I'd heard of this film for many years and finally got round to seeing the four-hour restoration of it, and I have to say, I'm really quite surprised at how hammy and hamfisted it all is. I think a lot of the people overpraising it must simply never have watched a silent film before and so have nothing to compare it to.
But look: by the mid-20s we have Chaplin's The Kid and The Gold Rush, Harold Lloyd's Safety Last and The Freshman, Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr and Emil Janning's astounding performance in The Last Laugh, all of which have amazing subtlety, wit, and mastery of the artform.
'Greed', on the other hand, looks like it was shot in 1908 in between 8 minute loops of 'horse running' and 'train arriving in station', with a cast from the local amateur dramatics pantomime in bad clown wigs. The 'dialogue' cards are the worst of any film I have ever seen, all taking up space and saying nothing.
By 1924, 'Greed' was already a creaky old relic of the past: not only should it never have been up to nine hours long, but everything interesting in the story could have easily been told perfectly well in an hour and forty at most, and the only reason it wasn't has to be Stroheim's ineptitude and self-indulgence. How many times can an audience be expected to watch the same situations and relationships going round and round in circles, getting nowhere?
On the plus side, I liked the yellow tinting of anything gold on the screen - I'm not sure if that was something done in the restoration or was there all along, but it's a nice touch whatever. The ending, which several people here have said was unforgettable, IS pretty memorable (and the only surprising turn in the whole damn film), but 4 minutes of good movie can't make up for the four-to-nine hours of molasses that precedes it.
I'm now of the opinion that the only thing truly legendary about this film is the length itself. But, as with any art, quantity does not equate to quality, and in this case less would definitely have been more.
But look: by the mid-20s we have Chaplin's The Kid and The Gold Rush, Harold Lloyd's Safety Last and The Freshman, Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr and Emil Janning's astounding performance in The Last Laugh, all of which have amazing subtlety, wit, and mastery of the artform.
'Greed', on the other hand, looks like it was shot in 1908 in between 8 minute loops of 'horse running' and 'train arriving in station', with a cast from the local amateur dramatics pantomime in bad clown wigs. The 'dialogue' cards are the worst of any film I have ever seen, all taking up space and saying nothing.
By 1924, 'Greed' was already a creaky old relic of the past: not only should it never have been up to nine hours long, but everything interesting in the story could have easily been told perfectly well in an hour and forty at most, and the only reason it wasn't has to be Stroheim's ineptitude and self-indulgence. How many times can an audience be expected to watch the same situations and relationships going round and round in circles, getting nowhere?
On the plus side, I liked the yellow tinting of anything gold on the screen - I'm not sure if that was something done in the restoration or was there all along, but it's a nice touch whatever. The ending, which several people here have said was unforgettable, IS pretty memorable (and the only surprising turn in the whole damn film), but 4 minutes of good movie can't make up for the four-to-nine hours of molasses that precedes it.
I'm now of the opinion that the only thing truly legendary about this film is the length itself. But, as with any art, quantity does not equate to quality, and in this case less would definitely have been more.