Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, Sylvia Ashton, Oscar Gottell, Otto Gottell, Frank Hayes, Tempe Pigott, Dale Fuller "Originally planned to run around ten hours but hacked to just over two by Thalberg's MGM, Erich Von Stroheim's greatest film still survives as a true masterpiece of cinema. Even now its relentlessly cynical portrait of physical and moral squalor retains the ability to shock, while the Von's obsessive attention to realist detail - both in terms of the San Francisco and Death Valley locations, and the minutely observed characters - is never prosaic: as the two men and a woman fall out over filthy lucre, their motivations are explored with a remarkably powerful visual poetry, and Frank Norris' novel is translated into the cinematic equivalent of, say, Zola at the peak of his powers." - Geoff Andrew, Time Out Selected by Guillermo Del Toro, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Simon Louvish, Carol J. Clover, Antonio Rodrigues.

A grimly fascinating fable about the thin line between love and hate and how money muddies the divide.McTeague (Gibson Gowland) is a gold miner who's extremely rough around the edges. He can tenderly kiss a lame bird, then the next moment toss a contemptuous co-worker into a canyon. "Such is McTeague." While Mac becomes an amateur dentist, he never really changes in character. Zasu Pitts does seem to evolve as Trina. She goes from being a wide-eyed, frigid naïf to a shifty-eyed, obsessive liar. I'd heard her name but never before seen Pitts, and this is a tour-de-force introduction to her work.Jean Hersholt is the greasy-haired friend in ill-fitting suits. As Marcus, he transfers Trina like chattel to Mac, who -- perversely aroused by the woman while she's under ether, having some teeth extracted -- has confided his lustful cravings. When Trina wins a large lottery, Marcus turns murderously venal.There are some extremely memorable scenes in this film. Who will forget Mac serenading Trina on the "sewer"? Or the sun-scorching death scene in the desert.This film touches on some modern themes, including the sexual abuse of patients, and is mesmerizing much of the time. Even my 11-year-old son was drawn in. I learned on Wikipedia that we have the Danish-born Hersholt to thank for our current translations of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales. Great work on both fronts, sir!

To Clarify, this is a review of the 4-hour TCM version of Greed.From the very first few minutes in Greed, one can understand that this is no ordinary morality tale or an extremely long picture exploring the habituality of human nature. This is the film that I believe to be Erich von Stroheim's magnum opus, and one of the greatest losses of any form of artwork in the world (the full uncut version that is).To dissect any film regardless of its stature, one must first look at the macro-elements of the picture and see what can gleaned from them. The narrative of the film is no ordinary linear single story; von Stroheim has created the TV mini-series long before it was ever conceived. With the main plot following McTeague and Trina, there are two other sub-plots which are not necessarily important to the main one, but as a whole, culminate to give the general majesty of the film including the novelesque features and underlying message of human greed. The narrative is structured heavily as von Stroheim wanted to perfectly recreate the novel on which Greed was based (McTeague, 1899); each plot compliments the other perfectly and mesh together at certain points with each one giving off their own message at its end. Then there are the Micro-elements to inspect. For Greed, von Stroheim wanted to create a raw and dirty atmosphere that fitted perfectly with the overall feeling of the narrative and settings; so one will notice that the camera-work throughout consists generally of close-ups and other shots that seem to make the characters seem garish in some sort of fashion. And the same can be said about the lighting choices for the film, usually von Stroheim chooses a hard and powerful light as if trying to show every crooked detail of his characters faces; and in the other instances, von Stroheim uses a dark and gloomy lighting as if to mask characters in the scenes in which they are about to commit the evil. The performance given by all of the central characters is perfect for the style that von Stroheim needed. One may not think that they are all fantastic actors, but they don't need to be, most of them succumb to madness, or in the case of McTeague: inebriation. The actors commit themselves to the general feeling and message of the film which is more than any respectable director can ask for. The editing, all things considered, is still very good with the stills from the cut scenes so that we can recreate the sub-plots that were cut from the original release. But unfortunately we can only imagine how grand and to what level of effort would have been given to the original 8-hour von Stroheim version of Greed, some of which we can already see from the colour of gold in any scene in which it is featured.Hopefully one day, someone will find an original cut in a basement of an asylum in Croatia (or some other random place), but until that time we are stuck with a 4-hour masterpiece that may not be the original, but is still absolutely magnificent. Greed is one of the six films ever created that I rate a straight 10 out of 10, so if that doesn't encourage you to watch this film, I don't know what will.

So much has been written about this extraordinary work of art that little remains to be said. Perhaps it might be useful to consider the three landmark years that are associated with this film: 1924---The badly mutilated and much abridged version that runs 140 minutes is released by M-G-M. Although there are many different views of the original running time of "Greed", it is generally believed to be over nine hours. Key characters and story lines were deleted altogether to accommodate the bureaucrats of the new M-G-M. The deleted footage apparently has been lost forever. All that remains of the deleted portions of the film are archival still photos and unused dialog cards. This 140 minute version is the only one known to modern audiences up until the year 1973.1973---Herman G. Weinberg, a film historian, published through E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. his monumental book entitled "The Complete Greed." Weinberg attempted through supplementary use of the surviving archival material to assemble a photographic reconstruction of the original film. Obviously, Weinberg was in uncharted territory. The book represents one scholar's serious effort to present us with an approximation of the nine hour film. It is flawed but absolutely indispensable to anyone interested in "Greed." 1999---Turner Classic Movies took Weinberg's concept to the next level by incorporating the surviving archival material into the existing 140 minute version----employing a method similar to that used in the reconstruction of Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon" (1937) and Judy Garland's "A Star Is Born" (1954) directed by George Cukor. However, unlike those films, TCM's version is only a reconstruction and not a reconstruction/restoration. The end result is a film that now runs a little over four hours, where the archival material actually looks better in many respects than some of the elements from the original 140 minute film.The TCM version is a revelation to people who are unfamiliar with Weinberg's book. It is a superb achievement in itself and allows the viewer for the very first time to see a reasonable approximation of Von Stroheim's film on a screen.So much has been said about the tragedy of what happened to "Greed." While the TCM reconstruction cannot reverse this situation, we should be grateful for the opportunity to see, ponder and be moved by the "Greed" of "what might have been."