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Greed (1923)

Director: Erich von Stroheim

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From Time Out Film Guide

Originally planned to run around ten hours but hacked to just over two by Thalberg's MGM, von Stroheim's greatest film still survives as a true masterpiece of cinema. Even now its relentlessly cynical portrait of physical and moral squalor retains the ability to shock, while the Von's obsessive attention to realist detail - both in terms of the San Francisco and Death Valley locations, and the minutely observed characters - is never prosaic: as the two men and a woman fall out over filthy lucre (a surprise lottery win), their motivations are explored with a remarkably powerful visual poetry, and Frank Norris' novel is translated into the cinematic equivalent of, say, Zola at the peak of his powers. Never has a wedding been so bitterly depicted, never a moral denouement been delivered with such vicious irony.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Erich von Stroheim

Producer: Louis Mayer

Cast: Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Tempe Pigott, Frank Hayes, Dale Fuller full cast

Duration: 7 mins


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