IT TOOK TWO YEARS TO MAKE; IT GIVES YOU TWO HOURS OF ENGROSSING ENTERTAINMENT. YOU MAY HATE IT, AS YOU HATE THE DANGEROUS UNDERCURRENTS OF LIFE, BUT YOU WILL BE FASCINATED, THRILLED, HELD SPELL-BOUND.
Imagine the greatest film in the world, the stuff that becomes legend, especially since only a handful of people ever saw the full version, before the evil studio locked it up in a vault, never to be seen again. That’s the mythology surrounding Greed, Erich von Stroheim’s most famous movie. After a troubled production, the full nine-hour version was screened in January, 1924, and the 12 people who saw it were reportedly stunned.
The Goldwyn Company naturally demanded cuts, and when von Stroheim had gotten the film down to about half of the original length, he was at a loss for what to do. Goldwyn knew that even four hours would be unacceptable to the audience. Then Goldwyn merged with Metro Pictures and became MGM. Irving Thalberg made sure the von Stroheim cut was shown in a few select theaters, studying the audience’s reaction to this mammoth piece. That guided the studio in cutting the film down to what became 140 minutes.
The director mourned the loss of what he considered his greatest film. Reaction to Greed at the time was mixed, but the film’s status grew stronger over the years. That shows there’s some merit even to the shorter version.
A dentist in San Francisco
The story begins in 1908. John McTeague (Gibson Gowland) is a gold miner in Placer County, California, who finds a new career, learning how to become a dentist. In San Francisco, he eventually opens a practice. It’s love at first sight between McTeague and a young woman who enters his life, Trina Sieppe (ZaSu Pitts). She’s the intended fiancée of McTeague’s friend Marcus Schouler (Jean Hersholt), but when it becomes clear that McTeague and Trina have fallen for each other, Marcus steps out of the way, having never cared all that much for Trina. Things change when she buys a lottery ticket and wins a sum of money that is huge for them all: $5,000. Jealousy begins to consume Marcus, but he’s not the only one…
Stills replacing missing scenes
In 1999, TCM presented the version of Greed that I just saw, a film that runs almost four hours. Many scenes are missing, but there are plenty of stills replacing them, complete with title cards. The photos are brought to life by zooming in on various faces and details that are relevant for a particular scene. There are upsides and downsides to both versions. The shorter one tells a great story without boring the audience, but loses some context that gives Greed greater depth, including two subplots that are restored in the longer version: a sweet portrait of love in old age that’s a healthy contrast to the film’s darkness, and an almost mythic tragedy of a junkman and a Mexican woman whose actions are close to casting a spell on Trina. The longer version, on the other hand, is… very long. And the theme of greed becomes a tad repetitious, since it so wrecks and engulfs Trina, over and over.
ZaSu Pitts gives a very dramatic performance in her most famous role as Trina who becomes completely transformed.
However, the upsides far outweigh complaints. Pitts gives a very dramatic performance in her most famous role as Trina who becomes completely transformed. The haunting final scenes in Death Valley are a darkly logical conclusion to the story. von Stroheim and his team arrange several sequences to perfection, including a wedding that the director was particularly proud of; deep focus cinematography plays a key role there, as in a few other great scenes. von Stroheim also personally hand-tinted all that gold throughout the film, highlighting the connection between the metal and greed.
A major achievement, Greed draws us into the dark souls of these people, but not without moments of romantic tenderness and humor, especially in the portrait of Trina’s family.
Greed 1924-U.S. Silent. 239 min. B/W. Directed by Erich von Stroheim. Screenplay: Eric von Stroheim, June Mathis. Novel: Frank Norris (”McTeague”). Cinematography: Ben F. Reynolds, William H. Daniels. Cast: Gibson Gowland (John McTeague), ZaSu Pitts (Trina Sieppe), Jean Hersholt (Marcus Schouler), Dale Fuller, Cesare Gravina, Frank Hayes.
Trivia: The novel was previously filmed as Life’s Whirlpool (1916). von Stroheim appears as a balloon vendor.
Last word: “[Greed] was the beginning of when Hollywood started to be afraid of directors. Somebody told me that [von Stroheim] was shooting Greed in San Francisco and he stopped shooting for three days because there wasn’t enough horse shit in the streets. They had to collect it from San Jose and all over, because that’s what he wanted.” (Billy Wilder, “The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age”)