Greed (1924)
Erich von Stroheim's "Greed"
After Erich von Stroheim wrapped filming on his 1922 film "Foolish Wives," he was enraged to discover that Universal had severely edited down the picture. Irving Thalberg, Universal's general manager, resented Stroheim's defiance of commercial norms and fired the director from finishing production. The final product of "Foolish Wives" was heavily censored to appease general audiences. The angry Stroheim decided to take his talents to Goldwyn Company, where he was promised more creative freedom. He signed a three-picture deal with Goldwyn in November of 1922. Abe Lehr, the president of Goldwyn, signed Stroheim because he wanted him to direct an adaptation of the famous German operetta, "The Merry Widow." Stroheim agreed on the condition that he could make his own personal project beforehand. The planned production was an adaptation of Frank Norris' 1899 novel, "McTeague: A Story of San Francisco." Known for his expensive shoots, Stroheim ensured Lehr that his planned film would be completely inexpensive. Not only this, the film would not contain any sets whatsoever and would be filmed entirely 'on location.' Goldwyn approved the lengthy 300-page shooting script. Stroheim shot on location in San Francisco, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Big Dipper Mine in Iowa Hill, and even Death Valley. Stroheim shot a total of 446,103 feet of film, totaling approximately 85 hours. The hours of footage would eventually be edited down to varying lengths (anywhere from 9 hours to 6 hours). Despite protests from Goldwyn, Stroheim had originally planned on splitting the film in two and showing it over two nights. However, on April 10, 1924, Goldwyn Company officially merged with Metro Pictures. The merge brought over Stroheim's nemesis Irving Thalberg, and the company even put him in charge of the picture. Once again, the studio, and specifically Irvin Thalberg, had taken Stroheim's project and mangled it to fit a wider audience. The reels that were removed are now lost, and the original copy now is considered film history's holy grail.
The film we are left with sees a man named John McTeague working for a gold mine in 1908. He eventually becomes the apprentice of a crackpot traveling dentist. McTeague sets up his own practice in San Francisco. There, a good friend named Marcus Schouler introduces McTeague to his intended fiancee, Trina. Trina, needing dental work, becomes a patient of McTeague. However, McTeague falls in love with Trina and asks Schouler if he could have her hand in marriage over him. After seeing McTeague's conviction, Schouler agrees. Right before getting married, Trina finds out that she has won $5,000 on a lottery ticket. Schouler becomes resentful and expresses to McTeague that it should have been him that married Trina along with the money. A rift forms between the friends and Schouler leaves San Francisco to become a cattle rancher. Before he goes, he reports McTeague for practicing dentistry without a license out of spite. McTeague must quit his practice. All throughout these events, Trina refuses to give up her $5,000 or spend any of it. This starts to create tension between her and McTeague as the two of them become increasingly poor over both's unemployment. Not only this but Trina drains McTeague of any money he has, taking it all for herself and hoarding it. After unemployment, selling off all their possessions, and his wife's unyielding selfishness, McTeague finally snaps. He kills his wife and steals the $5,000. Now a wanted outlaw, McTeague heads to Death Valley in search of quartz. Schouler discovers that McTeague has killed his ex-finance and made off with her money. Schouler finds out that McTeague is headed to Death Valley and heads there looking for him. The oppressive heat of the valley slows McTeague's progress and drains Schouler of his water supply. Once Schouler catches up with McTeague, the two begin to fight over the money. McTeague kills Schouler before realizing that Schouler has handcuffed the two of them. The film ends with McTeague left in Death Valley with no food, no water, and handcuffed to a dead corpse.
"Greed," along with its adapted book, belongs to the school of naturalism. Initially created by French author Emile Zola, this naturalist style depicts lower-class characters trapped by their own human nature. Biographer Arthur Lennig points out in his book "Stroheim," that the themes of this naturalist style stem from the belief that "man's nature, despite free will, is determined by genetic and environmental factors." This style was a heavy influence on Professor Charles Darwin as it portrayed characters whose higher states of being, the rational and compassionate, are in direct conflict with their lower states, what the French call, La Bete Humaine (human beasts). Despite this attention to lower-class depictions, Stroheim stated that he did not view "Greed" as a political film. Rather, he viewed it as a Greek tragedy. The story instead uses its naturalist style to focus on characters whose fates are at the behest of their own being and inner nature. All of the characters seem to exhibit very positive qualities. However, once money becomes involved, their inner natures reveal something dark underneath. These negative traits create inherent derision between them and eventually drive them to their ultimate demise.
One way in which Stroheim demonstrates the characters being prey to their passions is by using the newly developed Soviet montage theory. He does this by editing cross-cut images together of the characters and animal counterparts. McTeague is often cut with his pet canary. After McTeague buys Trina a female canary after their wedding, the two lovebirds are crosscut with literal love birds. Another example occurs just before Schouler leaves to inform on McTeague. Stroheim cuts between them and images of a stray cat about to pounce on the birdcage. These intellectual montages, as Sergei Eisenstein called them, were not only experimented with in "Greed" a year before "Strike" and "Battleship Potemkin," but were praised by Eisenstein himself. Stroheim also uses dogs, cats, and monkeys that he associates with various supporting characters. He also has many of the actors engage in animal-like behavior. In the wedding banquet scene, wedding guests crudely devour their meat like animals. This constant allusion to animals further drives home the film's themes of naturalism. The characters, try as they might, cannot escape their basic human/animal impulses. These impulses create the world and circumstances the characters cannot seem to escape from. Stroheim views "Greed" as a Greek tragedy not because of what is happening to the characters, but rather what the characters are doing to themselves.
Stroheim was a renowned director whom many often compared to D.W. Griffith. However, unlike Griffith, Stroheim utilized the 360 degrees of space in front of the camera. According to biographer Arthur Lennig, "unlike Griffith, who viewed scenes as through a fourth wall, Stroheim shot from many sides and from different angles; he also used deep-focus, meaningful foregrounds, and effective camera movement." "Greed" was a film praised for its deep focus. It had been one of the first films to have such full-focused imagery, allowing viewers to see the foreground and background equally in focus, seventeen years before this was mastered in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane." Stroheim also utilized 'mise-en-scene' well before it became a popular method of filmmaking. The characters' environments often reflected abstract attitudes or concepts important to their situation. For example, as their marriage and economic standing start to disintegrate, so too does their living quarters. Film critic Andre Bazin praised Stroheim's use of mise-en-scene, stating, "one simple rule for directing[:] take a close look at the world, keep on doing so and in the end, it will lay bare for you all its cruelty and ugliness." Stroheim does this by filling the characters' environment with increasing grotesque imagery. Midgets, hunchbacks, women with buck teeth, and a boy on crutches all can be seen at the wedding of McTeague and Trina. The lower class environment is alluded to using images of the sewer, dead rats, and garbage trucks. Stroheim also contracts profanity with religious imagery. Trina is revealed to the audience as a miser on Easter Sunday and her murder by McTeague occurs on Christmas Eve. These 'holy' days are directly conflictual with the dark and ugly characteristics and actions of the characters. "Greed" displays Stroheim's proficiency as a director, showcasing his ability to use imagery in varying degrees to demonstrate the corruption of our nature.
Stroheim's use of on-location shooting was a major departure for him. The results look incredible and authentic. This realism from the real location evokes the naturalism in the themes. The most praised aspect of this on-location shooting was the shooting in Death Valley. Most Hollywood films used Oxnard Dunes (just north of Los Angeles) for their desert scenes. However, Stroheim wanted real authenticity and took 43 members of his crew where no film crew had gone before. With no roads, hotels, gas stations, or running water nearby, as well as temperatures that ranged from 90 to 120 degrees, exhaustion and frustration reach an all-time high. 14 members of the crew even got ill and had to be sent back to Los Angeles. Many crewmembers would collapse from heat exhaustion daily. The results, however, are some of the greatest shot scenes in film history, including a close-up of the sun itself (which would later be emulated by Akira Kurosawa in "Rashomon").
The editing of the film was long and arduous. Stroheim and his editor Frank Hull worked to shorten the 85 hours of footage down to a more reasonable length. They eventually edited it down to a 42-reel version of the film. This version was viewed by only 12 people, ranging from reporters to other directors. After this special screening, many of them hailed this 42-reeler as the greatest film they'd ever seen. Harry Carr, reported for the Los Angeles Times says of the screened film, "It is like 'Les Miserables.' Episodes come along that you think have no bearing on the story, then 12 or 14 reels later it hits you with a crash. For stark, terrible realism and marvelous artistry, it is the greatest picture I have ever seen. But I don't know what it will be like when it shrinks to 8 reels." The studio persisted in its continued cutting and Stroheim eventually landed at 24 reels, instructing the executives at Goldwyn not to cut another frame. However, after Goldwyn and Metro's merger, Irving Thalberg took this decision out of Stroheim's hands. The new studio, MGM, had cut "Greed" down to 10 reels, or 140 minutes. Stroheim felt that the studio had destroyed his masterpiece. The edits were not only to appease the general public's lack of artistic inclination, but Louis B. Mayer, president of MGM, vehemently disliked the film. According to Mayer, the film lacked glamor, optimism, or morality. The reels that were removed from the final version of the film were burned in order to extract the expensive silver nitrate. Viewers that watch the film today will find missing scenes that only show stills, rather than archival footage. The fact that the film was mangled and burned for its silver contents creates a real-world realization of the film's themes. The greed and animalistic nature of humanity shown in the film mirrored the selfish greed of the studio ripping apart the art itself for its own consumption. As a contemporary viewer watching scenes of still images, it creates an even more elevated haunting effect, showcasing how intermingled with 'reality' the film's themes reach. It can even be said the edited-in stills enhance the film's message, presenting to us a Frankenstein monster of its own making.
The film was a major flop for MGM, earning a total of $274,827. This was far below the total cost of making the picture, $665,603. Biographer Arthur Lennig asserts that this cost was suspiciously high for a film with no built sets, no stars, a small crew, and inexpensive stock. Lennig asserts that MGM may have tampered with the figures to prevent Stroheim from getting a percentage of his more profitable follow-up, "The Merry Widow." However, despite the lackluster turnout for the film, it grew in praise over the years by filmmakers and historians. Sergei Eisenstein, as previously stated, loved the film and its use of his own montage theory. Josef von Sternberg once said, "We were all influenced by 'Greed.'' Sternberg would go on to make films that deal with the complexity of the human internality. Jean Renoir called it "the film of all films." Renoir was heavily influenced by the film's naturalism and became a heavy utilizer of its method. Ernst Lubitsch remarked that Stroheim was "the only true novelist' in films. Film historians have attempted to uncover lost reels and frames of the film, believing that there could be something out there that exists that comes close to Stroheim's original intention. Despite this, the film as it is now is still considered a masterpiece by many. Its depiction of human fallacy, its unyielding gaze on horrifying behavior, and its contemplation of Darwinian themes all elevate a film whose filmmaker was years ahead of his time.
Comments
Post a Comment