Edgar Allan Pooh . . . as its Jewish Villainess is meant to illustrate the Bible verse, "The love of Gold is the root of all Evil." When Trina chances upon a hoard of gold coins, she is even less willing to part with one of them than Smaug the HOBBIT dragon. Worse yet, she bludgeons blind beggars to death in order to steal the cents in their tin cups. (This scene was among the seven hours of deleted footage contained on my GREED "director's cut" disc set.) Trina is shown here shopping at the "Semite Market," paying a nickle for a week's worth of rancid family dinner meat that her butcher says has been rejected by the mongrel alley dogs. Since Erich Von Stroheim was Hitler's second-favorite movie director, it's not hard to picture the future Fuhrer watching all nine hours of GREED again and again, taking breaks only to scribble another chapter of his MEIN KAMPF rant now and then. America's TCM TV Channel occasionally runs GREED late at night in the belief that not everyone who views its edited 129-minute version will become a Genocidal Megalomanic Fascist Dictator. Let's hope that they're right about that!

cstotlar-1 I don't know many times I've seen this. Along with everyone else, I agree that the full version must have been powerful beyond words, but what we have here is probably the best possible product of the nearly impossible task of reduction. For that, I'm profoundly thankful. There were several parallel stories in the original script, some rather interesting, a few of not much interest at all. The major story of McTeague and his wife is the strongest and we can only guess (through the version we have now) what was going on around the central characters. In this respect, the truncated version is acceptable, given the time frame. This film was presented on television with stills and narrative inter-titles from the original and it wasn't really very successful. The rhythm was askew, of course, and things didn't "gel" at all. My big gripe is that this should be available on DVD. Why the foot-dragging?Curtis Stotlar

tylerp-275-916754 Greed(1925) was based on a novel that was in the tradition of great long novels like Crime and Punishment or War & Peace. The director, Erich Von Stroheim wanted to do a faithful adapation of the book McTeague because of his fascination with the theme of greed. He did do a faithful adaption but ended up paying a stiff price for his drive towards perfection. Marvelous film that is one of the 100 greatest films of all time. The acting is terrific and the story is compelling to follow.Gibson Gowland does a convincing job in the role of Dr. McTeague. Like many of the director's early films, Greed(1925) was severely cut. Original running time of the movie was nine hours. Its a disgrace that we will never see the full cut ever resurface in the theaters or DVD. One of the best films from the 1920s(besides Metropolis) to suffer at ridiculous cuts at the hands of the censors and studios.

IMDBcinephile The audience were not able to access the over-excessive time; the lack of humor was an attribute to that as well. They couldn't handle looking at a study of a dramaturgical realistic story. So accustomed to the likes of Arbuckle, Mary Pickwalsh and so many more, Von Stroheim was known for how autocratic he was in "The Heart of Humanity", and this fundamentally changed his image from an immigrant to the bad guy.The story involves Mcteague (Gibson Gowland), a young boy working in the mines; his Mother puts him under the wing of a Dentist, so that he can aspire to something; he shows an aptitude in it and he is signed up to work in Dentist with him. His Friend Markus is given his establishing scene, and we see Mcteague's love interest, Trina (Zasu Pitts) Markus' cousin; the way he initially embraces her is just deeply intimate with her before he gives her a procedure and this underlines the depth of the movie. The Grannis characters are another subplot he centers on; we see how they're deprived of money and have a lust for it. There is another subplot involving Maria, who is a subject of the same thing; riddled with money, but incapable of keeping it with the extravaganza she can spend it with and in such high dosages.Trina gets a bootleg of a lottery ticket and she wins $5,000 through it; she then indulges with it and so does McTeague; however in the duration of their marriage, they idle away, McTeague's establishment is taken over and he becomes redundant, he becomes a drunken dipsomaniac, lost to hitting his wife and feigning his love for her "I'm in a turn" - he goes for houses near the point, but aware that she is prodigal, they struggle to get one.From Frank Norris' novel, he speaks of the charlatan without respect and rightfully so; like in "Citizen Kane" and in modern days "The Social Network", avaricious misers get lost to nothing but Dystopia; what's fascinating is how Von Stroheim directs the actors in a very unbinding but really brutal way. The golden tooth that McTeague finds is his "jewel" and he gives it back to the person who owns his Dentist Establishment.The movie is just brilliant! It is even reconstructed through panels of images in a lot of parts to constitute to its 4hr length, but the metaphors, like a metaphor for gluttony when Stroheim makes everybody at the wedding gorge their selves on food is just a sense that he is truly trying to make us feel this concept sensuously. They are unable to change their house...McTeague gorging into his money is then the real focal point of the movie. It chronicles the mans troubles and instincts at wealth, and even turning on the people that blossom his life. Even when he negotiates with his Friend to take her out of his tutelage, you feel a genuine sense of self indulgence. From what the movie says in its intertitles for exposition, she does have a baby as well.However, now on to why I love it: I love it because Stroheim's brass, bleak and uncompromising reality very much challenges that of our own intrinsic qualities, but dramatised so far that it becomes an extension of the deeper and inhumane; themes so associated now a days, but never done quite as well. Frank Norris said (paraphrased) that he was trying to show this in his novel.Also the cross cutting of Stroheim as he utilizes a Cat's face and puts it frame by frame to the redundancy of Mcteague is deliberately off key; when looking into it is also a rapacious prey looking for its scraps of food as well. Like in "Birth of a Nation" where Griffith uses a Cat and a Dog to portray Hostility, Stroheim is akin to that in that scene. From the very beginning McTeague drunk heartily in celebrations; the pain of his fall makes it all the more unbearable. But withering to the idea established, it fits appropriately. The movie has a certain core that fits tightly into it; it's like a painting, created with the strokes of fervor, only to simplify the intricate idea of life, hindsight or just the wholehearted desires. The thing is the Grannis, Marie and Mcteagues all had it coming in hindsight and this is what is, maybe not endearing, but rather hard hitting.I like Chaplin and so on, but they don't have this type of awe-inspiring effect that "Greed" has on me; inspiring "Sunset" on a way and imbuing an unfortunate legacy as being the most sought out gem of the silent era. However, the version I had was 3hrs 55mins and I would recommend getting this one; it's a hard DVD to locate, but it is possible to get one; you just have to scrutinize the internet and there you will most likely find a copy.For what ever it costs, this movie is definitely warranted for repeated viewings; the "movie" shouldn't even be deemed a movie. It should be deemed a relic from a time, lurking underneath the "golden mines" it seems; the film fanatics all want to excavate it, and collect it, and I was in the same position because I dislike watching movies on the Internet.But for all it's worth, Turner Classic Movies have done a sublime job at reduxing this. Brutally passionate and uncompromising, "Greed" is a movie that shouldn't be dismissed; not by anybody with any serious output to Cinema; it's there as a personal statement for both Stroheim (I think) in his extravagant budgets for movies (this one cost $500,000) and what cinema can do to our manipulation as a spectator; the length only proves that he was really trying to do a story with turns and twists and by doing so has fleshed it out to embrace the suspense.