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Greed Overview:

Greed (1924) was a Silent Films - Film Adaptation Film directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer.

SYNOPSIS

A silent-era monument, and intended by its director to achieve monumental length: eight hours. Even with studio-enforced cuts, von Stroheim's story (from the Frank Norris novel McTeague) remains powerful. A dentist loses everything because of his wife's (Pitts) fixation on money. He becomes a fugitive maddened by lust for money, and kills his captor, only to find himself handcuffed to a corpse and the gold he desires out of his reach. The video release includes a prologue hosted by film historian Kevin Brownlow explaining the controversy around cuts made to the film and the music score.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion).

Greed was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1991.

Greed BlogHub Articles:

Screen Capture Theatre: "Scandal Sheet," or Greed All About It

By David on Mar 25, 2022 From The Man on the Flying Trapeze

From out of the blue of the western sky comes ... Screen Capture Theatre! Today's entry: the 1952 film ... "Scandal Sheet" takes place in a mythical world where people read newspapers. Rush Limbaugh -- I mean Broderick Crawford -- plays Mark Chapman, hard-driving newspaper editor. Chapman... Read full article

Silents are Golden: A Closer Look at – Greed (1924)

By Lea Stans on Nov 18, 2021 From Classic Movie Hub Blog

Silents are Golden: A Closer Look at – Greed (1924) With its deeply, grittily realistic story and grand, almost operatic themes, Frank Norris’s 1899 novel McTeague is one of the great American books of the late 19th century. While many critics disliked it at the time for being overly “vulga... Read full article

Greed (1924)

By 4 Star Film Fan on Jun 12, 2016 From 4 Star Films

With some cinematic endeavors, there is simply an aura that surrounds them which informs how we look at them. Erich von Stroheim’s ambitious silent film Greed is such a picture. To this day, a full cut of the film has never been found and perhaps never will be, but it has survived in two versi... Read full article

Greed (1924)

By 4 Star Film Fan on Jun 12, 2016 From 4 Star Films

With some cinematic endeavors there is simply an aura that surrounds them which informs how we look at them. Erich von Stroheim’s ambitious silent film Greed is such a picture. To this day, a full cut of the film has never been found and perhaps never will be, but it has survived in two versio... Read full article

Greed (1924)

By 4 Star Film Fan on Jun 3, 2016 From 4 Star Films

With some cinematic endeavors there is simply an aura that surrounds them which informs how we look at them. Erich von Stroheim’s ambitious silent film Greed is such a picture. To this day, a full cut of the film has never been found and perhaps never will be, but it has survived in two versio... Read full article

See More Greed Articles

Greed Quotes:

Marcus: There's no water... within a hundred miles o' here!
[the two men hopelessly stand by the dead mule in the middle of the desert]
Marcus: We... are... dead... men!
Trina: Let's go sit on the sewer.
See More Quotes from Greed
Greed Facts
The original 42 reel version is one of the top ten "lost films" of the American Film Institute
Real locations in San Francisco and Oakland were used, even for interiors. The house depicted in the film, however, is not actually located on Polk street, as it is in the story. Much of Polk street had been remodeled around the time Stroheim took his company to San Francisco, and he decided that it looked too modern for the film. The company selected a building on the corner of Hayes and Laguna and completely took it over. The building still stands.
Erich von Stroheim:  [prostitutes]  In a scene that was part of Stroheim's original cut, McTeague's father is shown carousing with prostitutes.
Concerning the editor hired to cut "Greed" down to 2 hours, Erich von Stroheim supposedly commented: "The only thing he had on his mind was his hat!"
According to a newsreel produced by the CV (Cornelius Vanderbilt) News Service, the production utilized a crew of thirty-nine men and one woman while filming in Death Valley.
See More Facts about Greed >>