By Armando Inquig
A century after its release, Greed (1924) still feels modern. The nearly four-hour reconstructed version, created in 1999 by Turner Classic Movies, restores Erich von Stroheim’s lost footage by combining the surviving reels with hundreds of still photographs after the studio famously cut and destroyed most of his original film.
For a movie made a hundred years ago, it feels current, not in style or pacing, but in spirit. Its themes, the rawness of its characters, and the way it exposes human nature feel as if they belong to right now. Watching it is like holding up a mirror and realizing we haven’t changed much at all.
Reconstructing a Ghost
In this version, some parts unfold in motion, others through still photographs of scenes lost when the studio destroyed Stroheim’s original cut. The reconstruction used these images to bridge the missing footage and preserve the story’s rhythm. Watching this mix creates a ghost-like experience, one that makes you imagine and fill in the missing pieces. In that act of reconstruction, the film becomes a collaboration between the dead and the living, between Stroheim’s impossible ambition and our modern imagination.
Stroheim was a Viennese-born immigrant director who came to America chasing reinvention. His reputation at the time was controversial, not for scandal, but for insisting on realism where Hollywood preferred gloss. Greed became his ultimate rebellion. Shot in real locations, the film was famously cut down from an eight-hour epic to just over two. What survives today is part motion, part stills.
What Remains of Greed
The story follows McTeague, a San Francisco dentist whose simple life unravels. He marries Trina, a woman who wins a lottery. What begins as love slowly rots into obsession, possession, and ruin. Stroheim’s vision isn’t subtle; it’s raw and heavy, filmed with dirt, sweat, and human ugliness.
As the story unfolds, McTeague’s decency erodes. Trina’s fixation on her winnings becomes pathological as she clings to her gold coins. Marcus, McTeague’s friend and Trina’s former suitor, grows bitter over what he gave up and what she became. His resentment curdles into spite when he reports McTeague for practicing without a license, setting off the spiral that drives the rest of the film. Each frame feels heavy with inevitability. Stroheim shows poverty, jealousy, and collapse without judgment or sentiment.
The story reaches its bleak ending in Death Valley, where two men, chained together, die under the desert sun, surrounded by gold. What remains isn’t tragedy but recognition, the futility, the grudges, the blur between success and self-destruction.
Made in 1924, Greed could just as easily be about now. The same ambitions, the same moral exhaustion, the same fascination with wealth and ruin. Stroheim’s realism still feels radical a century later. The four-hour reconstruction endures as proof that even when art is damaged, it can outlive everything else. The fragments, the lost footage, the stills, the ghosts, all feel fitting for a film about human appetite. We never get the whole thing, just enough to want more.
Where to Find Greed
Various DVD editions of the shorter, 140-minute theatrical version have circulated since the late 2000s, often from European distributors like Llamentol. The more complete four-hour reconstruction, however, remains most accessible through digital platforms like Amazon and Tubi, a fitting afterlife for a film that refused to disappear, even after being cut, chopped, and destroyed.
Robert Bresson’s late masterwork THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977), a blistering indictment of post-May ‘68 France, will run in a new 4K restoration at Film Forum from Friday, September 20 through Thursday, September 26. 
