Customer Reviews

Greed

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Erich von Stroheim (the aristocratic 'von' tacked on by Stroheim himself) was a demanding director with a passion for perfection and an unforgiving eye for detail. His scripts typically included precise notes for camera angles and intricate descriptions of even the most minute of actions. Stroheim's persona reflected his attention to appearance and detail. He favored close military haircuts, precise military manners, a stiff Viennese accent, and affected for himself a privileged background. In truth, his father, a Prussian Silesian, was listed on Stroheim's birth certificate as a maker and seller of hats, and his mother, of Czech origin born in Prague, was neither a lady-in-waiting to the Empress nor a baroness as Stroheim preferred to pretend she was.

Aristocratic or not, von Stroheim favored BIG pictures and spent BIG producing them. He worked very hard at them too, invariably toiling late into the night to ascertain every of his exactly-plotted details came off perfectly. All told, Stroheim's output numbered just nine films, all but the last silent, and he served as a director for a rather brief span of time ~ between 1919 and 1932 ~ before returning to Europe to resume an acting career (monocle-wearing Nazis and other heavies). Of Stroheim's films, one was never released, two were finished by others, one was stopped during production and released incomplete, two were taken from him during post-production and slaughtered (von Stroheim referred to the released version of GREED as 'the skeleton of my dead child'), two others received rather more minor cuts ordered by the studio, and one was released intact.

GREED was von Stroheim's tour-de-force. It's said that he was so enamored of the book McTEAGUE by Frank Norris (of the American naturalist-realist school) he became determined to film every last word of it, including commas and periods. Certainly he went way overboard in budget, shooting forty-seven reels ~ more than 8 hours of viewing time ~ in the making of it. However, the forty-seven reels were never intended to be seen by a paying audience; these were pre-director's cuts.

When the shooting was completed in December 1923, Stroheim invited a hand-picked few to a private showing of forty-five reels of his masterpiece ~ a showing that lasted from 10:30 in the morning until 8:00 that night. Stroheim then presented to the Goldwyn Company 42 reels of his work, and was promptly requested to cut it to a more reasonable length, wherein he obliged by further reducing it to 24 reels. Still too long, so with the help of his friend Rex Ingram, Stroheim produced an 18-reel version he planned to release in two parts, 18 reels being the minimum length in which he felt justice for McTEAGUE could be done. The studio, unconvinced, turned the material over to June Mathis, story editor at Goldwyn, who trimmed Stroheim's final cut of 24 reels to 10 reels and gave it the title GREED. In December 1924, following the merger, MGM released the Mathis version. None too pleased, Stroheim argued for months with producer Irving Thalberg and MGM head Louis B. Mayer about the removed footage, raging '[June Mathis] had read neither the book nor my script, yet was ordered to cut it'.

In his quest for ultra-realism in GREED, Stroheim bought out entire blocks of property in downslidden neighborhoods, forcing his actors to live on these blocks so that they might gain insight into such a lifestyle. Stroheim insisted on filming a murder scene in GREED at a place where a murder actually occurred (and who watching the scene would know this unless it was pointed out?) The climactic final scenes were shot in Death Valley during the hottest part of the summer of 1923, forcing more than a few crew members into outright mutiny, and almost destroying the equipment in the process (in order to function the cameras had to be wrapped in icewater-soaked cloths). Wildly outrageous stories circulated about von Stroheim, including that he once insisted on waiting for chimney smoke to blow in a certain direction before continuing with a scene (untrue). However, this brand of fanaticism earned him the title 'The Man You Love To Hate'.

Despite the massive cuts, GREED remains a HUGE story. Powerful, startlingly honest, brutal, unrelentingly bleak, tragic ~ the characters in this story are rawboned and real. McTeague (Gibson Gowland) is a man ruled by his passions, his wife Trina (Zasu Pitts) is driven frighteningly insane through her obsession with money, McTeague's friend Marcus (Jean Hersholt) is a miserable scheming villain. In the 'reconstructed' version we are introduced to a Mexican housekeeper Maria (Dale Fuller), whose cherished childhood dream ultimately costs her life, and a greedy junk dealer (Cesare Gravina), and a subplot involving a quietly amorous older couple. GREED retains several searing scenes of violence and depravity, and builds to an unforgettable climax. Several websites are devoted to discussions of the plot and subplots and symbolisms within GREED ~ the pre-cut complete version, the Brownlow version, and the 75th anniversary 'reconstructed' version; a simple search should get you started. It's fascinating information, well worth the effort of anyone interested in the history of this legendary film.

From forty-seven reels down to 10 ... and still for sheer size and scope, no silent film rivals GREED. You might well ask, what happened to all that sliced stock? According to Stroheim, the film was melted down for its silver content. Although ~ and who can fault them? ~ several film enthusiasts and experts still hold out hope for the discovery of yet a few more reels of what remains 'The Holy Grail' of lost film footage.

I would give this unrivaled masterpiece ten stars if possible. What's really maddening is that every year when would-be and never-was movie historians put together their hysterical list of "100 Greatest Movies of All Time", it's always "Citizen Kane" at the very top. Which goes to show how illiterate these critics are. It was "Greed", "Intolerance" and Cecil DeMille's underated "The Cheat" (1915), which really paved the way for Orson Welles. "Greed" is an amazing experience to sit through. I've seen it 50 times (the beautifully restored version put together by Thames and Turner Entertainment" should win awards about the restoration of an ancient movie)and each time you're left stunned. The acting, the masterful sets and camera angles alone should be this at the very top of the "Greatest 10 or 100 movies of all time". In the video version at least, the wonderful musical score enhances this movie a l00 fold. Bravo to von Stroheim, a forgotten genius who should be studied religiously and his movies looked upon as landmark film making.

If you watch only one silent film in your lifetime, it should probably be Erich von Stoheim's GREED, a film--even in truncated form--of such artistry and power that it will forever wipe away any thought you may have of silent film being a "lesser" art form.

The story line is serious, following the lives of a San Franciso dentist, his wife, and his friend over the course of several years. Although rather dim and socially inept, all three are reasonably good natured--until the dentist's wife's lottery winnings sparks a gradual competition for the money between all three, a competition that will ultimately have lethal results. Played with tremendous restrait with Zasu Pitts a particular standout, director von Stroheim's powerful vision horrified most critics and audiences when first released--and it continues to shock even to this day.

The running time varies depending on the particular cut, but most versions run well over two hours. A must-see, must-own for any serious student or admirer of cinema arts, a film to which you will return again and again.

The history of "Greed" abounds in confusions and misconceptions. Contrary to legend, Von Stroheim's 42-reel (10-hour) version of the film was never more than a rough cut; he realized that a film of such length could never be released, and he himself cut the film in half, to 24 reels. When the studio demanded further excisions, Von Stroheim gave the film to a director friend, Rex Ingram, whose own editor cut it to 18. Finally, still dissatisfied, the studio took the film away from all involved and cut it to its final form, 10 reels. This complicated history makes judging "Greed" very difficult, since---again, contrary to what many think---Stroheim never brought (or was never allowed to bring) the film to his own final preferred length. In other words, there was never what could properly be called a "director's cut."

We can get some inkling, however, of what the film was to have been through reading the shooting script, which was published by Faber & Faber back in the 1970s. It would have been an extremely ambitious film, with several concurrent plot lines (most of which have vanished in the version we have now) and a radically innovative narrative structure in which there would have been many full reels with virtually no "action," instead concentrating on background and scene-setting (imitating, perhaps to a fault, the Norris novel). It would certainly have been a grueling film to sit through, and reading the script one cannot help but wonder how many brave souls would actually have made it to the end. Even in its two-hour form, "Greed" exhausts many viewers. But the full version may well have been some kind of masterpiece.

But what we do have is the two-hour version, and it is most certainly a masterpiece: one of the finest and most important films ever made, in fact. In this streamlined version, the story of the downfall of McTeague and his wife Trina takes on an almost unbearable intensity. There is no comic relief (or virtually none), no cutting away to other stories. It is a mercilessly dark film, superbly acted (especially by Zasu Pitts as Trina), gruesomely fascinating. And, like all great art, the application is virtually universal: poverty does this to people, we realize, and so does sudden wealth. The scenario would not play out like this for every individual, obviously, but there is something terribly believable in this film and relevant to all cultures, all times. I myself was once married to an African woman and I showed this film to her; she "got" it perfectly, nodding to herself as she watched and telling me of people she knew of in her native country who were "like that."

So, did MGM "ruin" this film? Considering that it routinely places in the all-time Top 10 in critics' polls, this is a difficult argument to make. The fact is, the film that MGM released is one of the greatest classics of world cinema. (In fact, it is astonishing how few narrative gaps or confusions there are in the released print---yes, there are some, but overall the final editors' ability to cut the footage together into a coherent and fully integrated whole is amazing.) It could be argued, in fact, that MGM's "crime" (artistic crime, anyway) was not in the cutting---which Von Stroheim should have seen as absolutely inevitable---but rather in not at least keeping one of the longer versions, preferably the 10 hour, in their vaults. Even if a film of such length was commercially impossible, MGM owed it to the future of film to keep the original version in existence. But then it is easy to write that now; in 1926, few had any notion of the movies as a lasting art.

In any event, anyone seriously interested in film simply must see "Greed." 75 years later it remains as powerful and true a film as any ever made.

I've never directly responded to another review before, but it must be done in this case.

Ixta Coyotl is just wrong. (S)he obviously knows a great deal about the history of film but almost nothing about great art. (S)he finds it impossible to appreciate many of the finer facets of film history, and leads people astray with obscure references in order to insult the deserving classics.

Take a look at her/his other reviews. (S)he gives Frida five stars because of the lesbian scenes. Forget that it had almost nothing else to offer as a film. (S)he gives Buster Keaton's timeless masterpiece The General only two stars and meanwhile bashes his and Chaplin's entire catalogs. Amazing! Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia may escape with fair reviews, but along the way obscure drivel is canonized and masterpieces like La Strada and La Regle du Jeu face the firing squad.

Greed is much better than most people give it credit for. Don't use your fast-forward button. Let this film develop, slowly and deliberately, and let it unfold to you a story with amazing symbolism, fascinating depth, and one of the greatest endings of all time.

Von Stroheim was altogether justified in feeling that his film had been butchered. If the original cut of this film had been released to the public, it may have changed the way we watch movies, elevating them from thin, plotless, uninteresting star vehicles, to deep, probing, and time-independent portraits of the complexities of human nature. Well, maybe. Given the attention span in the roaring twenties and in this new millennium, I'm probably wrong about that.

No matter. This restoration is brilliant, and, unfortunately, sold out. Rick Schmidlin's fantastic work (along with Robert Israel's surprisingly good score) deserves DVD release.

That's right. This film needs to be released on DVD as soon as possible; an out-of-stock tape copy obviously doesn't suffice. So, what's the hold-up? I don't know. Given that some people here think this is the greatest film of all time (a tenable position, might I add), it only makes sense that some publishing company should immediately release this restored print on DVD.

I know they have at least one guaranteed customer.

Most of the reviews that I have read for the movie "Greed" start off with a short history of the movie. For film fans, watching this movie is like watching history. Director Erich von Stroheim directed this movie with a whooping ten hours of a movie. The studio made him cut it, so he cut it to about four hours. It was still too long. Back at the time, movies that ran over one hour were long, so the studio chopped his masterpiece work up to a little over two hours. A little over two hours from what was once ten hours long. The studio wants to recycle the film, so the completed ten hours of material is now considered the "Holy Grail" of the cinema. What me and millions of other people would do to see the entire thing. . . The version I saw was a four hour restored version, replacing some of the missing scenes with still photographs. I watched it from 1:45am to 6:00am one night, and what a journey! I was finished wanting more. It was one of the best nights I spent watching a movie. I was totally blown away. It was something different than the silent movies that I saw prior, the old Lon Cheney and Harold Lloyd movies.

"Greed" starts off to the introduction of McTeague. He becomes a dentist in San Francisco, and he wants a golden bird that he sees in a shop window more than anything. When one of his friends, Marcus, comes in with his love interest Trina, who has a chipped tooth, McTeague falls in love, and he must contain himself from doing anything to her while she is in the chair. The two fall in love, and Marcus gives McTeague his blessing. The first hour and a half deals with their relationship, and then their marriage. But, shortly after their marriage, Trina wins the lottery and gets five thousand dollars. Trina buys McTeague that golden bird that he always wanted, but then she wants to put the money away so that it could collect interest and McTeague can't even access it. As Trina becomes more and more obsessed with money, it becomes more important to her than her marriage. As if that is the worst of McTeague's problems. Marcus becomes greedy, because that would have been his money if he didn't let McTeague have Trina. McTeague becomes part of a large conflict, which leads to the most grim and surprising turn of events that not many could see coming.

"Greed" ends in Death Valley. I won't tell you how the characters get there, but it is on of the most grim, ironic endings ever. It's so sad, how money can do so much to people, and how it could take over their lives. Somebody told me about the golden bird. At the end of the movie, you know that it is going to die, and it is still stuck in it's cage. This person said that the bird did nothing to get into that situation, and it is going to die because of the greed and corruption of other people. I applaud that person for thinking of that, something that I didn't even think about.

At the end of this journey, I realized that this is one of the best movies ever. It's the kind of movie that makes me feel bad for the modern day teenagers that wants to see a good movie, and then they watch a horrible thriller like "The Grudge" which I already trashed. This is the good stuff. Just because it is a silent movie doesn't mean that it is bad. Open you minds and tastes to the movies that were the foundation of what you watch today. This movie is a masterpiece, and it's characters are so sad to watch, as they change from the first minute to the last second. I felt like Stroheim did when he saw the finished work, and how the movie was destroyed based on what he had. I wanted to see the rest. . . I wanted to see what we were meant to see. This movie has to come out on DVD, so that everybody could see what an amazing thing film it really is.

ENJOY!

Not Rated, but I would rate it PG for thematical elements and a brief violent image.

I first watched this movie in a senior seminar class and found it to be one of the most tedious events I had ever endured...Explosions and murder in a cinematic experience? Fine,but what really scares the bejesus out of generation X is a two hour silent film. Luckily, I later watched it a second time and noticed the many deep themes that resound in this rather deciptively simple-looking flick. Originally I thought the film was just portraying various form of human mania and misery, but there is a deeper message to this film that pertains to the narrow horizens of it's characters The dominating theme of this film is choices. How the characters reaction to events (in this film badly) precipitate their own doom. Granted, there are outside forces beyond the character's control that causes conflict, but the choices of characters in how they react to these forces is what makes or breaks them. A very haunting film. That is the deep truth to this movie that still manages to be disturbing to a modern audience. It is a very unique film experience that I highly reccomend

The history of this film is almost notorious. Austrian-American Von Stroheim (he added the aristocratic "von") suffered mercilessly at the hands of studio conformity in the period that the Hollywood film industry was trying to get rid of the "independent" director. I highly recommend this film although we couldn't label it as Stroheim's "baby". Recently, however, many missing pieces were unearthed, which allowed for a near-complete reconstruction of the original recordings. One cable channel (AMC I belief) aired this new "old" version of "Greed", restoring not only this classic picture, but equally, Stroheim's shattered dream of bringing out his own (lengthy) rendition of Norris's "McTeague" novel. I recommend watching both versions in a row. The Death Valley scene, by the way, was filmed on location under the weight of 130 Fahrenheit!

I saw "Greed" on french tv years ago and afterwards was able to lend the VHS edition from the Antwerp city library(God bless 'm for thinking beyond blockbusters)...and yes it is truly a masterpiece...but why, when there is a specialized but quite triving marked for silent films on dvd, hasn't there been ANY release of this masterpiece on dvd??There is now a 4+ hour restauration(the most fully realized so far) available...somewhere...but not on dvd..
This film is so important in film history it's like someone would have forgotten to put "Citizen Kane" or "battleship Potemkin" out on dvd ?..Film marketeers :do they even have a clue ?

I'm amazed that this masterpiece of film art isn't available on DVD. It should be.

Even without the benefit of music this must be one of the most rivetting films I've ever encountered. It is a fairly literal adaption of "Mc Teague" by Frank Norris, a realist author who straddled the last century. It is brilliantly brought to the screen by Erich von Stroheim, a Hollywood director of considerable merit who fell out of favor with his boss and with the system in general.

The film's extreme length made it impossible to screen successfully and the many attempts to pare it down were well-meaning but doomed to failure. Nevertheless, what remains is still wonderful to look at with some electrifying performances and a deliberate, inevitable pace. ZaSu Pitts was a remarkable actress who was hampered with a jarring voice when the talkies came around. Her dramatic ability needs to be experienced to be believed. Gibson Gowland is also wonderful in his role as Mc Teague.

There was a reconstruction of what the film might have aimed at, using
still photographs for the missing footage that is not very successful in the long run. The original film, cut up so badly, is still extremely successful. I would recommend it to anyone interested in film but why it is currently unavailable is a mystery to me.

Curtis Stotlar