5e. Greed (recurring in-jokes and threads - alt.movies.silent)
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This article is from the alt.movies.silent FAQ, by Rick Levinson Rick.Levinson@sympatico.ca and Emily Way emily@vex.net with numerous contributions by others.
5e. Greed (recurring in-jokes and threads - alt.movies.silent)
GREED (1925) is famed director Erich von Stroheim's epic, based on
the Frank Norris novel McTeague.
Von Stroheim filmed Lord knows how many reels. MGM released it in
a cut version. To this day silent film aficionados will argue over
how many reels constitute the "director's cut" of the film. So it's
not uncommon for someone to say, apropos of nothing, "well, I've
seen the 72-reel version of GREED," just to start an argument and
tick others off.
GREED was restored to four hours in 1999, shown on Turner Classic
Movies, and then released on video. The 1999 version restores
lost subplots, secondary characters, and important bits of
development of the main characters. Although much of Von Stroheim's
cut footage is gone forever, the restoration uses some of the
extensive stills that exist, in the same way as the restored version
of Frank Capra's LOST HORIZON. The 1999 version is about as close
to Von Stroheim's original vision as we're likely to get.
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