Back in 2011 I’d watched the ARTE four-hour “restored”
version of Erich von Stroheim's Greed
but seeing a mere 132-minute version projected with live music really brought the
core of the story emphatically to life.I'm not saying I agree with MGM's decision to strip down vonStroheim's vision but what's left is still so good it's better than most films.
Stephen Horne accompanied in style matching the film tonally
and synchronising mood but also style as he played along on accordion
as Mac squeezed out hymns to Trina on the unglamourous Oakland beach. Stephen’s played
to Greed before but not that frequently which made these perfectly sequenced multi-instrumental
moments all the more impressive.
Decades of practice makes for perfect and had the film
been nearer its original length of 9-10 hours; I’m sure he would have kept pace
(possibly with a break or four...). As it was, the accordion, flute, piano – whether
played straight, deliberately-distorted with paper placed on the strings, or
with those same strings plucked – and other effects matched and enhanced one of
the most distinctive and brutally believable of all silent films.
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| Zasu Pitts |
I deliberately wait to watch the “cannon” projected and with
live music (and maybe one day someone will screen Sunrise without a pre-recorded score and I’ll see that too!) and
the connection and experience of the work is always better. An informed and
sympathetic audience helps too and those of us sheltering from 30-degree
London knew full well that we were swapping rare metropolitan summertime for even
rarer classic film.
Von Stroheim wanted to film the whole of Frank Norris' 1899
novel McTeague but everyone, except
him, knew it was impossible. But what remains is unsettlingly life-like... rich in the details of everday desparation and human failure.
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| Gibson Gowland |
The cast were chosen for their looks and not in a John
Gilbert or Norma Talmadge way… Gibson Gowland is rough-around-the-edges McTeague
a man who cares for small birds but with suitable provocation might throw you
down a ravine if you crossed him. His best buddy Marcus is played by a Jean
Hersholt realistically out of condition and in ill-fitting clothes and slicked
down hair whilst the woman who comes between them, Trina, is played by Zasu
Pitts like a cross between a drugged-up Lillian Gish and Stan Laurel. Pitts is
the standout performer here and her transition from scared little mouse to deranged miser is played out through her manic saucer eyes and protean contortions
the equal of Lon Chaney’s.
Her Trina is terrified of McTeague, none more so than on
their wedding night but sublimates all in the pursuit of more money; a
psychosis derived from either winning $5000 on the lottery, marrying her brutal
dentist or both.
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| Jean Hersholt and Gibson Gowland |
If there’s one sequence that gives away the film’s tone and
the director’s signalling it’s this marriage which takes place in McTeague’s
dental practice. As the vows are being read the camera looks down on the priest
and couple then, with stunning deep-focus, reveals a crowd outside watching a
funeral procession: in the midst of life (and this film) we can expect death. Stephen made
light work of this unexpected duality and the moment had me in mind of Mahler’s
First Symphony when the composer interweaved a funeral march with a folk dance;
a mix he remembered having experienced as a child.
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| The funeral procession passes by outside during the vows... |
If Trina’s character is mercurial McTeague’s
an open book: a “slow-witted “man with anger issues. It’s interesting that von
Stroheim dedicated the film to his mother as of the two mothers featured in Greed, one, McTeague’s, spends her life
worrying about what might become of her son whilst the other, Trina’s, is a
good old German mutter - about which Erich would know plenty - prone to
cartoonish exploits with her husband and their three smaller children.
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| Mother McTeague pleads with her wastrel husband in a restored sequence (still only) |
I re-watched the reconstruction and the story is a much
fuller one – there’s an opening sub-plot dealing with McTeague’s father, a
drunkard who spends all his time and money on booze and other vices, ignoring
his poor wife’s entreaties to give her money… as well as much more details on
those living in the block where McTeague’s dental practice is located, especially Maria
the Mexican who sells the unwanted junk she is given to a man called Zerkow.
Zerkow becomes obsessed himself with the idea of hidden treasure denied to him
by Maria but this sub plot is missing entirely from the studio cut.
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| Zerkow dreams of golden avarice are restored in still form for the ARTE restoration. |
The reduced
version still works though as it focuses on the main three characters… it’s
less novelistic but still compelling in detail and the patient way von Stroheim dismantles good humour, civilised behaviour and all hope.
It does remind me of Zola and other late nineteenth century
"realists" and the characters are largely doomed mostly by their own
decisions. Their world is horrible and not unlike our own: how would we act in Greed?
The closing section is remarkable, prefiguring dozens
of desert pursuits in later westerns, it shows the options fatally running out
for men, horses and even birds. The story is wound up by a classic device which
rams home the central point that the consequences of selfishness are terminal
and damning in this world not just the next.
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| Death Valley '24 |
Greed was shot by
von Stroheim entirely on location including weeks in Death Valley for this
sequence. That’s a measure of his insane commitment to make something “real”
and possibly lasting. Despite his torment at the studio’s butchery, posterity
holds his film up not only as one of the greats but also as a missed
opportunity for Hollywood to advance the art of movie making. Of course, they
were never going to take the chance… We
mourn what was lost and savour what remains of this unique production.
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| The tinted birds in the restoration may indicate the connection between gold and freedom? |
Bizarrely only a Spanish DVD is available of the film – industry
indifference having passed down through generations of marketing and product
development staff... When there are so many inferior films on Blu-ray you wonder
how a such things come to pass. This is a major film, surely the film studies
market alone is enough to justify a release of the ARTE restoration? That’s me as a publishing professional speaking and not as a
silent movie fan… if you don’t monetise the great legacy of silent film you
have to fight harder to preserve it and this is a golden (yes, on purpose)
opportunity to do just that.
But. All this aside, huge props to the BFI for screening the
film twice and for getting not only Stephen but the excellent John Sweeney to play along the previous week. I cannot complain at all about the quality and content!!
