Greed (film) - Wikipedia. Greed is a 1. 92. American silent film, written and directed by Erich von Stroheim and based on the 1.
Frank Norris novel Mc. Teague. It stars Gibson Gowland as Dr. John Mc. Teague, Za. Su Pitts as his wife Trina Sieppe and Jean Hersholt as Mc. Teague's friend and eventual enemy Marcus Schouler. The film tells the story of Mc. Teague, a San Francisco dentist, who marries his best friend Schouler's girlfriend Trina.
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Shortly after their engagement, Trina wins a lottery prize of $5,0. Schouler jealously informs the authorities that Mc. Teague had been practicing dentistry without a license, and Mc. Teague and Trina become impoverished. While living in squalor, Mc.
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Teague becomes a violent alcoholic and Trina becomes greedily obsessed with her winnings, refusing to spend any of them, despite how poor she and her husband have become. Eventually Mc. Teague murders Trina for the money and flees to Death Valley. Schouler catches up with him there for a final confrontation. Stroheim shot more than 8.
Two months were spent shooting in Death Valley for the film's final sequence and many of the cast and crew became ill. Greed was one of the few films of its time to be shot entirely on location. Stroheim used sophisticated filming techniques such as deep- focus cinematography and montage editing. He considered Greed to be a Greek tragedy, in which environment and heredity controlled the characters' fates and reduced them to primitive b. Thalberg had fired Stroheim a few years earlier at Universal Pictures. Originally almost eight hours long, Greed was edited against Stroheim's wishes to about two- and- a- half hours. Only twelve people saw the full- length 4.
Stroheim later called Greed his most fully realized work and was hurt both professionally and personally by the studio's re- editing of it. The uncut version has been called the . In 1. 99. 9 Turner Entertainment created a four- hour version of Greed that used existing stills of cut scenes to reconstruct the film. Greed was a critical and financial failure upon its initial release, but by the 1.
Plot summary. By God, I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn't like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth; I knew it for the truth then and I know it for the truth now.
A traveling dentist calling himself Dr. Potter agrees and Mc.
Teague eventually becomes a dentist, practicing on Polk Street in San Francisco. Marcus Schouler brings Trina Sieppe, his cousin and intended fianc. Schouler and Mc. Teague are friends and Mc. Teague gladly agrees to examine her. As they wait for an opening, Trina buys a lottery ticket. Mc. Teague becomes enamored with Trina and begs Schouler for permission to court Trina. After seeing Mc. Teague's conviction, Schouler agrees.
Trina eventually agrees to marry Mc. Teague and shortly afterwards her lottery ticket wins her $5,0. After Mc. Teague and Trina wed, they continue to live in their small apartment with Trina refusing to spend her $5,0. Before he goes he secretly reports Mc.
Teague for practicing dentistry without a license in order to ruin his former friend. Mc. Teague is ordered to shut down his practice or face jail. Even though she has saved over $2. Trina is unwilling to spend her money.
Money becomes increasingly scarce, with the couple forced to sell their possessions. Mc. Teague finally snaps and bites Trina's fingers in a fit of rage. Later he leaves to go fishing to earn money, taking Trina's savings (now totaling $4.
Trina's bitten fingers become infected and have to be amputated. To earn money she becomes a janitor at a children's school.
She withdraws the $5,0. Mc. Teague then returns, having spent the money he took and asks Trina for more. The following day Mc. Teague confronts Trina at the school. After a heated argument Mc.
Teague beats Trina to death and steals her $5,0. Now an outlaw, Mc. Teague returns to Placer County and teams up with a prospector named Cribbens. Headed towards Death Valley, they find a large quantity of quartz and plan to become millionaires. Before they can begin mining, Mc. Teague senses danger and flees into Death Valley with a single horse, the remaining money and one water jug. Several marshals pursue him, joined by Schouler.
Schouler wants to catch Mc. Teague personally and rides into Death Valley alone. The oppressive heat slows Mc. Teague's progress. Schouler's progress is also beginning to wane when he spies Mc. Teague and moves in to arrest him. After a confrontation, Mc.
Teague's horse bolts and Schouler shoots it, puncturing the water container. The water spills onto the desert floor. The pair fight one last time, with Mc. Teague proving the victor; however, Schouler has handcuffed himself to Mc. Teague. The film ends with Mc. Teague left in the desert with no horse, no water, handcuffed to a corpse and unable to reach the remaining money.
Sub- plots. The point of these sub- plots was to contrast two possible outcomes of Trina and Mc. Teague's life together. The first depicted the lives of the junkman Zerkow and Maria Miranda Macapa, the young Mexican woman who collects junk for Zerkow and sold Trina the lottery ticket. Maria often talks about her imaginary solid gold dining set with Zerkow, who becomes obsessed by it. Eventually, believing she has riches hidden away, Zerkow marries her. He often asks about it, but she gives a different answer each time he mentions it.
Zerkow does not believe her and becomes obsessed with prying the truth from her. He murders her and after having lost his mind, leaps into San Francisco Bay.
The second sub- plot depicts the lives of Charles W. Grannis and Miss Anastasia Baker. Grannis and Baker are two elderly boarders who share adjoining rooms in the apartment complex where Trina and Mc.
Teague live. Throughout their time at the apartment complex, they have not met. They both sit close to their adjoining wall and listen to the other for company, so they know almost everything about each other. They finally meet and cannot hide their long- time feelings for each other.
When they reveal their love, Grannis admits he has $5,0. Trina. But this makes little difference to them. Eventually, they marry and a door connects their rooms. Prologue. Jack Curtis as Mc.
Teague's father. Tempe Pigott as Mc. Teague's mother. Florence Gibson as a hag. Erich von Ritzau as Dr.
Heise, the harness maker. E. Ryer. Reta Revela as Mrs.
Simon as Joe Frenna. Hugh J. Mc. Cauley as the photographer.
William Mollenhauer as the palmist. Others. William Barlow as the Minister. Lon Poff as the man from the lottery company.
James F. Fulton as Cribbens, a prospector. James Gibson as a Deputy. Jack Mc. Donald as the Sheriff of Placer County. Erich von Stroheim as the balloon vendor.
Production. I was not going to compromise. I felt that after the last war, the motion picture going public had tired of the cinematographic 'chocolate . Now, I felt, they were ready for a large bowl of plebeian but honest corned beef and cabbage'. Stroheim's interest in Mc. Teague can be traced back to January 1. He had himself lived in San Francisco in the early 1. He eventually moved to Los Angeles and worked his way up in the film industry under pioneering director D.
By 1. 91. 9 he had become a successful director at Universal Film Manufacturing Company, although one with a reputation of going over budget and over schedule. Upon the appointment of Irving Thalberg as general manager at Universal, Stroheim's excesses were no longer tolerated. After Thalberg's shutdown of his 1. Foolish Wives (which had been shooting nonstop for eleven months), and after six weeks of filming Merry- Go- Round, Stroheim was finally fired from the studio on October 6, 1. This was a step unprecedented in Hollywood and heralded a new era in which the producer and the studio held artistic power over actors and directors. However, by this time Stroheim had received several offers of contracts with other studios, even before being fired from Universal.
He had met with executives of the Goldwyn Company on September 1. November. Since March 1. Goldwyn had been run by Abe Lehr, who publicly promised that .
The deal stipulated that each feature would be between 4,5. It also promised von Stroheim $3. Lehr initially wanted Stroheim to film a big- budget version of The Merry Widow, which the producer saw as a guaranteed hit. Stroheim convinced Lehr to let him make Greed first, promising low costs. A press release of February 1.
Stroheim had . Among the changes that he made to Norris's novel was giving Mc. Teague the first name of John and omitting Norris's anti- Semitism. Mc. Teague had been filmed once before as Life's Whirlpool, a five- reel short by William A. Brady's World Pictures, starring Broadway star Holbrook Blinn as Mc. Teague, which had been released in 1. Film critics disliked this version and Stroheim later criticized Blinn's performance. According to film historian Kevin Brownlow, Life's Whirlpool was also shot on location in Death Valley.
Stroheim was known for his meticulous perfectionism and attention to detail, as well as his insolence towards studio executives. Working on Greed, Stroheim set out to make a realistic film about everyday people and rejected the Hollywood tropes of glamor, happy endings and upper- class characters.
Before shooting began, Stroheim told a reporter: It is possible to tell a great story in motion pictures in such a way that the spectator forgets he is looking at beauteous Gertie Gefelta, the producer's pet and discovers himself intensely interested, just as if he were looking out of a window at life itself. He will come to believe that what he is gazing at is real. They went on in their daily life with their joys, fun and tragedies and the camera stole it all, holding it up afterward for all to see. In early January 1.
Stroheim arrived in San Francisco, where he scouted locations and finished writing the shooting script. While researching for Greed, he attended society functions in town and met many friends of Frank Norris, including his brother Charles and his sister- in- law Kathleen.
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