Greed (1924)
Greed (1924)
Plot.
Where to Watch.
Currently Greed is available for streaming online, rent, buy or watch for free on: Classix, Tubi TV, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Amazon Video
Streaming in:🇺🇸 United States
This Movie Is About.
Cast & Crew.
Gibson Gowland
John McTeague
Zasu Pitts
Trina
Jean Hersholt
Marcus
Dale Fuller
Maria
Tempe Pigott
Mother McTeague
Sylvia Ashton
Mommer Sieppe
Chester Conklin
Popper Sieppe
Joan Standing
Selina
Jack Curtis
McTeague Sr. (uncredited)
James F. Fulton
Cribbens a Prospector (uncredited)
Florence Gibson
Hag (uncredited)
Cesare Gravina
Zwerkow a Junkman (uncredited)
Frank Hayes
Charles W. Grannis (uncredited)
Austen Jewell
August Sieppe (uncredited)
Tiny Jones
Mrs. Heise (uncredited)
Lillian Lawrence
Gossip (uncredited)
Kevin Brownlow
Producer
David Gill
Producer
Hughie Mack
Mr. Heise (uncredited)
Carl Davis
Composer
Jack McDonald
Placer County Sheriff (uncredited)
Robert Israel
Composer
Fanny Midgley
Anastasia Baker (uncredited)
Lon Poff
Lottery Agent (uncredited)
S.S. Simon
Joe Frenna (uncredited)
Erich von Ritzau
Dr. Painless Potter (uncredited)
Erich von Stroheim
Balloon Vendor (uncredited) / Director / Production Design / Screenplay / Art Direction
Glenn Morgan
Editor
James Wang
Chinese Cook (uncredited)
June Mathis
Screenplay
Frank Norris
Novel
Ben F. Reynolds
Director of Photography
Irving Thalberg
Producer
William H. Daniels
Director of Photography
Joseph Farnham
Editor / Title Graphics
Cedric Gibbons
Art Direction / Set Decoration
J.J. Cohn
Production Manager
Harry Rapf
Production Manager
Edward Sowders
Assistant Director
Louis Germonprez
Assistant Director
Media.
Details.
Release DateDecember 4, 1924
StatusReleased
Running Time2h 20m
Content RatingNR
Budget$665,603
Box Office$274,827
Filming LocationsCalifornia · San Francisco, United States of America
Genres
Wiki.
Greed is a 1924 American silent psychological drama film written and directed by Erich von Stroheim and based on the 1899 Frank Norris novel McTeague. It stars Gibson Gowland as Dr. John McTeague; ZaSu Pitts as Trina Sieppe, his wife; and Jean Hersholt as McTeague's friend and eventual enemy Marcus Schouler. The film tells the story of McTeague, a San Francisco dentist, who marries his best friend Schouler's girlfriend Trina.
Greed was one of the few films of its time to be shot entirely on location, with von Stroheim shooting approximately 85 hours of footage before editing. Two months alone were spent shooting in Death Valley for the film's final sequence, and many of the cast and crew became ill. Von 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 bêtes humaines (human beasts), a naturalistic concept in the vein of Zola.
During editing, the production company merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), putting Irving Thalberg in charge of post-production. Thalberg had fired von Stroheim a few years earlier at Universal Pictures. Originally almost eight hours long, Greed was edited against von Stroheim's wishes to about two-and-a-half hours. Only twelve people saw the full-length 42-reel version, now lost; some of them called it the greatest film ever made. Von 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 "holy grail" for film archivists, amid repeated false claims of the discovery of the missing footage. In 1999, Turner Entertainment created a four-hour version 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 1950s, it began to be regarded as one of the greatest films ever made; filmmakers and scholars have noted its influence on subsequent films. In 1958, the film was voted number 6 on the prestigious Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo.