Greed (1924 film)
| Greed | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Erich von Stroheim |
| Written by | June Mathis Erich von Stroheim Frank Norris (novel) |
| Produced by | Irving Thalberg Louis B. Mayer |
| Starring | ZaSu Pitts Gibson Gowland Jean Hersholt Dale Fuller Tempe Pigott Chester Conklin |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates | December 4, 1924 |
Running time | 239 min (restored) |
| Language | Silent |
Greed is a 1924 dramatic silent movie about an honest dentist whose wife wins a lottery ticket, only to become obsessed with money. When her former lover betrays the dentist as a fraud, all of their lives are destroyed. It stars Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt and Chester Conklin.
The movie was adapted by Erich von Stroheim (shooting screenplay) and Joseph Farnham (titles) from the novel McTeague by Frank Norris. (The onscreen credit for June Mathis was strictly a contractural obligation to her on the part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, as she was not actually involved in the production.) It was directed by von Stroheim.
The story of the making of the movie has become a Hollywood legend. Under the aegis of the Goldwyn studio, Von Stroheim attempted to film a version of the book complete in every detail. To capture the authentic spirit of the story, he insisted on the filming on location in San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Death Valley, despite harsh conditions. The result was a final print of the film that was over eight hours in length, produced at a cost of over $500,000--an unheard of sum at that time. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that acquired Goldwyn during production, forced him to edit the film to a more manageable length, and he reluctantly delivered a print with a running time of just over four hours with the assistance of fellow director Rex Ingram and editor Grant Whytock. The film was then removed from his control and cut further, despite his protests. Even key characters were removed from the final version so that it could be screened in a reasonable timeframe. Existing prints of Greed run at about two hours and twenty minutes. The hours of cut film were destroyed (although it appears that much of it survived until at least the late 1950s), and this film is known as one of the most famous "lost" films in cinema history. The released version of the film was a box-office failure, and was fiercely panned by critics. In later years, even in its shortened form, it was recognized as one of the great realistic films. Rare behind-the-scenes footage of Greed can be seen in the Goldwyn Pictures film Souls for Sale.
In 1999, Turner Entertainment (the film's current rights holder) decided to "recreate," as close as possible, the original version by combining the existing footage with still photographs of the lost scenes, in accordance with an original continuity outline written by director Erich von Stroheim. This restoration (such as it is) runs almost four-and-a-half hours. (Other classic films with missing footage include Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, Frank Capra's Lost Horizon, George Cukor's A Star Is Born and von Stroheim's Queen Kelly.)
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The re-edit was produced by Rick Schmidlin.