Greed (1924)

Mac is ready to attack

Directed by Erich von Stroheim

Starring Zasu Pitts, Gibson Gowland and Jean Hersholt

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corporation

Before moving onto 1926, we take one last backward look to 1924 and Erich von Stroheim's Greed. Widely considered the director's masterpiece, Greed is as much known for its tortured history as its critical praise. The film was originally ten hours long. The studio naturally cut it back to two hours and the eight hours lost is considered one of the great tragedies of the silent era. 

I can't speak to the value of the ten hour version or even the two hour version. I cannot imagine sitting down to watch a half day long movie. I also cannot fathom trying to get through a two hour film that was butchered from a film five times longer. 

The four hour restored version is a good compromise. It includes the two hour version cut together with production stills and intertitles that fill in the story gaps. The editors use the camera to zoom into and out of photos to focus our attention, an approach that works well. 

So how is the movie I saw?

In a word: brilliant. 

When the word "epic" is applied to movies, it usually means world-altering events, massive landscapes and larger-than-life characters. Greed is an epic, but it's an epic writ small. The movie alters the world of these characters in massive and tragic ways. 

At its heart, Greed is about three characters. McTeague is a simple man in both thought and desire. Marcus is his best friend, always looking for the next angle. And Trina is Marcus' cousin and the object of both men's desire. 

Marcus reluctantly steps aside for his friend "Mac" and Trina agrees to marry him, though it's clear she's not entirely in love with him. Then, a fourth character introduced: money. And the idea of cash wreaks havoc on their relationships. 

Trina wins $5000 in a lottery. She invests the money, but becomes a miser stealing from her husband at every opportunity. McTeague wants to spend a little more freely, which of course puts him at odds with his wife who is squirreling away every penny. And Marcus damns his own luck. If he had just ended up with Trina, he'd be the rich man. 

A creepy example of the gold tint used at key moments

Greed does not do the obvious Hollywood thing and let its characters become rich and addicted to an unrealistic, lavish lifestyle. The film is far more interested in the concept of money. Before the lottery win, none of the characters really knew what they didn't have. Once one of them gets a check, their entire existence becomes preoccupied with earning, stealing, or hustling the next dime. 

It's not accurate to say though that the money creates the characters' failings.  The money simply magnifies the flaws that were already there. Marcus was always looking for the latest fashion or coolest turn of phrase.  He used artificial means to make himself superior. When the lottery win shows him how little he really has, he has to lash out. McTeague has a gentleness to him, but an anger as well.  Our introduction to him is him throwing a man from a bridge during an argument over a bird.

McTeague rises above it for a while. But then he loses his dentistry practice (turns out you need to be licensed). And he can't hold down any other job. By the time Trina is refusing to give her husband a nickel for carfare to get to a job interview in the rain, we all know this is not going to end well. 

The stakes could not be higher. I'd say love is at stake, but true love was never in the cards for any of these people. We see where the high road leads in a couple of elderly neighbors who discover they're soulmates. And we see the path to hell in a craven junk dealer and his wife. And while the former is held out as an ideal, it is never a real option.

I love the tale spun here.  The movie is populated with some great dialogue and quirky characters supporting a tale of mankind's depravity. If this were being remade today, Joel and Ethan Coen would be behind the characters

The acting here is great. None of the players are inhabiting real characters. Rather, they are the personification of greed and goldlust, but that's exactly what the movie needs. As her desire for more cash takes over, Zasu Pitts plays Trina as completely unhinged. I particularly liked Gibson Gowland as McTeague. Even in his kindest moments, you can feel the rage bubbling below the surface. The secondary characters all perfectly execute what the script requires.

The real star is the director himself. The framing and editing are first rate. More than that, the film uses perspective to make McTeague feel larger than life. It's the type of camerawork Orson Welles turned into an art form in Citizen Kane. 

Greed is a tale of envy, stealing, murder and, well, greed. It tracks the way men and women can allow jealousy and sin to fester like a cancer until it consumes them totally. By the time McTeague is escaping into Death Valley, we know that's not just a place, but the inevitable conclusion to this epic morality play. 

***** out of *****