Poster from TMDB
OverviewAI-generated
Greed is a 1924 American silent drama film directed by Erich von Stroheim, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Joseph Farnham and June Mathis, based on a work by Frank Norris titled McTeague. Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer produced it through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Mayer also serving as executive producer, cinematography by William H. Daniels and Ernest B. Schoedsack, editing by Rex Ingram, and a score by William Axt. The cast includes Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt and Cesare Gravina.
Shot in black-and-white and set and filmed in San Francisco, it was made on a budget of $665,603 and earned $274,827 at the box office. It was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Synthesized by Vinony from 38 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, IMDb. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film · TMDB
7.3When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.
Cast
- Gibson Gowland as John McTeague
- Zasu Pitts as Trina
- Jean Hersholt as Marcus
- Dale Fuller as Maria
- Tempe Pigott as Mother McTeague
- Sylvia Ashton as Mommer Sieppe
Themes
- gold
- greed
- marriage
- lottery
- gold mine
- money
- tragedy
- murder
- poverty
- wedding
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Key facts
- Directed by
- Erich von Stroheim
- Screenplay by
- Erich von Stroheim Contractually credited: June Mathis
- Based on
- McTeague , 1899 novel, by Frank Norris
- Produced by
- Erich von Stroheim Abe Lehr Irving Thalberg
- Starring
- Gibson Gowland ZaSu Pitts Jean Hersholt
- Cinematography
- Ben F. Reynolds William H. Daniels
- Edited by
- Erich von Stroheim Frank Hull, (42- reel and 24-reel versions) Rex Ingram Grant Whytock , (18-reel version) June Mathis Joseph W. Farnham , (10-reel version)
- Music by
- William Axt
- Production company
- The Goldwyn Company–Metro-Goldwyn
- Distributed by
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Release date
- December 4, 1924 ( 1924-12-04 )
- Running time
- Over 9 hours, (first cut) 140 minutes, (original release) 239 minutes, (reconstruction)
- Country
- United States
- Languages
- Silent film English intertitles
- Budget
- $665,603
- Box office
- $274,827
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- film
- Part of
- National Film Registry
- Named after
- greed
- Genre
- silent film
- Country of origin
- United States
- Based on
- McTeague
- Director
- Erich von Stroheim
- Screenwriter
- June Mathis
- Cast member
- Tempe Pigott
- Composer
- William Axt
- Producer
- Louis B. Mayer
- Production company
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- Cinematographer
- Ernest B. Schoedsack
- Narrative location
- San Francisco
- Filming location
- California
- Duration
- 140
- FilmAffinity ID
- 724826
- Distribution format
- video on demand
- Image
- Greed, 1924, 03 mac e trina al primo appuntamento.jpg
Show 14 more facts
- Commons category
- Greed (film)
- publication date
- 1924-01-01
- film editor
- Rex Ingram
- title
- Greed
- color
- black-and-white
- distributed by
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- production designer
- Cedric Gibbons
- after a work by
- Frank Norris
- executive producer
- Louis B. Mayer
- aspect ratio (W:H)
- 4:3
- copyright status
- public domain
- assessment
- Bechdel test
- set in environment
- desert
- review score
- 96%
Sources (8)
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Greed is a 1924 American silent psychological drama film written and directed by Erich von Stroheim and based on the 1899 Frank Norris novel McTeague. It stars Gibson Gowland as Dr. John McTeague; ZaSu Pitts as Trina Sieppe, his wife; and Jean Hersholt as McTeague's friend and eventual enemy Marcus Schouler. The film tells the story of McTeague, a San Francisco dentist, who marries his best friend Schouler's girlfriend Trina.
Greed was one of the few films of its time to be shot entirely on location, with von Stroheim shooting approximately 85 hours of footage before editing. Two months alone were spent shooting in Death Valley for the film's final sequence, and many of the cast and crew became ill. Von Stroheim used sophisticated filming techniques such as deep focus cinematography and montage editing. He considered Greed to be a Greek tragedy, in which environment and heredity controlled the characters' fates and reduced them to primitive bêtes humaines (human beasts), a naturalistic concept in the vein of Zola.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Greed” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.