Reconstructing Greed

In the original concept of Director Erich von Stroheim, his Greed, 1924, a classic in silent films, should have nine hours duration. To adapt it to the market, however, the director himself set about editing the film initially down to seven hours duration and, later, to four hours. Still not satisfied, producer Irving Thalberg finished the job. Over 420 minutes of this classic were lost. In 1999, Turner Entertainment and Turner Classic Movies sponsored the restoration and inclusion of 650 photographs in the film, to restore the original four hours of the last version by Stroheim. The work of reconstruction was assigned to Rick Schmidlin who based himself on the 330 pages of film script. The restorer also took care to color some photograms of the film according to the original concept of the author such as the coins, the plaque from the gold mine, the canary, all of it in that yellow gold that represented a mortal obsession to Trina, the miserly protagonist of the film. Reconstructing Greed was awarded a prize by the Los Angeles Association of Film Critics for its “meticulous reconstruction” and the Film Heritage Award from the United States National Society of Film Critics. According to U.S. critic Leonard Maltin, Greed is one of the greatest contributions to the history of Cinema.

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA