Customer Reviews

Greed

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I mean when will the new restoration be released on DVD. I have the great laserdisc of the original release but I want the new version. If enough of us go to Amazon search and type in Greed under DVD we can all cast a vote to let the studio know that there is a demand to see this on DVD. The same goes for Sunrise by itself. Come on people!

Surprisingly poignant and powerful for a 1920's film. The protagonist, John McTeague, is a fascinatingly contradictory character. At times, he appears naïve and childlike, such as when he confesses to his friend that he has never been close to a woman before, or in the way he allows himself to be led by his mother, his wife and his friend. At other times, the darkness of his lust and anger burst from beneath his civilized veneer revealing a very disturbing individual. Director, Erich Von Stroheim incorporates very effective symbolism, such as the shots of the cat attacking the two birds to illustrates the true maliciousness of McTeague's friend. It's a real shame the original director's cut no longer exists.

"Greed" is one of those films whose history is as interesting as the film itself. Von Stroheim had absolute control over the task of filming the Frank Morris novel "McTeague." Von Stroheim expanded the novel, filming an incredible 96 hours of footage! After editing, the film was cut to 8 hours. Executives at MGM demanded an appropriate length for theaters, so the film was cut to just under three hours. The version I saw ran about two hours. Even under such sliced-up conditions, "Greed" stands as a masterpiece of one of the oldest stories of mankind: the lust for wealth by man. The film brilliantly captures the madness that people go through in their attempts to gain riches. The ending in Death Valley is one of the unforgettable moments in film. A film for the ages.

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.

Eric Von Strohiem was reportedly "devastated" by the cut of his ten hour film Greed to just over two hours. The opening sequence of this four-hour tape version calls the lost scenes of Greed the "Holy Grail" of film. If I may say so, PUHLEEZ! I would say that the blockbuster Cleopatra or the censored and destroyed The Spirit of 76 (both from 1917) are much better qualified for such a title. Come now, I can see wanting to take ten hours to film Gibbon's Rise and Fall, but the story of McTeague is no 1000 year old Roman Empire. Its not even a Lawrence of Arabia. Its a silly little novel that perhaps teaches an important moral lesson; not something that requires ten hours of film to achieve; two hours should have been plenty. That is the reason people go to the movies instead of reading books!

Regarding the four-hour version, lost scenes are apparently replaced by stills with more frequent intertitles; it is a good effort to replicate what was lost but quite frankly most of the still-cut scenes seemed quite unremarkable. And the character of Maria and her creepy "spouse" seemed profoundly racist or anti-Hispanic in demeanor. For the non-von Stroheimaniacs, I would suggest the two hour version as it feels much less choppy and more entertaining. I was only able to finish this four-hour tape with substantial aid from my FF button.

A final word on von Stroheim, for all his pompous whinging about the "destruction" of his "masterpiece" Greed, he had no problem denigrating himself and his heritage in order to get ahead in life. While his countrymen were being killed defending their homes from Imperial British and French armies, he was in New York fueling the fire of anti-German hatred amongst Americans with roles on stage, and in films like The Hun Within (1918). Hardly the work of a starving artist.