Greed (1924)
A San Francisco dentist marries his best friend's former sweetheart just after she wins a small lottery fortune, and their marriage curdles into obsession and violence as her miserliness and his jealousy drag them both toward ruin and murder.
Erich von Stroheim shot nearly a year of footage for Greed, including a punishing location stretch in Death Valley, and cut it down to roughly nine hours before MGM took the film away and slashed it to about two, destroying the excised reels; the butchered result is still routinely ranked among the greatest American films ever made.
Background
Greed was adapted by Erich von Stroheim from Frank Norris’s novel McTeague, and Stroheim shot an extraordinary amount of footage, reportedly close to nine hours in his own preferred cut, including a grueling location shoot in Death Valley during summer heat. MGM took the film away from him during editing and cut it down to roughly a quarter of its original length, and the material that was removed was destroyed, so Stroheim’s full vision has never been seen since.
What to watch for
Even in its truncated studio version, the film follows a San Francisco dentist and his wife as a small lottery win curdles their marriage into obsession, miserliness, and eventually violence. Watch for the unusually harsh, unsentimental view of greed and human weakness that survives even after the studio’s cuts, and consider that the film is still routinely ranked among the greatest American films ever made despite existing only as a fragment of what Stroheim intended.
