to well up from within rather than being imposed from the outside. Near the beginning and the end McTeague is seen kissing a tiny bird he's carefully holding in his huge hand; the second one is his pet that he's about to set free anticipating his own death; it's as poignant as a similar moment that Rutger Hauer had years later in "Bladerunner." Unfortunately Jean Hersholt as McTeague's best friend and later bitter enemy is more conventionally hammy, and Zasu Pitts as McTeague's doomed wife Trina plays virtually every scene with her eyeballs bulging; again, to be fair to the actors, that maybe was what Stroheim wanted. I personally was disappointed that some downright gruesome elements only survive in the still shots, such as McTeague getting his ear bitten nearly off in a wrestling match with his friend, or his wife discovering the corpse of the local junk dealer's wife, then having a nightmare about the latter (in the dream the dead woman seems to have as many teeth as Lon Chaney in "London After Midnight"). But along with the viciousness and degradation there's also some genuine tenderness (mostly involving the old couple who live next to each other for years before finally getting intimate) and even some humor, mostly of the "black" variety. ("Black humor," it's an old expression not involving African-Americans, you can Google it.) As a final "modernism," there's really no "emotional payoff" as such; it's basically a bleak view of humanity carried through to the bitter end, and to paraphrase the Frank Norris quote seen at the outset, people will like it or they won't. But I doubt they'll forget it.

I will confess that parts of "Greed" seem dated now, such as the depiction of Trina's German immigrant parents with their Katzenjammer-Kids dialog cards, also some vaguely anti-Semitic elements; the junk dealer has a Jewish-sounding name and looks somewhat like the old drawings of Charles Dickens' Fagin character; there's also a sign for SEMITE BUTCHER. (I read that Stroheim may have been originally Jewish himself before adding "Von" to his name, so maybe this was also a subtle dig at the "goyim.") The junk dealer's wife seems a stereotypical "shifty Mexican." I would imagine Stroheim was again adhering to the novel. Some of Stroheim's directorial flourishes veer a little too close to "German expressionism," such as a recurring shot of a pair of gnarled arms caressing a pile of gold coins, or a similar recurring shot of several pairs of arms clutching at a pile of gold dishes. There's a scene with McTeague's cat leaping up to attack a birdcage that clearly involved the cat being tossed into the air. I could probably think of a few other quibbles but I'm really not so inclined. As my (unprecedented) 10 out of 10 vote indicates, I want to convey what an amazing achievement this movie is, even in it's truncated form, and whatever issues I may have with Ted Turner, may the movie gods bless him for presiding over this reconstruction. ("Colorizing" the classics, on the other hand...) Bottom line, don't just see this out of a "sense of duty." See it because it's relevant to us now, reminding us that we have choices in life, and those choices have consequences...

Contrarian View of the Editing

[barnesgene · 6/10 · 21 November 2007]

I just finished watching the TCM 4-hour version I recorded (via DVR) a while back, and I believe the 2 1/4-hour version is probably superior. Let's face it folks: A bunch of stills added to an otherwise moving picture does not a complete moving picture make (although I did get used to it after an hour or so). Plus the 4-hour version is simply one long slog.

Why is this version -- or ANY version -- so long? Well, I think the director is just in love with himself and can't bear to crop a 10-second shot of McTeague down to 6 seconds. If you do that enough over a period of 9 hours -- if you allow every frame to be retained in the editing process -- you wind up with a movie that is more ego-driven than good-sense driven. How many times do you need to shout at the screen, "Okay, Erich, we GET it!" before you realize that the much-maligned studio executives might just have been right? The exception proves the rule when you do occasionally witness a genuinely well-cut sequence and are understandably riveted by it. Pacing is everything, but in this case even the studio hacks couldn't completely excise the excess baggage.

One positive comment about the TCM 4-hour version: I'm often highly critical of music soundtracks added 75 years later that are pure hokum. This one however, composed by Robert Israel and performed by the Moravian Symphony Orchestra, is mostly excellent, and I'd recommend anyone watch this version just to see how successfully it can be done. It sure made the long hard slog through the picture a whole heck of a lot easier!

dollar, dollar bill, y'all

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 25 April 2009]

Nearly all reviews tend to begin talking about Erich von Stroheim's film Greed in reviewing its length, and its controversy at the studio and how now we either can see a version that is 4 hours long and uses some intermittent production stills and title cards, or a 2 hour version that is the most complete version available that contains moving footage. It's inevitable, in fact, because what von Stroheim did was create a great film at any length; it's important to not overestimate the value of what remains, since, frankly, this is what people still rave about 85 years after it was produced. It could be 5 minutes and I'd want to see it again, and again, and maybe again. Hell, just give me that final Death Valley sequence and I'm a happy cinema camper forever.

What remains of that great-white-whale of cinematic folklore, the "8-hour-cut", is a 132 minute sliver on the corruption of the human spirit. Greed is never less than compelling: it's about a failed gold-miner named John McTeague (unforgettable screen presence Gibson Gowland) who gets a job by the prodding of his mother as a dentist in San Francisco. Enter in dog-doctor Marcus (Jean Hersholt) and his girl Trina (equally unforgettable, for better or worse, Zasu Pitts) who comes in to get her teeth fixed. She does, and during the operation McTeague gives her a kiss. When Marcus finds out he's not happy, but he relents- he can have her, and very soon after, though somewhat reluctantly, McTeague and Trina get married.

But there's a certain catch: Trina has by true stroke of luck won $5,000 from a lottery ticket (and this is five grand in 1906 money which is... a lot, I take it from this film), and decides to hold on to the money... and then never spend a dime of it. She has all this gold and doesn't know what to do with it, except being stingy. As this may puzzle some 21st century people who wonder why a woman would hold on to her huge lot of money, equatable today to hundreds of thousands, the answer is only given as that it's in her nature to save - which then turns into an obsession, her eyes growing wider and wickeder every day, with von Stroheim inserting in vicious, incredible images of skeletal arms reaching in and bony hands and fingers grasping gold coins. All of this, of course, doesn't bode well on Mr. McTeague, especially when faced with it being found out he has no license as a dentist, and loses his job.

To say it gets worse from there for the unhappily married couple is putting it lightly. What von Stroheim does with his dramatic crux in Greed is to make everything authentic in the exterior sense - everything was shot on location in San Francisco and, yes, Death Valley - and then to make the characterizations of McTeague, Trina and Marcus into such sad, grotesque but very human figures that it goes beyond the usual boundaries of melodrama. Some of their facial expressions and their acting may be so very over-the-top and even for a frightening but somehow cute Pitts kind of hokey, but they always work for whatever scene is required, be it a drunken McTeague badgering the ever-greedy and obsessive Trina for the gold coins, or Marcus's never-ending grudge against McTeague for taking away "his" woman who, ironically, won't give his man a penny of the earnings.

Like future essential chronicles on the nature of the title subject like Treasure of the Sierra Madre and There Will be Blood, wealth becomes a state of mind for its characters, but since these are not bourgeois people used to having loads of money it blows head gaskets. Would the characters know what to even do with it all if they could hold on to it long enough? Von Stroheim may be a somewhat crueler and definitely more pessimistic person on this matter than even Huston or Anderson (the ending also makes the desert scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly look like Care Bears in comparison), and it's because the drama is at such a pitch of the maddening and bizarre and sad that it stays so pungent to this day.

And all this, I should say again, in only a quarter of its original running time. To be more controversial than anyone else might be, as a compromise it may have served von Stroheim well to at least have something of a full-length film by the end of it all. This is not to say Mayer was the hero in this story, and any given movie-lover will feel a sense of sympathy for the film not unlike The Magnificent Ambersons or Metropolis. But the legacy of Greed remains not on its cult status as a deformed thing but a work of artistic wonder, a monumental shriek to that all encompassing bastard of the title. Anyone who loves a good silent film would do well to seek out any version, save maybe for that on an Ipod.

The First MGM Film, an Epic

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 22 January 2016]

The sudden fortune won from a lottery fans such destructive greed that it ruins the lives of the three people involved.

Stroheim shot more than 85 hours of footage and obsessed over accuracy during the filming. Two months were spent shooting in Death Valley and many of the cast and crew became ill.

During the making of Greed, the production company merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, putting Irving Thalberg in charge of the production. Thalberg had fired Stroheim a few years earlier at Universal Pictures. Originally almost eight hours long, Greed was edited against Stroheim's wishes to about two-and-a-half hours. Only twelve people saw the full-length 42-reel version, now lost; some of them called it the greatest film ever made.

In the early 1950s Greed's reputation began to grow and it appeared on several lists of the greatest films ever made. In 1952 at the Festival Mondial du Film et des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Greed was named the fifth greatest film ever made, with such directors as Luchino Visconti, Orson Welles and Billy Wilder voting for it.

There are a great many versions floating around. You will not be able to find the ridiculously long version, but Turner has put together the next best thing, and it seems pretty simple to find a medium-length copy. There are also some out there that look awful and sound worse. Maybe the film is in the public domain or maybe these are bootlegs. i am not sure. But do not watch these copies if you can help it. The least they could have done was put a new soundtrack over the top, but instead they left some awful din.

Stroheim's New Clothes

[MogwaiMovieReviews · 3/10 · 1 September 2018]

I'd heard of this film for many years and finally got round to seeing the four-hour restoration of it, and I have to say, I'm really quite surprised at how hammy and hamfisted it all is. I think a lot of the people overpraising it must simply never have watched a silent film before and so have nothing to compare it to.

But look: by the mid-20s we have Chaplin's The Kid and The Gold Rush, Harold Lloyd's Safety Last and The Freshman, Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr and Emil Janning's astounding performance in The Last Laugh, all of which have amazing subtlety, wit, and mastery of the artform.

'Greed', on the other hand, looks like it was shot in 1908 in between 8 minute loops of 'horse running' and 'train arriving in station', with a cast from the local amateur dramatics pantomime in bad clown wigs. The 'dialogue' cards are the worst of any film I have ever seen, all taking up space and saying nothing.

By 1924, 'Greed' was already a creaky old relic of the past: not only should it never have been up to nine hours long, but everything interesting in the story could have easily been told perfectly well in an hour and forty at most, and the only reason it wasn't has to be Stroheim's ineptitude and self-indulgence. How many times can an audience be expected to watch the same situations and relationships going round and round in circles, getting nowhere?

On the plus side, I liked the yellow tinting of anything gold on the screen - I'm not sure if that was something done in the restoration or was there all along, but it's a nice touch whatever. The ending, which several people here have said was unforgettable, IS pretty memorable (and the only surprising turn in the whole damn film), but 4 minutes of good movie can't make up for the four-to-nine hours of molasses that precedes it.

I'm now of the opinion that the only thing truly legendary about this film is the length itself. But, as with any art, quantity does not equate to quality, and in this case less would definitely have been more.

key silent with surprising images

[didi-5 · 22 March 2004]

Erich von Stroheim made his film version of Frank Norris' novel ‘McTeague', and, as is well-known, it lasted over eight hours. The version which has survived is obviously nothing near that length, and cuts out many of the subplots from the book which had been planned and filmed.

What has survived is a broken masterpiece, starring Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, and Jean Hersholt, which is full of memorable images (not just the final sequences in the desert, but the trip out where McTeague and Trina fall awkwardly in love, and the scene where Trina rolls literally in the golden coins strewn on her bed) and makes you long for more of this film to turn up from the vaults.

There is a marvellous book available which reconstructs much of the lost material through stills, and much of this was amalgamated with the existing footage to ‘restore' the film during the late 1990s. Even in its butchered state, Greed is well worth a look.

Silent Classic with Interesting History

[Falcon-51 · 8/10 · 12 June 2000]

Although I am not a big fan of classics, I know a good movie when I see one. However the legendary butchering of the film is more interesting than the movie itself. The original film was over nine hours long and was trimmed down to just over two and a half hours. Director Erich von Stroheim condemned the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for slashing his film. Continuity and subplots were torn from the masterpiece. Turner later tried to restore the film with publicity stills and new dialogue cards. This helped the film regain continuity and bring to light some of the subplots in the film. Turners new version is four hours and is splendidly done.

The film is about a miner named John McTeague who becomes a dentist through an apprenticeship. He soon opens his own business and meets a woman already involved with his friend Marcus. Marcus agrees to step aside since McTeague is obviously in love with the woman. After the woman named Trina wins $5000 in a lottery the story really takes off in what can only be described as a serious case of "Greed." I can tell no more without spoiling the film, but if you can stomach silent films this is one of the best.

Hard to follow, but still I liked it a lot -- magnificent ending!

[Ursula_Two_Point_Seven_T · 9/10 · 11 January 2005]

I recently saw the 2.5-hour version on Turner Classic Movies. I understand the original was approx. 9 hours, and that TCM does have a 4-hour restored version. I hope to catch the 4-hour version at some point.

The 2.5-hour version was hard to follow in spots, mainly because there was definitely a loss of continuity, especially in the relationship between the two main characters, Mac and Trina.

I was confused by Mac's character. On the one hand, he is very kind to animals (a character trait that I find attractive). On the other hand, he was a mean SOB. Perhaps the 9-hour version or the 4-hour restored version addresses these two sides of his personality better than the 2.5-hour version does; I don't know.

I enjoyed the symbolism of the canaries (they were lovey-dovey when Trina and Mac were getting along; they were fighting each other when Trina and Mac were fighting; when Mac was finally alone in the desert he had only one canary, which made me wonder what happened to the second "Trina" canary).

Also charming was the primitive, quaint "special effects" of gold-tinting certain portions of the film. As a 21st-century viewer I was charmed by its simplicity, and wondered how the viewers in 1924 found these effects.

Another aspect of the film that I enjoyed were the LOCATION SHOTS! I didn't even know they did location shots in 1924! Having been born in San Francisco and lived in the bay area all my life, it was fantastic to see the location shots of S.F. and Oakland circa the early 1920s.

I won't give away the plot of the movie. The reader can check out other IMDb'ers comments for plot summaries. I will only say that, even though much of the movie was hard to follow due to the aforementioned continuity problems, I did still get the gist of the movie, and it was enough for me to fully appreciate the magnificent ending in the desert. The symbolism and the irony were just beyond fantastic.

Finally, for those (me included) who thought the first swear word in a movie was from Gone With the Wind ("Frankly my dear I don't give a damn"), I'm guessing that's the first POST-CODE swear word. I've heard "damn" in some pre-codes, and in the silent "Greed", there are "damn"s a'plenty, as well as a couple of "hell"s. Just a little piece of trivia!

Even chopped up at 2.5 hours, I have to give this movie a 9/10. I loved the story, and I loved the tragic ending.

EDITED 2/7/06 TO ADD: I just saw the 4 hr restored version - it is magnificent and is head-and-shoulders above the 2.5 hr version. The reconstruction is wonderfully accomplished with stills (the camera moves fluidly over the stills, so that at many times I forgot I was looking at actual "stills"), and the missing story is filled in with excerpts from the book that the film is based on. I finally understood Mac and Trina's relationship with this version! Interestingly, there were two other couples in this movie with separate sub-plots of their own (elderly Mr. Grannis and Miss Baker, and the brutal, hard-scrapple Maria and Zerkow). These couples were completely cut from the 2.5 hr version, but their stories were told in full via stills in the 4 hr version. I don't think their stories added anything particularly significant to the overall story of Mac and Trina and Marcus.

Hold out for the 4 hr version to get the full impact of this fantastic silent film!

Marvelous Silent Film

[evanston_dad · 10/10 · 11 October 2018]

The novel "McTeague" by Frank Norris is one of my all-time faves, and I was flabbergasted at how well director Erich von Stroheim's obsessive adaptation of it captures the flavor of the book. Many film adaptations now can't do this well, let alone those made back when resources were much more limited than they are today.

I saw the reconstructed version aired on TCM, which clocks in at about 4 and a half hours (a mere short compared to von Stroheim's original mythical 9 hour version). Half of the movie exists as still images giving a general impression of what the film would have looked like, and it's absolutely mesmerizing even presented in this less than ideal format. I can't even imagine what it would have been like to experience it as filmed. Von Stroheim slavishly recreates every plot line and detail in the book, which I suppose might frustrate someone not as morbidly fascinated by the novel as me. I, on the other hand, thought the film was going to be a bit of an endurance test, and instead found the time flying by. I had to watch it in three installments because of time limitations, but I could easily have watched the thing in one sitting if I had been able to.

Gibson Gowland and Jean Hersholt give fantastic performances as McTeague and friend-turned-rival Marcus, but it's the character of Trina, as it is in the book, that steals the show. I was delighted to find that von Stroheim includes the scene from the novel in which Trina, who starts out as a lovely little wife and turns into a monster through obsessive frugality, rolls around in a bed littered with gold pieces. It's such a striking image in the book, and it is in the movie as well. And as Trina, Zasu Pitts is extraordinary.

"McTeague" the novel may be antiquated in its style, and "Greed" the movie in its techniques, but what the book and movie are about will never be out of fashion as long as humans and money coexist.

Grade: A+

Von Stroheim elevates source material

[timmy_501 · 8/10 · 15 December 2012]

Frank Norris's 1899 novel McTeague is one of the key works in American literary naturalism, featuring several hallmarks of the literary movement, which flourished around the turn of the century. Erich Von Stroheim's adaptation, retitled Greed, strictly adhered to the novel and the original nine hour cut must have been a scene for scene translation. This closeness of the film to the source material means that Greed carries over some of naturalism's key themes. Specifically, the film is about John McTeague, a miner's son who attempts to better himself by becoming an apprentice in a trade—dentistry—but ultimately finds himself doomed to failure as mining is what he was meant to do. This combination of determinism and social Darwinism is typical of naturalism's focus on the lack of autonomy of individual humans. Another characteristic of naturalism evident in Greed is a sort of primitivization of human beings as both John McTeague and his father are constantly dirty and covered in masses of unkempt hair. Similarly, in one of Von Stroheim's most inspired scenes, some clever editing compares McTeague's rival Marcus to a cat preparing to prey on a couple of helpless caged canaries.

Another key theme of Greed is…greed, which wrecks the lives of the three principal characters. McTeague's love interest Trina is a hard working, thrifty girl who remains relatively happy until she wins a substantial sum in a lottery, after which she becomes a miserable miser as she strives to increase her small fortune. This infuriates the formerly happy-go-lucky Marcus, who gracefully bowed out of a semi-engagement with Trina to make his friend McTeague happy. His opportunism is amplified into psychosis as he realizes he's missed his chance to share a part of Trina's fortune. The money even ruins McTeague himself, who finds it impossible to work for menial wages when his household possesses enough wealth to allow him a relatively leisurely life if only he could convince his wife to use it.

The other important characters in Greed are two diametrically opposed couples: there is the greedy couple Zerkow and Maria, who dream of fabulous wealth and the elderly couple Grannis and Miss Baker, who are too busy working to notice each other. Zerkow suspects Maria is hiding money from him and it drives him mad while Grannis sells his business (for the same amount Trina won in the lottery) and settles down to retirement with Miss Baker. The never subtle Norris uses these subplots to posit two possible future future paths for McTeague and Trina.

Contrary to my focus on themes common to the novel and film, Greed is not merely an extension of Norris's novel. Von Stroheim makes the film his own as he sets the proper tone with colored filters, carefully controlled zooms, and some reasonably well put together editing. In fact, his filmmaking is considerably more adept than Norris's workmanlike prose. The climactic scenes in Death Valley, which Von Stroheim shoots through a yellow filter, are particularly impressive and are easily among the best of the silent era.

In spite of the carefully realized themes of McTeague, I did not enjoy the novel when I read it a few years ago. Like many works of naturalism, some of the character behavior seems stilted—probably to reinforce the idea that humans lack autonomy. Further, Norris's lack of style and his heavy-handedness in slathering on miserable situations make for a rather unpleasant reading experience, which to be fair is not atypical of my experiences with literary naturalism. The most problematic aspect of McTeague, though, is one I've already mentioned: the social Darwinism. It's always difficult to establish intent, even with a writer as heavy- handed as Norris, but it's tempting to see the novel as a snobby dismissal of an irredeemable lower class represented by the buffoonish and reprehensible McTeague. Yet, in spite of my dislike for McTeague, which caused me to stay away from this film for years, I found Greed quite impressive even with its often languid runtime, which is padded out with uncinematic production stills and expository title cards. Von Stroheim has a better sense of characterization and he manages to build some sympathy even for the mostly unlikeable characters here and he infuses the goings on with an epic quality mostly absent from the book. Somehow, Von Stroheim stayed true to a book I didn't like and made a film I found above average nonetheless.

Creative Genius v.s. Production Moguls

[harry-76 · 7/10 · 27 May 2000]

An interesting lesson in the "Greed" controversy is the reminder that in Hollywood, the emphasis is basically upon "merchandise," whereas in New York it is on "talent." What happened to von Stronheim is the same pattern of Welles, Cukor, and other great artists of true genius, who attempted in vain to place art above business interests.

It's really all about profit, box office, ratings in Hollywood. If one can create art while turning in a product under budget, under schedule -- and do good box office, fine. But, to this very day, those still living production folk who were at RKO during the "Citizen Kane" era, speak lowly of Welles. Not because the film has long been hailed as a great milestone, but because it failed to turn in the profit they expected.

Welles suffered from that experience to the extent he never fully recovered, and his "Magnificent Ambersons" underwent a similar studio hacking.

Cukor disavowed "A Star Is Born" and died before he could ever see the "restored" version -- not that that would have necessarily have pleased him. His cut footage was destroyed and no one will ever see the Cukor version again.

von Stronheim's "Greed" is the same. One may speculate, but the film is forever gone, thanks to the attitude and actions of Thalberg, along with Mayer's approval.

Hollywood is no place for the genuine artist . . . unless he can somehow "sneak" in the art (as Welles did cleverly with "Kane").

So, the rhetorical debate over lost footage remains purely theoretical. It pays to be a writer, composer or painter ... at least their work can't be easily destroyed. ###

Butchered, but great nonetheless.

[DeDe-14 · 10/10 · 14 August 1999]

Mourn if you will lost films; mourn partially lost films that rock the house even more so. Originally about eight hours long, the executives at new film studio MGM (through which Greed was released) demanded that it be cut to be two hours. The cut footage was lost. Furthermore, the remaining footage flopped at the boxoffice. Years later, this footage was preserved, and put on video, but the search for that lost footage continues. This December, a new video release is being put out-remastered and with all gold objects in the film tinted yellow! What a treat to silent movie fans! This was the first silent film I saw, and still one of the best. In fact, most film buffs say that this film is one of the best. Why was it ignored in 1925, then? 1925 was the height of the Jazz Age. Greed is a very depressing movie. Early 20th century woman marries a dentist somewhat against her will and the couple wins $5,000.00. This money causes their friend to become jealous, and the wife tries to hoard the gold and hide it from her husband. After she dies, the estranged widower...I won't give away the ending. =) But such a beautiful, meticulous film, this is. And a great, moving musical score, too. Seek out the remastered version coming out soon, but see it as is now. You'll love this film, and it shows funny girl ZaSu Pitts in a rare dramatic role. She does a fantastic job!

It's a long haul to get to that fantastic ending

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 27 September 2019]

Definitely a marathon of a movie, not a sprint. Stay hydrated, and summon the patience of Job. You also might want to leave a trail of popcorn to the kitchen in case you should become dazed and disoriented. The original film was about 8 hours long, hacked down to about two and a half hours by the studio over director Eric von Stroheim's wishes, and then reconstructed via stills in 1999 to about 4 hours. I'm not sure what to say about that - I hate the butchery and how the original was lost, but on the other hand, even the reconstructed version feels far too long. It gets good in the second half, and truly great at the end, but it's a long haul to get there, and just not compelling enough to recommend without reservations. And in an irony not lost on me, I notice the length of my review is also far longer than any sane person will care to read. I broke it up hour by hour:

First hour - 3 stars. I can't really think of anything that stands out as remarkable in the long drawn out setup of this dentist and the woman he falls for. To be honest, I thought of not investing the time to watch the rest, but buoyed by the high average rating, soldiered on. It's pretty creepy when he kisses her when she's under sedation in his chair, and pretty weird/contrived when her cousin, a rival for her affections, simply steps aside when he finds out this guy loves her too. Maybe the best part was Gibson Gowland, whose appearance is so striking, or the coloring in of the gold items from time to time, which was done by hand (like the recurring image of those bony arms sifting through a pile of gold coins). Oh, and I liked to setting in San Francisco as well, with a still of the Ferry Building and some footage in the Cliff House area overlooking Ocean Beach.

Second hour - 3 stars. The young woman improbably wins the lottery, thus setting up drama, as her ex-boyfriend realizes the riches he could have shared. The film continued to plod along, making me think of a lumbering dinosaur, maybe one of the large sauropods. Or that I was in the dentist chair, sans novocaine, and the dentist was in there with primitive tools extracting a tooth, while my eyes rolled back in horror and drool began hanging from my lip. Meanwhile, the story of the old man and woman in the apartment building who hear each other through paper thin walls and are attracted to one another is cute, but most of this subplot (and another) was edited out. Surreal little details abound, like the spanking of three kids while looking at wedding gifts, which seemed excessive. Zasu Pitts's performance is hit and miss and she overacts in the wedding night scene, but some of von Stroheim's camera work is nice, seeing her walk ethereally down the hall, and the pan back out of the bedroom at the end ... though I was still waiting for cinematic magic, or something truly compelling.

Third hour - 4 stars. The film takes a dark turn and gets good here. Some stills show a dream sequence of an old junk dealer discovering treasure in a graveyard, another subplot that appears to have been a real shame to have lost. The face of this guy (Cesare Gravina) is pretty striking, as is the violence of his actions to try to get back an imagined wealth from his young wife (Dale Fuller), providing another layer to this squalid tale of humanity. Also lost was a vicious wrestling match at the picnic between the old rivals, and in the still we see them tearing at each other like animals. Another element of drama is introduced as the married couple argue over money, with the woman wanting to be much more careful with their lottery winnings than her husband. Zasu Pitts does much better in these scenes, and the one where she's in her husband's lap, stroking his head and pulling it down to her chest, saying "Do you love me, Mac, dear? Love me big - BIG?" before the rival shows up is a good one. So is the interleaved tight shots on the cat looking up at the birdcage, which made me think of evil intent even as he says he's going away and wishes them well. There is artistry in the filmmaking here, with interesting camera angles, the use of faces in both foreground and background, and fantasy elements like a shot of a giant hand squeezing two writhing figures when times get hard for the couple. The film gets even darker when the guy has lost his job, starts drinking, and then pushes her around. "And yet this brutality in some strange inexplicable way aroused in Trina a morbid, unwholesome love of submission" we read, but I'm not we really see that in the actions which follow.

Fourth hour - 4.5 stars. The morality tale bakes in a little more completely as the film comes down the stretch, with the conflict between the miserly wife and spendthrift husband coming to a head, and her old suitor not out of the picture either. Von Stroheim lays it on a little thick with intertitles like "Accursed thirst for gold! What dost thou not compel mortals to do?" and the man then goes back to the mines, following a contrived "blind and unreasoned instinct." Eventually the action reaches Death Valley, and this is where the film truly shines. The footage on location is very dramatic, the artistry in the way the sky is contrasted with the earth is magnificent, and whole thing is reflective of spiritual bareness.

In Spite of everything, It's still a masterpiece.

[wadetaylor · 10/10 · 5 October 2006]

It has been discussed a million times about Greed being cut down from an 8 to 10 hour movie to a 2 hour movie, so I will not go into that.

What is important is that Erich von Stroheim made an amazing movie at any length. It is a shame that Stroheim did not live in a time when the 130 minute cut would be released to theaters and the long version is released on DVD as the "Unrated Version" to try to boost sales, like now days. However, the visuals are some of the best in any movie ever made in the history of cinema. I am so glad that the restored 4 hour version with the stills has added the gold tenting and stenciling to the scenes as they originally were made. The acting is maybe the best in any silent cinema drama. Stroheim liked using comic actors for his dramas, he felt they had more understated actions to their acting as compared to the over-acting of the popular dramatic actors of the day. This is the essence of Erich von Stroheim's cinema. He cared more about realism than almost anything else. He used actual cramped apartments for the cramped apartments in the film. He even filmed in the actual locations of San Francisco and Death Valley, when all could have easily been done in the studio or in another desert. Stroheim thought for his actor's to show that they were about to pass out from 120 degree temperatures in the desert, that they needed to be actually be about to pass out from 120 degree temperatures. I lament over the fact I will probably never see a more complete version than what currently exists. I want to see the version that Stroheim originally planned, but what we do have is not necessarily a skeleton as Stroheim referred to it. It has a great amount of flesh on it, but not as much as the Director wanted. Even if only one frame of film existed it still would show an amazing achievement in the history of cinema.

Flaws of Motivation

[pery-1 · 7/10 · 9 May 2005]

We can't blame the director, since the film was "butchered", but what I saw was seriously flawed. I've seen many great silent films, and this isn't in the same league with them. "Intolerance" is a better film on a similar subject.

Motivation is the worst problem. It feels wrong that someone upon winning a lottery would refuse to spend a cent of it, and suddenly become the world's worst miser. Her love for the money becomes more important than any other human emotion or comfort. We read of old people like this dying filthy and destitute, with a hidden fortune, but the sudden onset here feels wrong. Some of the greed shown is created because of the stinginess of others. The husband has a strange lack of influence over the wife, especially for the time, perhaps because the human love and friendships in the film are shallow and phony. It is a dark movie.

There are some terrific views of streetcars and street scenes in early San Francisco; of interurbans and outside Shellmound Park in the East Bay. The Death Valley scenes probably had more visual impact then, as today they seem commonplace. So I felt the images as well as the story petered out to an unsatisfying end.

Heavy-handed and depressing

[Igenlode Wordsmith · 4/10 · 8 February 2007]

I can't really say that I'm surprised this film was a 'commercial failure'.

I see many IMDb users extolling the improvement to be made by including stills to pad out the picture with previously excised material; I've heard that the existing shortened edition plays much better with the orchestral Carl Davis soundtrack. Not having benefited by either of these experiences, all I can say is that the version I witnessed was one of the most downbeat, heavily symbolist (and thus, ironically, despite all von Stroheim's efforts, least 'realistic') and melodramatic films I've seen to date, and most definitely not a potential crowd-pleaser. This has to be the original 'feel-bad movie'.

I seriously doubt that a further hour and a half, or seven hours, of footage in the same style would have made much difference. The film does indeed show signs of missing segments, but the only real way to avoid this problem would have been to adapt the story more concisely in the first place: in editing down any work, there is a limit to how much can be achieved without summarising and reworking. Beyond a certain point, in film as in written text, simply juxtaposing snipped sections in all their original detail isn't effective. If von Stroheim had set out to create a two-hour film in the first place, he would probably have done it differently.

He probably should have.

Whatever else you can say for the film, it isn't subtle. I had the sensation after a while of being bludgeoned over the head with the repeated 'miser shots' of Trina gloating over gold, or of disembodied hands grasping at loot: as if the idea weren't already driven home by the intertitles. The melodrama of McTeague, veins swelling, eyes whirling, being tempted by the helpless panting lips of the unconscious woman in the dentist's chair -- with its wordy interjection about 'the fine fabric' of his mother's influence being tainted by the deep-tooted evil of his father's apparently hereditary vileness -- is the sort of thing that belongs to film-making of an earlier period (if, indeed, anywhere), and gets silent films a bad name.

None of the characters seem very pleasant, and they all seem to be caricatures, fired only and arbitrarily by lust for money; it's possible that the editing loses large chunks of motivation here, for none of the abrupt transformations seem to make a lot of sense. The state of the McTeagues' marriage (in which Trina several times displays physical fear and revulsion at her husband's anticipated advances, and never seems to find him attractive) is highly opaque, save as an exercise in self-flagellation.

The final Death Valley sequence is admittedly powerful, but if that were really the aim of the movie it could have been achieved without the need for everything that went before to justify it. The man-hunt across the desert has become something of a Western cliché now, but was presumably original when this production came out; I'm afraid it did bring to mind the little 'flea-pit' cinema in "The Smallest Show on Earth", where the patrons were subjected to endless desert films with the heating turned up full in order to increase the sales of cold drinks during the intermission!

And yet again, it's unsubtle: the point is made when Marcus catches up to McTeague and there isn't enough water to get them both back out of the desert. Their lust for gold condemns them; film over. But "Greed" has to pile on death after death -- McTeague talks Marcus into shooting his (to all appearances) perfectly healthy mule, thus removing any possible means of escape, presumably in order to get him to empty his gun. Then one of the bullets just happens to pierce the water-skin: oh no! they're doubly dead. (Or, counting the mule, is it triply?) And then they fight to the death over who gets to carry the gold before he dies of thirst -- more heavy-handed message. And then Marcus's dead body ends up handcuffed to McTeague, thus making *quadruply* certain that he can't get out of the desert, what with his being 100 miles from water, minus transport, with an empty water-skin, and cuffed to a corpse he can't drag. (I was waiting for him to start hacking Marcus' hand off at the wrist, but apparently that was a step in realism too far even for von Stroheim.)

So what does he do? He sets his bird free (presumably the other one, symbolising the hated wife, vanished during one of the missing sections). Clearly he has been carrying food and water for this delicate creature and shading it from the sun all the time he was crawling across the desert, simply in order to bring it out for one last rhetorical flourish at this point. Only the bird refuses to leave him, and perches on the empty water-skin. More heavy meaning... The End. I don't like to say this of a notorious masterpiece, but it verges on the laughable.

Some of my problems with the film are, I'm sure, down to the tone of the original 'warts-and-all' novel. Some of them are probably caused by the editing (which, frankly, the director would appear to have brought upon himself). Some of them -- namely the exaggerated acting style, the self-conscious use of arty gold-y inserts -- can only be laid at the foot of the choices made for the motion picture, and aren't ever going to meet my taste. But the experience as a whole really doesn't lead me to seek out the 'restored' version, when I so totally fail to recognise in this version of "Greed" the tragically butchered but sublime artwork I had seen described...