Item #: 10508 Category: SILENT Format: VHS MPAA Rating: PG

Woolly Rating: 5/10 (147 votes)

MEMBER COMMENTS ON THIS VIDEO

Kevin Rayburn

Nov 13, 2000 @ 16:12:29

A Stunning Restoration that Definitively Puts this Film Among the Greatest Ever Made
Plenty has been written about "the skeleton of (director Erich Von Stroheim's) dead child," as he characterized the standard 2-hour butchered version of his 1925 masterpiece, Greed. Why the film was cut down so dramatically by the studio is really no mystery, despite the outrage and lament of film buffs. One can understand MGM's position as a money-making enterprise: there was no precedent in film history to suggest box office success would result from a 9-hour, unrelentingly realistic tragedy about a simple married couple--and several associated characters--losing their loves, their property and their lives because of their obsession with money. And when MGM took Stroheim's 4-hour final cut and whacked THAT in half the casualties were two major plotlines that thematically contrasted and compared to the main surviving story thread. This "restoration," using hundreds of production stills taken during the filming of the lost scenes, makes it clear that Greed was a substantially different, and far greater film, than the standard, simplified version. The two-hour cut, never among my favorite films, always seemed too abrupt in character motivation (McTeague and Trina's tragic fall happens much too fast, especially the wife's conversion to obsessive stinginess) and in plot development (the final showdown in Death Valley between McTeague and his former friend Marcus Schouler, for instance, always seemed too casually tacked on to the end for believability). But the cumulative power of the story in this restoration convinces me that Stroheim made in Greed, arguably, one of the 10 or 20 greatest films in history--one that seriously needs to be reassessed as at least equally important in technical and narrative innovation for the American cinema as perennial list topper "Citizen Kane." For one thing, the constant and earnest use of symbolism, while often crude and obvious, is also at times startlingly subtle and sophisticated. The use of deep focus photography (in two crucial scenes that survive) is as dramatic and impressive as anything in Kane, and is something that filmmakers today, with all their digital wizardry would be hard pressed to duplicate. But what's most forward-looking, and modern, about this film is what MGM destroyed--the incredible naturalism, breadth and complexity of the original narrative. Nothing like it had ever been attempted and only later with filmmakers such as Orson Welles ("Kane") or Jean Renoir (especially in Rules of the Game) would there be anything comparable. In the standard 2-hour cut, the character of the cleaning woman Maria makes an entrance in a crucial scene, but her presence seems like some sort of arbitrary comic relief unrelated to the plot--and she promptly disappears. In fact, Maria was a major tragic character in the original cut, whose half-mad tales of wealth result in her brutal murder. This restoration restores this bizarre and fascinating side plot. Viewing the stills of some of these scenes--especially the Wagnerian dramatic staging and expressionistic lighting of Maria and her common-law companion, the crazed junk dealer Zerkow--provides some of the most bittersweet moments of this restoration. The mixed sense of revelation and the sadness of the loss of this footage makes for profound movie viewing. What this restoration successfully makes whole again is the credible buildup to the downfall of its characters, often through simple and even mundane views of ordinary life: Sunday picnics, Christmas shopping, street parades, family dinners, etc. McTeague and Trina are a real couple, going through the motions of life, who gradually come to hate each other through mutual suspicion borne of greed. This process, when it climaxes, has so much more weight and power in the restoration than it ever did in the artificially swift 2-hour cut. As the Zerkow/Maria plot is meant to compare to McTeague and Trina's downfall, another lost plotline--that of old man Grannis and Miss Baker--is meant as contrast. Instead of obsessing about wealth, they divest themselves of it, opting to love each other on what they have. Their story climaxes in their marriage and contentment, portrayed in a precious few glorious stills beautifully hand painted in color, per Stroheim's original instructions for the lost footage. Another fascinating effect of the restoration is the selective gold coloring of objects throughout the film to both highlight them and to make symbolic points about their destructive power. Sometimes, the suggestive use of gold is downright subversive: a gold wedding ring suggests marital possession, the objectification of people and their role in America's commodity culture, for instance. And McTeague and Marcus's walk into Death Valley is tinted in a gold hue, the ultimate symbolic statement equating greed with depravity and the loss of true human values and human life. The best way to approach the restoration of Greed is NOT to simply plunge into it uninitiated. Read a little about the film first (there's plenty of stuff on the Web). Then, watch the 2-hour cut to get the basic story thread (and to marvel, to a degree, about how skillfully MGM studio cutter Joseph Farnham extracted a pretty good and mostly coherent film out of a far longer, unwieldy and greater one). Wild & Woolly has the standard 2-hour cut, BTW--and Todd Brashear did not pay me to say that. Then, tackle this revelatory four-hour powerhouse. And be patient, this film builds its emotional impact on what at first seems like a lot of mundane plot detail. The genius of Stroheim is that none of it is arbitrary, and it all ultimately serves the thematic whole. That something as resoundingly dark and as critical of America as Greed ever got made at Hollywood's "feel-good" studio, MGM, is strange and ironic. That the for-profit enterprise's attempt to destroy it did not quite succeed is ironic also. This restoration is not exactly a Phoenix risen from the ashes, but as Phoenix's skeleton it's something to behold.

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a genius reality check 4 our race we may live in the white mans land & call it hme bt in doing that we deny the truth of our being. All brown skin people nomatta hw light r african rayalty ... (lady swirl)