Greed (1924) 1/29

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filmfanatic99
October 27, 2008

Directed by Eric von Stronheim. Running time approx. 4 hours. Made in 1924. The story of the making of the movie has become a Hollywood legend. Under the aegis of the Goldwyn studio, von Stroheim ...

Directed by Eric von Stronheim.
Running time approx. 4 hours.
Made in 1924.

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 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 an astonishing ten hours in length, produced at a cost of over $500,000 — an unheard of sum at that time (though Stroheim's 1921 film Foolish Wives was publicized by MGM as costing over a million) [1]. After screening the full-length film once to meet contractual obligations [2], Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that acquired Goldwyn during production, forced von Stroheim to edit the film to a more manageable length, and, with the assistance of fellow director Rex Ingram and editor Grant Whytock, he reluctantly trimmed the film to about four hours. The film was then removed from von Stroheim's 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 time frame. Existing prints of Greed run at about two hours and twenty minutes. The hours of cut film were destroyed by a janitor cleaning a vault who thought they were not important film rolls and threw them in an incinerator (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 of its time. 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 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 director Erich von Stroheim. This restoration runs almost four hours. The re-edit was produced by Rick Schmidlin. (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).

In 1991, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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gjelmgoe (3 days ago) Show Hide

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is anybody out there,who has the original /9 hours) please answere.

filmfanatic99 (2 days ago) Show Hide

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doesn't exist. This is the best we will ever get

gjelmgoe (2 days ago) Show Hide

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thanx. i´m sad but know i must face the reality.

BaaBaaRaa (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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WOW... to see some of the mining machines in action... my sis lives up there in Gold Country. I've walked the flumes, but this really brings it to life. Wish it would come to the Stanford Theatre, so I could watch it on the big screen.

giannireb68 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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I have to agree with Ironbudokan.But you don't watch a Stroheim film for the absorbing narrative. It's all about the visual (and visceral) spell he weaves.

giannireb68 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide

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Many authorities consider this work to have the some of the most brilliant images ever recorded on film. I recently purchased von Stroheim's unfinished masterpiece "Queen Kelly" (1928)- the one that destroyed his career-and I could not believe how disturbed and visionary this man was. He was easily fifty years ahead of his time.

BloodPump (3 weeks ago) Show Hide

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I'll watch this one a little later.

I love lengthy films (War and Peace stands as my third favorite film of all time, and its a good eight hours long), but I don't have the time to watch this at the moment. Still, I'll probably end up loving this.

Damn shame they had to cut out a good half of the movie though. That sucks.

louiseduvee (4 weeks ago) Show Hide

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I'm obsessed with this movie, so I thank you, from my heart for posting it.

panag3 (1 month ago) Show Hide

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Thanks so much for uploading this!!

gheeao (1 month ago) Show Hide

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THANK YOU

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Greed (1924) 1/29

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