"There is nobody now alive who has seen anything like the complete version of Erich von Stroheim's Greed [a 9-hour long version]. Yet many good judges still regard the bleeding remains of the film as one of the greatest ever made. They are almost certainly right." - THE GUARDIAN

+ LIVE ORGAN!

This is a very special night - a silent masterpiece accompanied by the best compton player in the North East - Carl Heslop!

THE PLOT

John McTeague (Gibson Gowland), a San Francisco dentist, marries Trina (ZaSu Pitts), a thrifty woman who has won $5,000 in a lottery. She banks this money and, by scrimping and saving, hoards most of the money her husband makes.

Marcus Schouler (Jean Hersholt), Trina's frustrated former suitor, discovers that McTeague does not have a license to practice dentistry and causes him to lose his business. McTeague can make only a poor living as a laborer, and he and Trina eventually drift to squalid quarters...

ABOUT THE FILM

And as MGM's first feature film, it should have shut them down permanently. The director was a loose cannon, the first cut was an arse-aching nine hours, the cast and crew spent several months in Death Valley, on rationed water, and two thirds of the movie ended up destroyed by a janitor.

So why is Greed so important?

Obviously, the source material was hugely popular ("McTeague" by Frank Norris), and Erich von Stroheim was clearly a talented, if unhinged, director, but the film itself transcends the medium, despite being cut to shreds by a succession of editors.

Greed centres on the troubles of a lottery winner, her dentist partner and her spurned lover – a triangle of love and hate that still resonates today. Humans are still as obsessed with love and gold as they were when the novel was written, and as the Depression loomed on the horizon, Greed in particular put real people's emotions onto a silver screen for all to dissect.

The Director: Erich Von Stroheim (1885 - 1957)

The force behind this picture was undoubtedly Erich Von Stroheim himself.

A bit part player who worked his way up the studio ranks to become director through sheer force of personality, Von Stroheim earned the nickname "The Man You Love to Hate". Although widely praised for the quality of his artistic output, the man himself was said to be overbearing, uncaring and frankly a bit of a dick.

He disowned his working class Jewish roots on his arrival at Ellis Island, and started claiming he was an Austrian aristocrat. He claimed to have been injured on the set of Birth Of A Nation, despite not even being in the production.

Unthinkably, at the time, he happily moved in with a woman he had just met. She encouraged his burgeoning creative talent, then divorced him for the constant abuse he subjected her to. Like I said, he was a bit of a dick.

Greed - Stroheim's Masterpiece

"Sequence after sequence is stunning, like the one in which Pitts, having won the lottery, caresses her naked body with gold coins. That was typical Stroheim." - THE GUARDIAN

Erich Von Stroheim was undeniably talented, and Greed is his masterpiece.

Despite being shredded from nine hours down to two and a half (with the rest being binned by the aforementioned studio janitor), Greed is still a tour-de-force on a breathtaking scale.

New techniques of filming were pioneered, and Von Stroheim brought the importance of location to the fore – the desert scenes are, quite simply, beautiful. For the urban scenes in San Francisco, the maverick director used hidden cameras to capture the reality of the time, something entirely new to a major production.

The gamble that MGM took on this movie is still frightening – a lot of careers hinged on this iron-fisted director's vision, not least his own…

Although much of the original print is missing, some might argue for the best, Greed demonstrates that the rules of filmmaking are only useful until someone learns how to break them. And Erich von Stroheim was a master at breaking rules.

Price: £5 (full price) / £3.50 (concessions)
Or £4.50 online - http://www.wegottickets.com/event/133913