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Greed (1924 film)

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Greed
Theatrical release poster
Directed byErich von Stroheim
Written byErich von Stroheim
June Mathis (credited contractually)
Produced byErich von Stroheim
Irving Thalberg
StarringGibson Gowland
ZaSu Pitts
Jean Hersholt
CinematographyBen F. Reynold and William H. Daniels
Edited byErich von Stroheim and Frank Hull (42-reel and 24-reel versions)
Rex Ingram and Grant Whytock (18-reel version)
June Mathis and Joseph Farnham (10-reel version)
Music byWilliam Axt
Production
company
The Goldwyn Company / Metro-Goldwyn
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • 4 December 1924 (1924-12-04)
Running time
462 minutes (original cut)
140 minutes (original release)
239 minutes (restored)
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSilent film
English intertitles
Budget$665,603.02
Box office$274,827.55

Greed is a 1924 American silent film written and directed by Erich von Stroheim and based on the 1899 novel McTeague by naturalist writer Frank Norris. It stars Gibson Gowland as McTeague, ZaSu Pitts as his wife Trina and Jean Hersholt as McTeague's friend and eventual enemy Marcus Schouler.

The film tells the story of McTeague, a San Francisco dentist, who marries his best friend Marcus' girlfriend Trina. Shortly after their engagement, Trina wins a lottery prize of $5,000. Marcus jealously informs authorities that McTeague had been practicing dentistry without a license and McTeague and Trina become impoverished. While living in squalor, McTeague becomes a violent alcoholic and Trina becomes obsessed with her winnings, refusing to spend any of it despite how poor she and her husband become. Eventually McTeague murders Trina for the money and flees to Death Valley. Marcus catches up to him there for the film's final sequence.

Von Stroheim shot over 85 hours of footage and obsessed over accuracy during the filming. Two months were spent shooting in Death Valley for the film's final sequence and many of the cast and crew became ill. Greed was one of the few films of its time to be shot entirely on location. Von Stroheim used sophisticated filming techniques such as deep focus cinematography and montage editing. Von Stroheim considered the film a Greek tragedy in which environment and heredity controlled the characters' fates and reduced them to primitive "bête humaines" ("human beasts").

During the making of Greed, the production company went through several mergers and eventually became Metro Goldwyn Mayer, putting Irving Thalberg in charge of the production. Thalberg had fired von Stroheim a few years earlier at Universal Pictures.

Originally almost eight hours long, Greed was edited against von Stroheim's wishes to about two-and-a-half hours. The full-length version is lost. Only twelve people saw the full 42-reel version, some of whom called it the greatest film ever made. Von Stroheim called Greed his most fully realized work and was hurt both professionally and personally by the film's re-editing.[1] The uncut version has been called the "holy grail" of film archivists, amid repeated false claims of the discovery of the missing footage. In 1999 Turner Entertainment created a four-hour version of Greed that used existing stills of cut scenes to reconstruct the director's version.

Greed was a critical and financial failure upon its initial release, but as early as the 1950s it began to be regarded as one of the greatest films ever made; filmmakers and scholars praised it for its influence on subsequent films.

Plot

"I never truckled, I never took off the hat to fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn't like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth; I knew it for the truth then and I know it for the truth now." — Frank Norris, quoted from his essay "The True Reward of the Novelist", in a title card at the beginning of the film.[2]

The film opens with John McTeague working as a miner in Placer County, California. A traveling dentist calling himself Dr. "Painless" Potter visits the town, and McTeague's mother begs Dr. Potter to take her son on as an apprentice. Dr. Potter agrees and McTeague eventually becomes a dentist, practicing on Polk Street in San Francisco.

Marcus Schouler brings Trina Sieppe, his cousin and intended fiancée, into McTeague's office for dental work. Schouler and McTeague are friends and McTeague gladly agrees to examine her. As they wait for an opening, Trina buys a lottery ticket. McTeague becomes enamored with Trina and begs Schouler for permission to court Trina. After seeing McTeague's conviction, Schouler agrees. Trina eventually agrees to marry McTeague and shortly afterwards her lottery ticket wins her five thousand dollars (approximately $66,000 in current dollars). Schouler bitterly claims that the money should have been his, causing a rift between McTeague and Schouler. After McTeague and Trina wed, they continue to live in their small apartment with Trina refusing to spend her $5,000.

Trina and McTeague have a relationship that moves from romance to tragedy.

Schouler leaves the city to become a cattle rancher. Before he goes he secretly reports McTeague for practicing dentistry without a license in order to ruin his former friend. McTeague is ordered to shut down his practice or face jail. Even though she has saved over $200 in addition to the original $5,000 from the lottery ticket, Trina is unwilling to spend her money. Money becomes increasingly scarce, with the couple forced to sell their possessions. McTeague finally snaps and bites Trina's fingers in a fit of rage. Later he leaves to go fishing to earn money, taking Trina's savings (now totaling $450).

Trina's bitten fingers become infected and have to be amputated. To earn money she becomes a janitor at a children's school. She withdraws the $5,000 from the bank to keep it close to her, eventually spreading it on her bed so she can sleep on it. McTeague then returns, having spent the money he took and asks Trina for more. The following day McTeague confronts Trina at the school. After a heated argument McTeague beats Trina to death and steals her $5,000.

Now an outlaw, McTeague returns to Placer County and teams up with a prospector named Cribbens. Headed towards Death Valley, they find a large quantity of quartz and plan to become millionaires. Before they can begin mining, McTeague senses danger and flees into Death Valley with a single horse, the remaining money and one water jug. Several marshals pursue him, joined by Schouler. Schouler wants to catch McTeague personally and rides into Death Valley alone.

The oppressive heat slows McTeague's progress. Schouler's progress is also beginning to wane when he spies McTeague and moves in to arrest him. After a confrontation, McTeague's horse bolts and Schouler shoots it, puncturing the water container. The water spills onto the desert floor. The pair fight one last time, with McTeague proving the victor; however, Schouler has handcuffed himself to McTeague. The film ends with McTeague left in the desert with no horse, no water, handcuffed to a corpse and unable to reach the remaining money.

Maria/Zerkow sub-plot

Von Stroheim's original edit contained two main sub-plots that were later cut. The point of these subplots was to contrast two possible outcomes of Trina and McTeague's life together. The first depicted the lives of the junkman Zerkow and Maria Miranda Macapa, the young Mexican woman who collects junk for Zerkow and sold Trina the lottery ticket. Maria often talks about her solid gold dining set with Zerkow, who becomes obsessed by it. Eventually, believing she has riches hidden away, Zerkow marries her. He often asks about it, but she gives a different answer each time he mentions it. Zerkow doesn't believe her and becomes obsessed with prying the truth from her. He murders her and after having lost his mind, leaps into San Francisco Bay.

Grannis/Baker sub-plot

The second sub-plot depicts the lives of Charles W. Grannis and Miss Anastasia Baker. Grannis and Baker are two elderly boarders who share adjoining rooms in the apartment complex where Trina and McTeague live. Throughout their time at the apartment complex, they have not met. They both sit close to their adjoining wall and listen to the other for company, so they know almost everything about each other. They finally meet and cannot hide their long-time feelings for each other. When they reveal their love, Grannis admits he has $5,000, making him just as rich as Trina. But this makes little difference to them. Eventually, they marry and a door connects their rooms.

Cast

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Production

Background and writing

"I intended to show men and women as they are all over the world, none of them perfect, with their good and bad qualities, their noble and idealistic sides and their jealous, viscous, mean and greedy sides. I was not going to compromise. I felt that after the last war, the motion picture going public had tired of the cinematographic 'chocolate éclairs' which had been stuffed down their throats and which had in a large degree figuratively ruined their stomachs with this overdose of Saccharose in pictures. Now, I felt, they were ready for a large bowl of plebian but honest corned beef and cabbage'." — Erich von Stroheim.[3]

Greed is based upon American author Frank Norris's 1899 novel McTeague. Von Stroheim's interest in McTeague can be traced back to January 1920 when he told a journalist that he wanted to film the novel.[4] He had previously lived in San Francisco shortly after moving to the US in the early 1910s.[5] His firing by Universal's Irving Thalberg on October 6, 1922 while working on Merry-Go-Round was an unprecedented event in Hollywood, bringing in a new era in which the producer and the studio had power over artists and directors.[6][4]

Von Stroheim in 1920, the year he first expressed an interest in filming the novel McTeague.

Von Stroheim, who had already directed and starred in several hit films, had been offered contracts with other film studios even before he was fired. He met with producers at the Goldwyn Company on September 14, 1922 and signed in late November.[7] Von Stroheim chose Goldwyn because of the level of artistic freedom on offer. Goldwyn had been run by Abe Lehr since March 1922 and Lehr had publicly promised that "each director will have his own staff and will be given every facility in putting into production his own individuality and personality."[4] Von Stroheim signed a one-year, three-feature deal with Goldwyn on November 20, 1922. The deal stipulated that each feature would be between 4,500 and 8,500 feet,[8] would not exceed $175,000 in costs and would be completed in fourteen weeks. It also promised that von Stroheim would be paid $30,000 for each completed film.[9] Lehr had initially wanted von Stroheim to film a big-budget version of The Merry Widow, which he saw as a guaranteed hit. Von Stroheim convinced him to make Greed first, with the promise of low cost due to not having to build any sets.[10] A February 1923 press release said that although von Stroheim had "run rather freely to large sets in the past, [he] seems to have reformed — or surrendered — for it is announced that he will not build any sets at all."[10]

Von Stroheim wrote a highly detailed, 300-page script that contained camera movements, composition and tint cues.[11] Among the changes that von Stroheim made to Norris' novel was giving McTeague the first name John and omitting Norris' anti-Semitism.[12] McTeague had been filmed once before, in 1916, as a 5 reel short film by William A. Brady's World Pictures called Life's Whirlpool and starring Broadway star Holbrook Blinn.[5] This version had been disliked by film critics and von Stroheim later criticized Blinn's performance.[13] According to film historian Kevin Brownlow, Life's Whirlpool was also shot on location in Death Valley.[14]

Before shooting began, von Stroheim told a reporter, "it is possible to tell a great story in motion pictures in such a way that the spectator forgets he is looking at beauteous Gertie Gefelta the producer's pet and discovers himself intensely interested, just as if he were looking out of a window at life itself. He will come to believe that what he is gazing at is real — a cameraman was present in the household and nobody knew it. They went on in their daily life with their joys, fun and tragedies and the camera stole it all, holding it up afterward for all to see."[15] In early January 1923 von Stroheim arrived in San Francisco, where he scouted locations and completed the shooting script. He also attended society functions in town[16] and met many friends of Frank Norris, including Norris's brother Charles Gilman Norris and sister-in-law Kathleen Norris.[17] To capture the authentic spirit of the story, von Stroheim insisted on filming on location in San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Big Dipper Mine in Colfax, California and Death Valley,[18] and he rented some of the actual buildings that had inspired scenes in the novel.[19] Other locations included the Cliff House and San Francisco Bay.[11]

Norris had scouted settings for his novel and chose the upstairs of a building on the corner of Polk and California street as McTeague's dentist office, as well as many of the saloons and lunch counters in the area. The Lest Norris kindergarten where the real life murder of a cleaning woman had taken place in 1893 was financed by Norris's family. Norris visited the Big Dipper Mine while visiting an old friend.[20] Von Stroheim discovered that many of the locations that Norris had described, such as Polk Street, had been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but he was able to find suitable locations on Hayes and Laguna streets.[21] To preserve authenticity, von Stroheim had no sets built in San Francisco and only redecorated locations such as saloons, butcher shops and wooden shacks.[11] Despite the strict conditions of von Stroheim's initial contract, Goldwyn approved the shooting script before filming began. Production Manager J. J. Cohn later explained that "they thought they could control him when the time comes."[22]

Casting

Von Stroheim often used a group of actors that became known unofficially as "the Stroheim Stock Company". With the exception of Jean Hersholt, all of the main actors in Greed appeared in two or more films directed by von Stroheim.[23] Gibson Gowland had previously appeared in Blind Husbands and returned to the U.S. from Scotland for the role. Cesare Gravina, who played the junkman Zerkow and Dale Fuller, who played the lottery ticket seller Maria, had both appeared in Foolish Wives and would later appear in The Merry Widow. Gravina had also been abroad, in Argentina. Other actors in von Stroheim's Stock Company included Maude George, Mae Busch, George Nichols, George Fawcett, Sidney Bracey and Hughie Mack.[23]

Trina was the most difficult role to cast and ZaSu Pitts was hired at the last minute,[11] after von Stroheim rejected Claire Windsor and Colleen Moore.[24] Pitts had previously acted only in comedic roles and Greed was her first dramatic part. Pitts later appeared in The Wedding March.[25] Von Stroheim said that Pitts was "the greatest psychopathological actress in the American cinema"[15] and that "she should not be in comedy, for she is the greatest of all tragediennes."[26] Von Stroheim had met casually with Hersholt to discuss the role of Marcus Schouler and was initially reluctant to cast him. Hersholt adjusted his appearance and wardrobe to resemble the character and von Stroheim changed his mind immediately.[27]

With the exception of Gowland, von Stroheim shot extensive screen tests with all the other actors at Goldwyn Studios with cinematographer Paul Ivano.[26] Although a scene from the Goldwyn Pictures film Souls for Sale that depicts von Stroheim directing is sometimes thought to be behind-the-scenes footage of Greed, it actually depicts von Stroheim directing Hersholt during one of these screen tests.[16]

Filming

Filming began in San Francisco on March 13, 1923[21] and lasted until late June.[28] Despite the initial contract between von Stroheim and Goldwyn, Lehr agreed to double the film's budget to $347,000 three days after shooting began.[29][30] Von Stroheim had already worked twenty-hour days for over two months of pre-production and collapsed on set after a few days of filming, but then remained in good health for the remainder of the shoot.[21] This was not the only mishap on set; during scenes shot at San Francisco Bay, Cesare Gravina got double pneumonia, making von Stroheim bitterly ashamed that Gravina's entire performance was later cut from the film, despite the actor's visible dedication to the role.[31] Hersholt was knocked out by Gowland during the picnic scene in which McTeague and Schouler fight, and Pitts was almost run over by a trolley.[32] In late May, Lehr visited von Stroheim on the set and praised the footage that he had seen, saying that "it has atmosphere, color and realism that could not possibly have been reproduced in the studio".[28]

The Death Valley scenes, including this final sequence, were filmed over two months during midsummer, in harsh conditions.

One scene that von Stroheim re-shot at the studio's insistence depicted a younger McTeague in his apprenticeship with Potter. In the scene McTeague is too embarrassed to examine the teeth of a young woman and Potter has to take over. Von Stroheim used a thinly disguised ZaSu Pitts to portray the woman, wanting the audience to see a resemblance with Trina, but the studio insisted that the scene was confusing and von Stroheim agreed to re-shoot it.[28] Von Stroheim's desire for authenticity was so extreme that he initially wanted a knife thrower to throw a real knife at Gowland during a scene in a bar, but Gowland refused to allow such a dangerous stunt and a special effect shot was used instead.[33]

After filming in San Francisco wrapped in late June, the production traveled to Death Valley. Most Hollywood films that required desert scenes settled for the local Oxnard dunes north of Los Angeles, but von Stroheim insisted on authenticity.[15] Death Valley had no roads, hotels, gas stations, or running water and was occupied by tarantulas, scorpions and poisonous snakes. The nearest populated area to the shoot was 100 miles away and insurance coverage was denied.[34] Filming in Death Valley lasted for two months during midsummer.[35] Some members of the production reported temperatures between 91 and 161 °F (33 and 72 °C), but the highest temperature officially recorded in Death Valley during the period was 123 degrees.[36] Of the 43 members of the cast and crew who worked on the Death Valley sequence, 14 became ill and were sent back to Los Angeles.[37]

While shooting, crew members would collapse of heat exhaustion every day. Hersholt spent a week in hospital after shooting was completed, suffering from internal bleeding.[34] Hersholt claimed to have lost 27 pounds during the shoot,[37] and was covered in blisters by the end of filming. He later said that he considered it the best role of his career.[38] In order to motivate Hersholt and Gibson during the scene where they fight, von Stroheim yelled at them, "Fight, fight! Try to hate each other as you both hate me!"[38] Throughout filming von Stroheim brought musicians on set to help create mood for the actors. He continued to use this for the Death Valley scenes with a harmonium and violin player.[39] A theme, inspired by the music of Ruggero Leoncavallo, was composed for the film and played throughout production. Other music used included the popular songs Nearer, My God, to Thee, Hearts and Flowers, Oh Promise Me and Call Me Thine Own.[40]

Filming moved to Placer County, CA on September 13 and continued for less than a month. The Big Dipper Mine had been closed for ten years, so von Stroheim convinced the Goldwyn Company to lease the mine and renovate it for filming. While first visiting Placer County during pre-production, von Stroheim had met Harold Henderson, a local resident whose brother had worked in the mine in the 1890s and who was also a fan of Norris. Von Stroheim hired Henderson to oversee the renovation of the mine and other locations in Colfax. Von Stroheim had also wanted to restore the local cemetery for a newly invented scene depicting McTeague's mother's funeral, but the Goldwyn Company turned down this proposal.[41] Inside the mine, von Stroheim usually shot at night between 9 PM and 6 AM.[42] William Daniels later said that von Stroheim had insisted on descending 3,000 feet into the mine for realism, even though the setting would have looked exactly the same at 100 feet.[43] Filming was completed on October 6, 1923,[11] after 198 days.[44] Despite his original contract stipulating that all films made by von Stroheim be under 8,500 feet, von Stroheim shot a total of 446,103 feet of footage for the film—running approximately 85 hours.[45]

Style

The wedding scene made innovative use of deep focus cinematography despite challenges with the lighting.

Von Stroheim's biographer Arthur Lennig compared the director's visual style to D. W. Griffith, but stated that "unlike Griffith, who viewed scenes as though through a fourth wall, Stroheim shot from many sides and from different angles; he also used deep-focus, meaningful foregrounds and effective camera movement."[46] The film's lighting often included high contrast, chiaroscuro techniques with pools or shafts of lights illuminating an otherwise dark space. Examples of this technique include the scene where McTeague begs Trina for money in a pool of moonlight[47] and the scene where characters ride a merry-go-round and alternate between light and silhouettes in darkness.[48]

Cinematographer William H. Daniels was especially proud of the wedding scene, which has a funeral procession visible through the window[49] and was difficult to light properly.[43] The film has often been praised for its use of deep focus cinematography, seventeen years before its more famous application in Citizen Kane.[50] Daniels also sometimes used incandescent lights instead of studio arc lights, due to the constraints of his locations.[51] Daniels later said that von Stroheim "was one of the first to insist on no make-up for men, on real paint on the walls which were shiny, real glass in the windows, pure white on sets and in costumes ... everything up to then had been painted a dull brown." (Sets painted dull brown helped mask scratches in worn film prints).[49] Although not officially credited, Ernest B. Schoedsack worked as a camera operator on the film.[52]

Stroheim favored Soviet style editing and Greed often uses dramatic close-ups and cuts instead of long takes. One exception to this is the scene where Marcus becomes angry with McTeague and breaks his pipe, which was shot in one long, unbroken take. Von Stroheim also used symbolic cross-cutting for dramatic effect, such as his use of animals in the film[53] and a shot of a train when McTeague and Trina first kiss.[48] In 1932 film theorist Andrew Buchanan called von Stroheim a montage director, stating that "each observation would be captured in a 'close-up' and at leisure, he would assemble his 'shots' in just the order which would most forcibly illustrate the fact."[54] In the 1950s film critic André Bazin praised von Stroheim's use of mise en scène and said the von Stroheim "has one simple rule for directing. Take a close look at the world, keep on doing so and in the end it will lay bare for you all its cruelty and ugliness."[54]

Despite von Stroheim's reputation as a perfectionist, the film contains anachronisms, such as scenes on Polk street where the main characters wear clothing from the 1890s but extras are dressed in clothes from the 1920s. Von Stroheim did his best to exclude such historical mistakes by only shooting buildings from the same era as the film's setting and by keeping cars out of the street while shooting. Daniels also stated that despite his desire for authenticity, von Stroheim would sometimes have walls knocked out of real locations to achieve a desired camera position.[55]

Themes

Frank Norris's novel was in the literary school of naturalism, which originated with French author Émile Zola[56] and shows the fate of its lower-class characters in terms of heredity and their environment[6] with the belief that "man's nature, despite free will, is determined by genetic and environmental factors"[56] and that heredity controls fate, despite their efforts at upward mobility.[57] This literary style was influenced by Charles Darwin and portrayed characters whose higher states of being, the rational and compassionate, are in conflict with their lower states of being, the "bête humaine" ("human beast").[57] McTeague was first published in 1899 and was inspired by an October 1893 murder case in which a poor husband with a history of beating his wife finally stole her money and stabbed her to death at her workplace in San Francisco.[5][58]

Von Stroheim did not see the film as political and told a journalist that he considered Greed to be like a Greek tragedy. Despite the characters' struggles with poverty and class, von Stroheim followed the naturalist technique of portraying characters whose lives are driven by fate and their inner nature. Von Stroheim often employed variations of this theme in his other films set in Europe, often involving a commoner falling in love with an aristocrat or royal.[32]

In the wedding banquet scene, Trina's mother grotesquely devours her food.

One of the cinematic techniques that von Stroheim used to visually portray naturalism was his use of animal symbolism.[59] McTeague is often associated with a canary in the film, which Norris only mentioned briefly in the novel.[60] Von Stroheim also altered Norris's original ending and in the film McTeague lets the canary out of its cage in Death Valley.[61] McTeague buys Trina a female canary as a wedding present[60] and early in their marriage von Stroheim cuts from a shot of them kissing to a shot of the birds fluttering wildly in their cage.[62] Other animal imagery includes cross cutting between a cat attempting to pounce on the canaries in the scene where Marcus says good-bye to McTeague and Trina without telling them that he has informed on McTeague,[60] as well as dogs, cats and monkeys associated with various supporting characters.[59] Von Stroheim also used the naturalist technique of giving characters specific objects, gestures or phrases that repeat throughout the film as a visual "leitmotif". For example, Trina tugged on her lips[63] and McTeague fiddled with his birdcage.[64]

Throughout his career Von Stroheim used grotesque imagery and characters. This is most apparent in the wedding banquet scene, which includes a midget, a hunchback, a woman with buck teeth and a boy on crutches.[65] The wedding guests violently and crudely devour their meal like animals, a scene unlike any other in films of that period, which usually treated meals with dignity and a sense of communion.[66] Other instances of grotesque imagery in the film include the scenes cut from the released version in which Trina's fingers become infected and have to be amputated.[67] Von Stroheim also often contrasted love scenes between McTeague and Trina with their ugly, lower-class environment, such as the sewer with the dead rat and a garbage truck driving by as they kiss.[68] Throughout the film the characters are driven farther into poverty and miserliness by their greed. Lennig stated, "What transpires between the documentary-like opening – gold mining as a business – and the hellish torture of Death Valley becomes an indictment of greed and perhaps even of humanity itself."[69]

Like his other films, von Stroheim used Christian imagery and symbols, such as crosses and churches.[70] Trina first shows signs of greed on Easter Sunday and is murdered by McTeague on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve was often depicted in von Stroheim's films and was close to the date of his father's death.[71] Lennig asserted that the character of McTeague's father (who was only briefly mentioned in the novel) is based on von Stroheim's own father, while McTeague's mother is a tribute to von Stroheim's mother, to whom Greed is dedicated.[72] Von Stroheim stated that he considered all of his good qualities to have come from his mother and all of his bad qualities to have come from his father.[73]

Editing

Initial editing

Editing Greed took almost a year and von Stroheim's contract did not include paying for his post-production work.[74] Von Stroheim was indecisive during the film's editing and often changed his mind. He felt restricted by his contract's limitation on the length of the film.[44] Von Stroheim credited himself in the film's beginning titles with "Personally directed by Erich von Stroheim" and also included the title "Dedicated to my mother".[75] In post-production, von Stroheim colored certain scenes with gold tinting by using the Handschiegl Color Process, in which individual frames are hand colored with stencils.[76] He and his chief film cutter Frank Hull[77] worked on the film for several months before completing a rough cut.[18]

Only twelve people saw the original 42-reel[a] version of Greed at a special screening in January 1924.[18] They included Harry Carr, Rex Ingram, Aileen Pringle, Carmel Myers, Idwal Jones, Joseph Jackson, Jack Jungmeyer, Fritz Tidden, Welford Beaton, Valentine Mandelstam and Jean Bertin.[78] After the screening Jones, Carr and Ingram all agreed that they had just seen the greatest film ever made and that it was unlikely that a better film would ever be made.[79] Carr wrote a review of the advance screening where he raved that he "saw a wonderful picture the other day—that no one else will ever see ... I can't imagine what they are going to do with it. It is like Les Miserables. Episodes come along that you think have no bearing on the story, then 12 or 14 reels later it hits you with a crash. For stark, terrible realism and marvelous artistry, it is the greatest picture I have ever seen. But I don't know what it will be like when it shrinks to 8 reels. Von Stroheim is imploring the Goldwyn people to make two installments of it and run it on two different nights."[80] Jonathan Rosenbaum suggested that Carr was most likely referring to a cut sequence early in the film that introduced all of the characters that lived in McTeague's building and established atmosphere without furthering the film's plot. Rosenbaum compared the cut sequence to novels of the 19th century and to the first few hours of Jacques Rivette's Out 1.[81] Jones publicly praised the advance screening and compared Greed to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Dr. Mabuse the Gambler.[80] However Welford Beaton of The Film Spectator disliked the 42-reel version and criticized its excessive use of close-ups.[80]

Some scenes, like this one, were gold tinted by Von Stroheim himself, hand coloring individual frames with stencils.

Von Stroheim knew the original version was far too long. Many sources claim that the 42-reel version was only ever intended to be either an assembly or a rough cut,[80] and that he chose to cut the film down to 24 reels by March 18, 1924,[15][54] with the intention of screening it with intermissions over two nights.[34] Von Stroheim had difficulty cutting the film down and told his friend Don Ryan, "I could take out sequences and thus get the job over in a day. That would be child's play. But I can't do it. It would leave gaps that could only be bridged through titles. When you do such a thing you have illustrated subtitles instead of a motion picture."[80] Von Stroheim later claimed that at this time the Goldwyn Company wanted him to shoot a scene of McTeague waking up in his dentist chair, showing the entire film to have been a bad dream.[80] While this was going on June Mathis, who was the head of the Story Department, had made her own 13-reel version of Greed by January 21, 1924. She ordered even more cuts to be made on January 29, but then left for Rome in early February to oversee the production of Ben-Hur and was uninvolved in the film's editing for several months.[82]

After having completed the 24-reel cut of Greed von Stroheim told Goldwyn executives that he could not cut another frame.[34] Goldwyn producers thought that this version was still too long and told him to cut it to a more manageable length. Von Stroheim then sent the film to his friend, film director Rex Ingram, who turned it over to his editor, Grant Whytock.[34] Whytock had worked with von Stroheim on The Devil's Pass Key and was familiar with the director's style and tastes. Whytock initially proposed that the film be split in two, with one 8-reel film ending with the wedding and a second 7-reel film ending at Death Valley. Whytock eventually cut the film down to 18 reels. His only major cut was the entire subplot of Zerkow and Maria, which he thought was "very distasteful".[83] Otherwise he simply cut down scenes and cut out 1,200 feet worth of quick "flash" shots that only lasted a few frames. However Whytock's version of Greed retained the prologue and other subplots, as well as much of the humor that was later cut out of the film.[83]

Whytock and Ingram screened their version of Greed to studio executives, who responded favorably to the film but worried that the tragic ending would be hard to sell to the public.[82] Ingram then sent the 18-reel version to von Stroheim and told him "if you cut one more frame I shall never speak to you again."[84] On April 10, 1924 the Goldwyn Company officially merged with Metro Pictures, putting von Stroheim's nemesis Thalberg directly in charge of Greed.[85] Von Stroheim and Louis B. Mayer had a lengthy confrontation over the film's editing, which according to both men ended with von Stroheim claiming that all women were whores and Mayer punching him.[86] Mayer disliked the film because of its lack of glamour, optimism and morality and considered it to be a guaranteed flop.[87]

Studio editing

MGM executives screened Greed at full length once to meet contractual obligations. Idwal Jones, a San Francisco critic, attended the all-day screening and wrote that while some of the film's scenes were compelling, Stroheim's desire that "every comma of the book [be] put in" was ultimately negative.[88] MGM then took control and re-edited it. June Mathis was ordered to cut it down further[89] and assigned an editor named Joseph Farnham to the job. Farnham was a well-known "titles editor", who patched scenes together using title cards to keep continuity. His contributions to Greed include the notorious title cards "Such was McTeague" and "Let's go over and sit on the sewer", which were snickered at for years to come.[90] Eventually Farnham reduced the film to 10 reels,[91] totalling 10,607 feet.[92] Von Stroheim later said that the film "was cut by a hack with nothing on his mind but his hat."[34] Von Stroheim later bitterly lamented that Greed was made before the success of Eugene O'Neil's four-hour play Strange Interlude, which was first produced in 1928 and was financially successful.[84] Although Mathis' actual involvement in the cutting has never been confirmed, she was credited as a writer due to contractual obligations. Von Stroheim angrily disowned the final version, blaming her for destroying his masterpiece.[93]

One week before the film's release the New York State Motion Picture Committee (which censored films) demanded several more cuts on moral grounds. These cuts included the administration of ether in the dental scenes and certain instances of foul language. Although these cuts were made to prints that were screened in New York State, the footage was kept in many other prints.[90]

Difference between von Stroheim's cut and MGM's cut

The main cuts to the film were the elimination of the film's two sub-plots and other entire sequences, while individual scenes were often not touched.[94][95] When commenting about the cuts made in the film to the Los Angeles Times, Thalberg stated "This whole story is about greed–a progressive greed. It is the story of the way greed grew in Trina's heart until it obsessed her. I found that the junk dealer's greed was so much greater than hers that it almost destroyed the theme. His intense greed drowned out Trina's greed just as a steam whistle drowns out a small street noise. Instead of hurting the picture, throwing out this junk dealer's story made the picture stronger." Thalberg also stated that he "took no chances in cutting it. We took it around to different theaters in the suburbs, ran it at its enormous length, and then we took note of the places at which interest seemed to droop."[96]

Individual scenes or sequences that were cut include McTeague and Trina's early, happy years of marriage, the sequence showing McTeague and Trina eventually moving into their shack,[95] the family life of the Sieppe family before Trina's marriage, the film's prologue depicting McTeague's mother and father at the Big Dipper mine and McTeague's apprenticeship, the more suggestive and sexual close-up shots depicting McTeague and Trina's physical attraction to each other, the scenes after McTeague has murdered Trina and roams around San Francisco and Placer County, additional footage of Death Valley, additional footage of Trina with her money, and a more gradual version of Trina's descent into greed and miserly obsession.[97]

Reception

Release and critical reviews

Greed premiered on December 4, 1924 at the Cosmopolitan Theatre in Columbus Circle, New York City, which was owned by William Randolph Hearst.[78] Frank Norris had once worked for Hearst as a foreign correspondent during the Spanish–American War and Hearst praised Greed, calling it the greatest film he had ever seen.[98] Hearst's newspapers promoted the film,[90] but MGM did very little advertising.[18] At the time of the release von Stroheim was in Los Angeles, having begun production on The Merry Widow on December 1.[15] In May 1926 Greed was released in Berlin, where its premiere famously caused a riot that may have been instigated by members of the then-fledgling Nazi party.[76]

The film received mostly critical reviews. The trade paper Harrison's Report said that "[i]f a contest were to be held to determine which has been the filthiest, vilest, most putrid picture in the history of the motion picture business, I am sure that Greed would win."[99] Variety Weekly called the film "an out-and-out box office flop" only six days after its premiere and claimed that the film had taken two years to shoot, cost $700,000 and was originally 130 reels long.[100] The review went on say that "nothing more morbid and senseless, from a commercial picture standpoint, has been seen on the screen for a long, long time" and that despite its "excellent acting, fine direction and the undoubted power of its story ... it does not entertain."[101] In its December 1924/January 1925 issue, Exceptional Photoplays called it "one of the most uncompromising films ever shown on the screen. There have already been many criticisms of its brutality, its stark realism, its sordidness. But the point is that it was never intended to be a pleasant picture."[102] In the February 1925 issue of Theatre Magazine, Aileen St. John-Brenon wrote that "the persons in the photoplay are not characters, but types - they are well selected, weighed and completely drilled. But they did not act; they do not come to life. They perform their mission like so many uncouth images of miserliness and repugnant animalism."[101] Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times gave the film a mostly positive review in regards to the acting and directing while criticising how it was edited, writing that MGM "clipped this production as much as they dared ... and are to be congratulated on their efforts and the only pity is that they did not use the scissors more generously in the beginning."[103] In a Life Magazine article, Robert E. Sherwood also defended MGM's cutting of the film and called von Stroheim "a genius ... badly in need of a stopwatch."[76] Iris Barry of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) disliked the tinting, saying "a not very pleasing yellow tinge is smudged in" to the film.[76] A March 1925 review in Pictureplay magazine stated, "perhaps an American director would not have seen greed as a vice."[104]

A more favourable review came from Richard Watts, Jr. of the New York Herald Tribune, who called Greed "the most important picture yet produced in America ... It is the one picture of the season that can hold its own as a work of dramatic art worthy of comparison with such stage plays as What Price Glory? and Desire Under the Elms."[76] The April 20, 1925 edition of The Montreal Gazette claimed it "impresses as a powerful film" and described the "capacity audience" screening as "one of the few pictures which are as worthy of serious consideration...which offer a real and convincing study of life and character and that secure their ends by artistic and intellectual means rather than by writing down to the level of the groundlings." The review went on to describe the direction as "masterly," citing "its remarkable delineation of character development and the subtle touches which convey ideas through vision rather than the written word, an all too-rare employment of the possibilities of the cinema play as a distinct branch of art capable of truthful and convincing revelation and interpretation of life's realities."[105] A review in Exceptional Photoplays stated that "Mr. von Stroheim has always been the realist as Rex Ingram is the romanticist and Griffith the sentimentalist of the screen, and in Greed he has given us an example of realism at its starkest. Like the novel from which the plot was taken, Greed is a terrible and wonderful thing."[106]

Box office

Greed was a financial disappointment.[18] On its initial run, it earned $224,500.39 in the United States, $3,063.11 in Canada and $47,264.05 in other markets. In total the film earned $274,827.55.[107] Von Stroheim biographer Arthur Lennig stated that according to MGM's records the final cost of Greed was $546,883.18.[108] Another biographer, Richard Koszarski, stated that the film's final cost was $665,603.02: $585,250.00 for the film's production, $30,000.00 for von Stroheim's personal fee, $54,971.82 for processing and editing the film, $53,654.28 for advertising and $1,726.92 for Motion Picture dues.[107]

Arthur Lennig asserted that MGM's official budget for Greed was suspiciously high for a film with no stars, no built sets, a small crew and with the inexpensive film stock. Lennig suspects that MGM averaged the film's cost with the more expensive The Merry Widow in order to prevent von Stroheim from getting a percentage of the more profitable film.[108] The Merry Widow ended up being a hit and earned more profits than Greed had lost;[109] it cost $614,961.90 but earned $996,226.25 on its initial run.[107]

Legacy

In his final years, von Stroheim said that "of all my films, only Greed was a fully realized work, only Greed had a total validity."[110] In 1926 a British foundation of Arts and Sciences requested a copy of the original version of Greed to keep in their archive, but their request was denied.[111]

Among those who have praised Greed over the years are Sergei Eisenstein;[112] Joseph von Sternberg, who said "We were all influenced by Greed;[74] Jean Renoir, who called it "the film of films";[113] and Ernst Lubitsch, who called von Stroheim "the only true 'novelist'" in films.[114] More recently director Christopher Nolan described the film as a "lost work of absolute genius."[115] Jonathan Rosenbaum has stated that Greed was a major influence on such films as King Vidor's The Crowd, Jean Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not, John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura, Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes and Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. Rosenbaum singled out American director Elaine May as being especially influenced by von Stroheim. In addition to Greed's influence on Mikey and Nicky Rosenbaum made strong comparisons between A New Leaf and Blind Husbands, The Heartbreak Kid and Foolish Wives and Ishtar and The Merry Widow.[116] The 1994 Jonathan Lynn film Greedy pays tribute to the film by giving the main characters the last name McTeague.[117]

In 1950, Henri Langlois screened the studio version of the film for von Stroheim. Von Stroheim said "it was for me an exhumation. It was like opening a coffin in which there was just dust, giving off a terrible stench, a couple of vertebra and a piece of shoulder bone."[1] He went on to say that "It was as if a man's beloved was run over by a truck, maimed beyond recognition. He goes to see her in the morgue. Of course, he still loves her but it's only the memory of her that he can love — because he doesn't recognize her anymore."[110]

In 1952 Sight and Sound magazine published its first list of the "ten greatest films ever made". Greed was tied for 7th place on that list. In 1962 it was tied for 4th on the same list. Since 1972 it has failed to reach a spot on the top ten.[111] In 1958 at the Brussels International Exposition, the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique named Greed as one of the twelve greatest films ever made, along with Battleship Potemkin, Bicycle Thieves, The Gold Rush, The Passion of Joan of Arc, La Grande Illusion, Intolerance, Mother, Citizen Kane, Earth, The Last Laugh and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.[74] When it revealed this list, the Cinémathèque published von Stroheim's original, uncut script for Greed, which came directly from von Stroheim's personal copy preserved by his widow Denise Vernac.[118]

In 1978 the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique released a list of "the most important and misappreciated American films of all time." Greed was third on its list after Citizen Kane and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.[111] In a University of Southern California list of the "50 Most Significant American Films" made by the school's Performing Arts Council, Greed was listed as number 21.[119] In 1991 Greed was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[120]

In 1999, Turner Entertainment (the film's current rights holder) decided to "recreate", as closely 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 von Stroheim. This restoration runs almost four hours and was produced by Rick Schmidlin.[121]

Myths and misconceptions

Von Stroheim was known to exaggerate events from his life and create myths about himself, such as about his aristocratic origins and military record in Austria.[122] He claimed that shortly after having moved to the US in the early 1910s, he had found a copy of McTeague in a motel in New York and read it in one sitting. He also said that it pushed him to make a career in filmmaking.[79] Georges Sadoul later stated that von Stroheim first read the novel in 1914, while living in poverty in Los Angeles.[14]

Claims that von Stroheim's original cut was a completely unabridged version of McTeague, are not accurate. Von Stroheim's 300-page script was almost as long as the original novel, but he rethought the entire story and invented new scenes, as well as extensively elaborating existing ones.[123] In the Norris novel, McTeague's back story in Placer County and relationships with his father, mother and Potter were remembered as a flashback and took two paragraphs. In von Stroheim's original Greed, this sequence took up the first hour of the film and was not a flashback.[124] Von Stroheim also modernized the novel's time span to between 1908 and 1923, a quarter century later than the novel.[123]

The film has sometimes been said to be over 100 reels long. Von Stroheim said that his initial edit was 42 reels, although Harry Carr remembered it as 45 reels.[80] Idwal Jones attended the same screening as Carr and remembered 42 reels while Paul Ivano said that the film ran 8 hours. Jean Bertin claimed to have seen a 47-reel version that was later cut to 42.[125] Grant Whytock remembered the edited version that von Stroheim initially sent to him as between 26 and 28 reels.[83] MGM's official studio files list the original cut of the film at 22 reels.[126] As recently as 1992, former MGM Story Editor Samuel Marx erroneously claimed that the original version of Greed was 70 reels.[127]

June Mathis is credited with co-writing the script due to her work on the 10-reel version. Mathis was the head of the Story Department at MGM and her contract stipulated that she would receive writing credit for all MGM films. She did not actually write any part of the screenplay.[19] She is also said to have changed the film's title from McTeague to Greed during post-production;[128] however, a publicity still of the cast and crew taken during production clearly indicates that the film was titled Greed before the MGM merger even took place.[129] The film's working title was "Greedy Wives", a joke on von Stroheim's previous film Foolish Wives; this working title was never considered as the film's actual title.[9]

The original version of Greed has been called the "holy grail" of film archivists.[15] Various reports of the original version proved to be unfounded. These "sightings" include claims that a copy existed in a vault in South America that was only screened once a year for invited guests on New Year's Eve, that a copy in the possession of a Texan millionaire was sold to Henri Langlois of Cinémathèque Française, that a film society in Boston held a private screening of a print found by a World War II veteran in Berlin from a tip by Emil Jannings, that David Shepherd of the American Film Institute had found a copy at a garage sale, that the head of a film society in Redwood City, CA owned "the longest existing version of Greed (purchased in Europe)" and that Benito Mussolini owned a personal copy (which was reported by von Stroheim himself).[130] There were also reports that MGM had retained a copy of the original version. Iris Barry of MoMA claimed that a copy was locked in the MGM vaults, although Thalberg denied it. It was also reported that John Houseman had a private screening at MGM and that MGM owned two copies stored in a vault in a Utah salt mine.[130] Lotte Eisner once claimed that in the 1950s and 1960s, several cans of films labeled "McTeague" were found in MGM's vaults and destroyed by executives who didn't know that the film was footage from Greed.[131] Von Stroheim's son Joseph von Stroheim once claimed that when he was in the Army during World War II, he saw a version of the film that took two nights to fully screen, although he could not remember exactly how long it was.[132]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b Weinberg 1972, pp. 17–18.
  2. ^ Lennig 2000, pp. 187–188.
  3. ^ Finler 1972, p. 7.
  4. ^ a b c Lennig 2000, p. 188.
  5. ^ a b c Lennig 2000, p. 186.
  6. ^ a b Wakeman 1987, p. 1073.
  7. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 114.
  8. ^ Lennig 2000, pp. 189–190.
  9. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 116.
  10. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 189.
  11. ^ a b c d e Lennig 2000, p. 190.
  12. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 31.
  13. ^ Koszarski 1983, pp. 116–117.
  14. ^ a b Rosenbaum 1993, p. 20.
  15. ^ a b c d e f Wakeman 1987, p. 1074.
  16. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 122.
  17. ^ Curtiss 1971, p. 164.
  18. ^ a b c d e Finler 1972, p. 29.
  19. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 16.
  20. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 16.
  21. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 124.
  22. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 127.
  23. ^ a b Finler 1972, pp. 17–18.
  24. ^ Curtiss 1971, p. 165.
  25. ^ Finler 1972, p. 17.
  26. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 119.
  27. ^ Finler 1972, pp. 22–23.
  28. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 135.
  29. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 21.
  30. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 37.
  31. ^ Finler 1972, p. 27.
  32. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 129.
  33. ^ Finler 1968, p. 52.
  34. ^ a b c d e f Finler 1972, p. 18.
  35. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 136.
  36. ^ "View Data". Retrieved December 28, 2012.
  37. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 23.
  38. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 24.
  39. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 81.
  40. ^ Curtiss 1971, p. 173.
  41. ^ Koszarski 1983, pp. 138–139.
  42. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 139.
  43. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 26.
  44. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 140.
  45. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 215.
  46. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 219.
  47. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 76.
  48. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 202.
  49. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 77.
  50. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 206.
  51. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 134.
  52. ^ Weinberg 1972, p. 21.
  53. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 75-76.
  54. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 142.
  55. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 22.
  56. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 187.
  57. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 118.
  58. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 18.
  59. ^ a b Lennig 2000, pp. 195–196.
  60. ^ a b c Lennig 2000, p. 198.
  61. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 214.
  62. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 200.
  63. ^ Finler 1968, p. 31.
  64. ^ Finler 1968, p. 38.
  65. ^ Lennig 2000, pp. 87–88.
  66. ^ Lennig 2000, pp. 204–206.
  67. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 211.
  68. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 95.
  69. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 199.
  70. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 91.
  71. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 90.
  72. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 193.
  73. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 194.
  74. ^ a b c Weinberg 1972, p. 15.
  75. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 41.
  76. ^ a b c d e Koszarski 1983, p. 147.
  77. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 326.
  78. ^ a b Weinberg 1972, p. 13.
  79. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 14.
  80. ^ a b c d e f g Koszarski 1983, p. 141.
  81. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 29.
  82. ^ a b Koszarski 1983, p. 144.
  83. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 143.
  84. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 28.
  85. ^ Koszarski 1983, pp. 142–143.
  86. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 38.
  87. ^ Curtiss 1971, p. 178.
  88. ^ As quoted by Roger Ebert (1999). "Greed", December 12, 1999. Retrieved December 1, 2010
  89. ^ Unterburger, Amy L. (1999). The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia: Women on the Other Side of the Camera. Visible Ink Press. p. 270. ISBN 1-57859-092-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  90. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 145.
  91. ^ Koszarski 1983, pp. 144–145.
  92. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 327.
  93. ^ Ward Mahar, Karen (2006). Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood. JHU Press. p. 200. ISBN 0-8018-8436-5.
  94. ^ Finler 1972, p. 11.
  95. ^ a b Finler 1972, p. 12.
  96. ^ Vieira 2010, p. 47.
  97. ^ Finler 1972, pp. 19–20.
  98. ^ Curtiss 1971, p. 181.
  99. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 146.
  100. ^ Finler 1972, p. 31.
  101. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 218.
  102. ^ Finler 1972, p. 32.
  103. ^ Hall, Mordaunt (5 December 1924). "Movie Review Greed (1924) THE SCREEN; Frank Norris's "McTeague."". The New York Times. Retrieved January 19 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  104. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 36.
  105. ^ "'GREED' IMPRESSES AS POWERFUL FILM: Screen Version of Norris's "McTeague" Draws Crowds to Palace". The Montreal Gazette. April 20, 1925. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  106. ^ Vieira 2010, p. 48.
  107. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 173.
  108. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 217.
  109. ^ Finler 1972, p. 10.
  110. ^ a b Weinberg 1972, p. 18.
  111. ^ a b c Koszarski 1983, p. 148.
  112. ^ Weinberg 1972, p. 10.
  113. ^ Weinberg 1972, p. 16.
  114. ^ Weinberg 1972, p. 17.
  115. ^ "Christopher Nolan's Top 10". http://www.criterion.com. Retrieved February 6, 2013. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  116. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, pp. 52–58.
  117. ^ "Greedy :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  118. ^ Finler 1972, p. 6.
  119. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 51.
  120. ^ "National Film Registry". National Film Preservation Board, Library of Congress. Retrieved July 14, 2012.
  121. ^ "GREED". http://www.tcm.com. Retrieved September 9, 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  122. ^ Lennig 2000, p. xii.
  123. ^ a b Lennig 2000, p. 191.
  124. ^ Lennig 2000, p. 192.
  125. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 24.
  126. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 25.
  127. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, p. 10.
  128. ^ Weinberg 1972, p. 41.
  129. ^ Weinberg 1972, p. 30.
  130. ^ a b Weinberg 1972, p. 9.
  131. ^ Rosenbaum 1993, pp. 38–39.
  132. ^ Koszarski 1983, p. 149.

Bibliography

Notes

  1. ^ It is traditional to discuss the length of theatrical motion pictures in terms of 'reels'. The standard length of a 35 mm motion picture reel is 1,000 feet (300 metres). This length runs approximately 11 minutes at sound speed (24 frames per second) and slightly longer at silent movie speed (which may vary from approximately 16 to 22 frames per second). Therefore the 42-reel version of Greed was 462 minutes (8 hours) at 24 fps and longer at other speeds.
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