Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)

Gibson Gowland and Jean Hersholt in Greed

McTeague: Gibson Gowland
Trina: Zasu Pitts
Marcus: Jean Hersholt
Maria: Dale Fuller
Mother McTeague: Tempe Pigott
"Mommer" Sieppe: Sylvia Ashton
"Popper" Sieppe: Chester Conklin
Selina: Joan Standing
Zwerkow: Cesare Gravina
Charles W. Grannis: Frank Hayes
Miss Anastasia Baker: Fanny Midgley

Director: Erich von Stroheim
Screenplay: June Mathis, Erich von Stroheim, Joseph Farnham (titles)
Based on a novel by Frank Norris
Cinematography: William H. Daniels, Ben F. Reynolds
Production design: Erich von Stroheim

One of the legendary mutilated masterpieces, Greed isn't one film but several, most of which are lost. The gravest loss would have to be the original 42-reel cut (about eight hours) of the film, which was seen only by a handful of people, several of whom were the first to call it a masterpiece. What we're most likely to see now is the 1999 reconstruction of the film, gathering the scenes that remained after various hands cut it down to about 10 reels (about an hour and 50 minutes) before its 1924 release, which was a critical and commercial flop. After that, the footage deteriorated or was trashed, so the four-hour restored version is pieced out with what remained in various archives along with stills and other archival material. I doubt that anyone other than professional film historians would be willing to sit through more of Greed than that: It's an exhausting experience, not only because of the length but also because Erich von Stroheim's dedication to telling as much of the story in Frank Norris's novel as he could led him into some extraordinarily bleak places. The bleakest of those places is of course Death Valley, where the climactic standoff of McTeague and Marcus takes place -- a sequence that still has the power to astonish even when seen independently of the rest of the film. But much of the bleakness also lies in the characters of McTeague and Trina, especially the latter, whose transformation from sensitive, shy virgin to monster of greed is harrowing -- a reminder that Zasu Pitts, now best known as a comic character actress, was a performer of real skill. The restoration also includes the sordid subplot of the greedy junk dealer Zwerkow and his half-mad henchwoman Maria, which ends in murder and suicide. Balancing that was a sentimental subplot involving the McTeagues' rooming-house neighbors, the elderly bachelor Grannis and the spinster Miss Baker, who don't meet for a long time, even though their rooms are separated by a partition so thin they can hear each other's every move. If the junk dealer subplot serves to indicate the depths of degradation that threaten the McTeagues, the story of the lonely elders helps sweeten the film as they meet and fall in love, using a monetary windfall in constructive ways -- a counterpoint to Trina's miserly hoarding of her lottery winnings. Greed is a fascinating film, but I suspect that the story of its mishandling outweighs any significance it might have had if it had remained intact and coherent.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram, 1921)

Alice Terry and Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Julio Desnoyers: Rudolph Valentino
Marguerite Laurier: Alice Terry
Madariaga: Pomeroy Cannon
Marcelo Desnoyers: Josef Swickard
Etienne Laurier: John St. Polis
Karl von Hartrott: Alan Hale
Doña Luisa: Bridgetta Clark
Chichí: Virginia Warren
Otto von Hartrott: Stuart Holmes
Tchernoff: Nigel De Brulier
Lt. Col. von Richthosen: Wallace Beery

Director: Rex Ingram
Screenplay: June Mathis
Based on a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Art direction: Joseph Calder, Amos Myers
Film editing: Grant Whytock

Nobody reads that whopping bestseller of 1919, Vicente Blasco Ibañez's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, anymore, but Rex Ingram's film version, adapted from the novel and shepherded through production by June Mathis, has helped keep it in print for a century. It's an impassioned reaction to the horror of World War I as well as the film that helped establish Rudolph Valentino -- who was discovered by Mathis -- as a superstar the moment he stepped onto the dance floor with Beatrice Dominguez for a sizzling tango. Granted, some aspects of Valentino's appeal have gone out of style: the flared nostrils and lowered eyelids and the oil-slicked hair that glistens like an LP record. But late in the film, when he appears with a few days' growth of beard, he could vie with any contemporary stubble-enhanced leading man. And he was not an inconsiderable actor, more than holding his own in a company of scenery-chewers. Just standing there, he had the quiet self-assurance of someone like Gary Cooper, an actor who draws the eye without begging for it. There is much that's preposterous about Ibañez's story, especially the mysterious Tchernoff, who lives in the attic above Julio Desnoyer's studio and descends at the start of the war to deliver a sermon about the four horsemen in the book of Revelation, illustrating it with Dürer's woodcuts. There are some characters and incidents brought over from the novel that could have been cut, like Julio's sister, Chichí, and the married couple across the way from Julio's studio, a Frenchman and a German woman. The latter falls to her death from her window after her husband marches off to war, a blatant symbolic moment. But Mathis's adaptation is on the whole solid, and John F. Seitz's cinematography makes the most of the expensive sets. 

Camille (Ray C. Smallwood, 1921)

Alla Nazimova in Camille

Marguerite Gautier: Alla Nazimova
Armand Duval: Rudolph Valentino
Gaston Rieux: Rex Cherryman
Count de Varville: Arthur Hoyt
Prudence: Zeffie Tilbury
Nichette: Patsy Ruth Miller
Nanine: Elinor Oliver
Armand's Father: William Orlamond
Olympe: Consuelo Flowerton

Director: Ray C. Smallwood
Screenplay: June Mathis
Based on the novel and play by Alexandre Dumas fils
Cinematography: Rudolph J. Bergquist
Art direction: Natacha Rambova
Costume design: Natacha Rambova

It's hard to judge from her performance in this silent version of Camille why Alla Nazimova (billed in the film, which she produced, as just "Nazimova") was so celebrated an actress, especially if you've seen Greta Garbo's performance in George Cukor's 1936 version of the Dumas fils story. To us, Nazimova's Marguerite Gautier is camp: a series of pouts and poses, with lots of swooning backbends, and an unfortunate hairdo that looks like a cross between an afro and an explosion in a wig factory. But it's very much Nazimova's movie: Her Armand is Rudolph Valentino, but she constantly upstages him, even to the extent of cutting the usual ending of Camille, in which Marguerite and Armand are reunited for her great resurgence of life just before she expires. In this Camille Marguerite dies unreconciled, with just the faithful Nanine and the just-married Gaston and Nichette as witnesses to her last swoon. It's as if she foresaw Garbo's grand demise and knew she couldn't compete. What the film mostly has going for it are the set and costume designs of Natacha Rambova (who may have been Nazimova's lover and who did marry Valentino). At some point, a decision was made to update the story from the 1840s to the 1920s, so Rambova's designs for Marguerite's Paris haunts are a fascinating version of Art Deco with touches of Art Nouveau and some hints of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings. Marguerite breathes her last in a round bed under a rounded arch in her Paris bedroom, which has a round window outside of which snow is falling. But Rambova seems less interested in Marguerite and Armand's country idyll, and the cottage is a rather drab affair, very obviously a three-walled stage set, and one that the director, Ray C. Smallwood, unimaginatively treats as such. As for Valentino, he's his usual handsome and dashing presence, but deprived of his final scene he makes less impact on the film than usual. In short, this Camille is a briefly tantalizing glimpse at some legendary figures, but not much of a drama.