Film Review: Greed (1924)

11 months ago (Edited)

(source: tmdb.org)

Conflict between pure artistic vision that should be preserved at all cost and those who want art to be subjected to more practical considerations is old as the art itself. It was usually won by the latter, but losers sometimes had the consolation of being hailed by critics and historians as misunderstood visionaries and their work as unrealised masterpieces. History of Hollywood provides such examples. Probably the most spectacular and best known is Greed, 1924 silent drama directed by Erich von Stroheim, a film that enjoys reputation of one of the greatest films ever made.

The film is based on McTeague, 1899 novel by Frank Norris. The plot begins in 1908 in Placer County in northeastern part of California where the protagonist John McTeague (played by Gibson Gowland) works as a miner. Having great physical strength as the only visible quality, he doesn’t have much prospects in life, but everything changes with an arrival of Dr. “Painless” Potter (played by Erich von Rintzau), travelling dentist. Apparently impressed by McTeague’s ability to pull people’s tooth with bare hands, he takes him as an apprentice. Years later McTeague has accumulated enough skill and money to open his own practice in San Francisco. There his best friend Marcus Schouler (played by Jean Herscholt) introduces him to his cousin and love interest Trina Sieppe (played by ZaSu Pitts). McTeague, while working on her teeth, falls in love with her. Later he tells that to Marcus who decides to give up on Trina for the sake of friendship. McTeague and Trina marry, but everything changes when it turns out that Trina won 5000 US$ from lottery ticket. Schouler is now embittered, blaming his friend from taking away not only the woman he loved but also the wealth he was supposed to have. The money does the same to McTeague’s marriage – Trina decides to put in investment fund that would pay modest dividend every month, while McTeague would prefer it to be spent on various luxury items. This conflict escalates when vengeful Marcus informs authorities about McTeague not going to dental college, thus depriving him of his livelihood. McTeagues are becoming poor, while miserly Trina refuses to touch her money, which would bring marital tension to boiling point and result in violence and bloodshed.

Austrian director Erich von Stroheim was one of the more colourful and iconic personalities of the early Hollywood. First he attained fame as an actor by playing depraved aristocratic villains then switched to directing immensely expensive films usually dealing with upper class excesses. His tyrannical ways on the set made him unpopular among actors, while his tendency to go over the budget made him unpopular among studio executives. In 1922, during difficult production of Merry-Go-Round, he was fired from the set by Irving Thalberg, then general manager of Universal Pictures. Stroheim turned to Goldwyn Company, which promised him a creative freedom, which Stroheim did to make a film which was very personal and much different from everything he had made before.

Frank Norris, the author of the original novel, was one of the best known American representatives of naturalism, literary movement originally championed by French writer Emile Zola. Norris’ novels went beyond realism and featured characters at the bottom of the society whose tragic plight was often product of their faulty genes as much as class divisions in society. Stroheim was enthusiastic about the novel, especially due to his own experiences as an impoverished man in 1910s San Francisco that resembled some of those experienced by novel’s characters and happening on the same locations. Stroheim decided to apply Norris’ naturalistic approach to the big screen. As such, film happens almost exclusively in mines, deserts and parts of San Francisco inhabited mostly by lower strata of the society. The people in the film often look and act grotesque. The main male stars – English actor Gibson Gowland and Danish actor Jean Hersholt – actually look like character actors. Even popular comedienne Zasu Pitts, who decided to try something different with dramatic role, does anything in her power to make initially charming Trina as dislikeable as possible and make her violent demise look in line with generally dark and depressive tone of the film. Greed continues with this approach towards the very ending, in which two characters, succumbing to greed and suicidal madness, provide one of the most powerful finales in history of silent Hollywood.

Stroheim’s insistence of maximum realism made Greed powerful, but it also ultimately doomed the film and, in a long term, Stroheim’s career in Hollywood. Stroheim insisted on making films on locations, which included not only San Francisco and mountains of California, but also Death Valley where, due to unforgiving desert conditions, number of crew members and Hersholt experienced all kinds of health problems requiring hospitalisation. The bigger issue for Stroheim and Goldwyn Pictures was whether the audience would accept all such uncompromising bleakness and whether they would sit for hours in order to experience it. After months of gruelling production and months of editing Stroheim finally delivered first version, lasting roughly nine hours, to studio executives. This version was originally seen only by twelve people who would later claim that it was unquestionable masterpiece. Greed was, on the other hand, deemed too long to be commercially viable. Stroheim was asked to cut it to more manageable length. Stroheim failed to do so and, in the meantime, Goldwyn Pictures was merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, studio whose one of top executives became Stroheim’s former nemesis Irving Thalberg. The film was finally cut without Stroheim’s approval to version lasting somewhat over two hours. Greed was greeted with mixed reviews, but the general audience, predictably, rejected it resulting in a flop.

Stroheim’s reputation never recovered and in few years he had to switch career back to acting, usually playing character roles, including some classics like The Grand Illusion and Sunset Boulevard. Greed was, however, rediscovered in 1950s and became quite appreciated by critics and film scholars who found its style influential to the works of cinema giants like Renoir and Kurosawa. As such it often scores very high in critics’ polls of the best films ever made. Like with many censored and suppressed films for the period, the integral version became something of a Holy Grail for silent cinema enthusiasts, but attempts to find original cut proved fruitless to this day. The closest to restoration came in 1999 with a four hour version that combines preserved footage, intertitles from Stroheim’s script and still photographs from deleted scenes. This version, although it requires some patience from the modern audience, can be recommended to cinephiles interested in early cinema as one of the most influential works of 1920s Hollywood.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)