ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Sasha Lovich Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, Sylvia Ashton, Oscar Gottell, Otto Gottell, Frank Hayes, Tempe Pigott, Dale Fuller "Originally planned to run around ten hours but hacked to just over two by Thalberg's MGM, Erich 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, 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." - Geoff Andrew, Time Out Selected by Guillermo Del Toro, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Simon Louvish, Carol J. Clover, Antonio Rodrigues.

krisrox "Greed" is a naturalistic, gritty silent from 1924, directed by Erich von Stroheim. Its storyline centers around three very unremarkable people who slowly lose their minds over money, and culminates with one of the most powerful, desolate, haunting closures in film history.The fact that it provides a street level view of life 90 years ago makes it a fascinating film by default, and one of the main attractions of the movie is seeing life through the eyes of - perhaps - your great-grandparents. The overarching story is fairly strong, but is told at a leisurely pace that resembles actual life more than tightly scripted drama. Which is fine, if you have an evening to spare, and like that sort of thing.Of course, "Greed" is famous for being 9 hours long before the studios butchered it. While I can imagine a 9-hour version of this story to be very immersive and rewarding, I can also imagine it to be extremely tedious and over-the-top. I watched the pretty good 239-minute restoration, but there was no way I could devour it in one session... Von Stroheim is consistently faithful to his realistic ethos, but the dynamics are often lacking. (Which is particular to this movie, not to 1920s movie-making in general.)The verdict: Landmark movie with a unique feel and a few moments of genius. Recommended for fans of realism.

TrendyMoustache To Clarify, this is a review of the 4-hour TCM version of Greed.From the very first few minutes in Greed, one can understand that this is no ordinary morality tale or an extremely long picture exploring the habituality of human nature. This is the film that I believe to be Erich von Stroheim's magnum opus, and one of the greatest losses of any form of artwork in the world (the full uncut version that is).To dissect any film regardless of its stature, one must first look at the macro-elements of the picture and see what can gleaned from them. The narrative of the film is no ordinary linear single story; von Stroheim has created the TV mini-series long before it was ever conceived. With the main plot following McTeague and Trina, there are two other sub-plots which are not necessarily important to the main one, but as a whole, culminate to give the general majesty of the film including the novelesque features and underlying message of human greed. The narrative is structured heavily as von Stroheim wanted to perfectly recreate the novel on which Greed was based (McTeague, 1899); each plot compliments the other perfectly and mesh together at certain points with each one giving off their own message at its end. Then there are the Micro-elements to inspect. For Greed, von Stroheim wanted to create a raw and dirty atmosphere that fitted perfectly with the overall feeling of the narrative and settings; so one will notice that the camera-work throughout consists generally of close-ups and other shots that seem to make the characters seem garish in some sort of fashion. And the same can be said about the lighting choices for the film, usually von Stroheim chooses a hard and powerful light as if trying to show every crooked detail of his characters faces; and in the other instances, von Stroheim uses a dark and gloomy lighting as if to mask characters in the scenes in which they are about to commit the evil. The performance given by all of the central characters is perfect for the style that von Stroheim needed. One may not think that they are all fantastic actors, but they don't need to be, most of them succumb to madness, or in the case of McTeague: inebriation. The actors commit themselves to the general feeling and message of the film which is more than any respectable director can ask for. The editing, all things considered, is still very good with the stills from the cut scenes so that we can recreate the sub-plots that were cut from the original release. But unfortunately we can only imagine how grand and to what level of effort would have been given to the original 8-hour von Stroheim version of Greed, some of which we can already see from the colour of gold in any scene in which it is featured.Hopefully one day, someone will find an original cut in a basement of an asylum in Croatia (or some other random place), but until that time we are stuck with a 4-hour masterpiece that may not be the original, but is still absolutely magnificent. Greed is one of the six films ever created that I rate a straight 10 out of 10, so if that doesn't encourage you to watch this film, I don't know what will.

tylerp-275-916754 Greed(1925) was based on a novel that was in the tradition of great long novels like Crime and Punishment or War & Peace. The director, Erich Von Stroheim wanted to do a faithful adapation of the book McTeague because of his fascination with the theme of greed. He did do a faithful adaption but ended up paying a stiff price for his drive towards perfection. Marvelous film that is one of the 100 greatest films of all time. The acting is terrific and the story is compelling to follow.Gibson Gowland does a convincing job in the role of Dr. McTeague. Like many of the director's early films, Greed(1925) was severely cut. Original running time of the movie was nine hours. Its a disgrace that we will never see the full cut ever resurface in the theaters or DVD. One of the best films from the 1920s(besides Metropolis) to suffer at ridiculous cuts at the hands of the censors and studios.