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Greed

Silent and Early Cinema Landmarks

Greed is a 1924 American silent film directed by Erich von Stroheim, adapted from Frank Norris's novel McTeague, following a San Francisco dentist whose marriage and life are destroyed by his wife's pathological greed after she wins a lottery. Von Stroheim originally assembled a version reported to run to a far greater length than any standard feature, and the studio, MGM, drastically cut the film for release over the director's objections, with the excised footage subsequently lost. Despite surviving only in this truncated form, Greed is widely regarded by film historians as one of the great achievements and great losses of American silent cinema, and a landmark case study in the conflict between directorial vision and studio control.

Facts
Release Year
1924 1
Country
United States 1
Classification
Original Language
English 1
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Sources
1. Greed (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead paragraph, opening sentence
    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.
  • Greed, Description, original language
    Greed is a 1924 American silent film directed by Erich von Stroheim, adapted from Frank Norris's novel McTeague, following a San Francisco dentist whose marriage and life are destroyed by his wife's pathological greed after she wins a lottery.
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