Dir. Erich von Stroheim. 1924, 140 mins. 35mm. With Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt. Stroheim’s film maudit, which originally ran nearly nine hours before its butchering at the hands of Irving Thalberg, nonetheless remains one of the silent era’s white-hot masterpieces, a ferociously grotesque and often Brechtian adaptation of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague. When former gold prospector turned dentist-from-hell John McTeague (a ghoulish Gowland) marries the miserly Trina (Pitts), a rift of jealousy opens between McTeague and his cousin Schouler (Hersholt), leading to the grisly downfall of all. Building to a literally stifling crescendo filmed on location in Death Valley, Greed is a fever dream from the pit of America’s capitalist id.

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