Directed by Erich von Stroheim

Position on the list (at time of viewing): 100

This is von Stroheim’s most highly rated film, and is broadly considered to be one of the most influential and excellent silent films of all time. It is another film masterpiece that was cut down by studio interference, and much of the original content remains lost. Stroheim shot 85 hours of total film for the production, then spent a year editing it down to about a nine hour cut that was shown to studio personnel and twelve other people total. Three of the twelve said that it was the greatest movie that had ever been made or would likely ever be made, comparing it to Les Miserables or War and Peace. The studio cut the film from nine hours to two, removing entire plotlines and characters from it in order to trim it down and using intertitles to bridge the narrative gaps in the new film. Stroheim was furious at these edits, but was contractually unable to do anything about them, and had to watch as his movie was released in a butchered, nearly incomprehensible form. The full edit of the movie has long been considered one of many Holy Grails of film restoration, with rumors persisting to this day that this or that eclectic millionaire has a private copy somewhere. The version that I watched for this review was a partially restored version, using some found footage, some production stills, and more intertitles to attempt to restore some portions of the film’s missing segments. It clocked in at just under four hours, so still many hours shorter than the original. I did not particularly like it.

Now, that is a weighty sentence to simply throw around after such an elaborate and meticulous outlining of the film’s backstory and fame, so I will attempt to clarify as best I can. Greed (as I saw it at least) is a film that I respect, but not one that I can bring myself to enjoy in any meaningful way. It is a brutal and unpleasant slog through the baser instincts of humanity with no real catharsis and for which I can supply no clear exegesis. The movie concerns a man named McTeague (Gibson Gowland) who is a pretty horrible human being and never really learns to be a better one and eventually dies having learned nothing and evolved in no meaningful way. He is surrounded by other people who are seemingly trapped in a deterministic existence of drudgery and vice, and who similarly learn nothing before dying or otherwise departing the narrative. Now, I am generally down for a depressing, or even a hateful examination of the human condition, but this one is just so burdensome that I couldn’t find any pleasure in it at all. It was brutally long, and much of the restored footage was simply stills with dialogue played over them, or laborious and dense intertitles explaining what I was missing, and it just didn’t work for me.

All that being said, there is absolutely genius to be found in this film. While I don’t like it nearly as well as von Stroheim’s later, more succinct work, it is clear that he is an artist of uncompromising and often brilliant vision. The stories that surround and inform this film would fill a book (and have, actually). Production was notoriously difficult and over budget, with von Stroheim insisting on location shooting for even scenes that took place in Death Valley, which was an uninhabited wasteland at the time. The effort rivaled and eventually surpassed his earlier work on Foolish Wives. Multiple actors were injured, hospitalized, or otherwise compromised in its production. Some of the actors who suffered so greatly for their art were even cut in their entirety from the film, a fact which infuriated and shamed von Stroheim. This attention to meticulous detail, though, resulted in a film that is unlike anything that came before it. The scenes that survive intact feel real and brutal like nothing else that I had seen before on the list. The ending, in particular, is a powerhouse of emotion and desperation that managed to wake me from my torpor and really feel for the characters, despicable though they were.

The film also, and perhaps less famously, uses a lot of difficult editing and filming techniques. A huge amount of the movie was shot in deep focus, allowing multiple elements in the frame to all be in focus at once, giving the movie much more of a realistic feel than many others of the time. While this effect is subtle, it adds greatly to the feeling of realism that the movie achieves. This film was incredibly historically significant, influencing everything from the Italian Neorealists of the 1940s and 50s to Huston’s brilliant Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which borrows both thematic and narrative elements from it. In my opinion, though, it is a movie to be respected and studied more than enjoyed. Perhaps it is my detachment from the moment of the movie, which makes it harder to appreciate its achievements; or perhaps it is the version that I watched, filled with almost two hours of still images contrasting with the dynamism of the surviving film sections. Whatever it was, I cannot bring myself to give this movie a recommendation to any but the most dedicated film buff, interested in an artifact of film history.

Overall: