Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/407863
17 NOV-DEC 14 / CINEMONTAGE social environment that connected these scenes as a story was brutally excised. The carefully observed "cause-and- effect" processes of McTeague's entry into dentistry and of the evolution of his and his bride Trina's life together are only two examples of footage only sometimes replaced by wordy and often clumsy titles to explain obvious gaps of continuity. Gradual transformations of personal habits and attitudes seen over time now appeared crudely sudden. Whytock said of the MGM cut, "What they released was in my opinion a lot of nothing. It was ruined, absolutely ruined." None of the excised footage has survived. In 1999, producer Rick Schmidlin created a four-hour "reconstruction" of Stroheim's original conception. Guided by the 1923 continuity script for the movie, he edited together over 600 production stills with the release version to represent the full story as Stroheim intended. Unfortunately, the stills cannot approximate the original framing and editing. After Greed, Stroheim completed one more project for MGM, The Merry Widow (1925) — a box office hit for the studio — but his career as a director petered out in 1933. He continued working as an actor in Hollywood and Europe, most notably in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950). In 1950, Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque Française persuaded Stroheim to watch the release version of his film. At the end of the screening, the director wept and said, "This was like an exhumation for me. In a tiny coffin, I found a lot of dust, a terrible smell, a couple bits of backbone and a shoulder bone." All the same, the very fragmentary nature of the released version gave the MGM editors little leeway to cut the individual scenes that now constituted the film. Mostly appearing as originally edited by Stroheim and Hull, these indestructible "bits of bone" still retain the power to evoke visceral emotions and instinctual human drives. Despite their truncated setting, the sharply drawn and relentlessly authentic images of Greed substantiate the film's reputation as a monumental achievement. To this day, Stroheim's ability to capture raw psychological realism resonates deeply, stirring us to crave for a look at the tragically irretrievable 15-reel cut. f CARDINAL COMMUNICATIONS GRAPHICS STUDIO "WITH THEIR SENSITIVE USE OF LENSES, LIGHTING, COMPOSITION AND FRAMING, DICK POPE MAKES 'MR. TURNER' A PAINTING UNTO ITSELF, GIVING VIEWERS THE MIRACULOUS IMPRESSION OF EXISTING WITHIN THE IMAGE ALONG WITH THE MAN MAKING IT. IT'S A POETIC, POTENT EFFECT, ONE THAT LENDS THE TIME TRAVEL OF A WELL-EXECUTED PERIOD PIECE A MYSTICAL, MEANINGFUL AND EVEN MIRACULOUS EXTRA DIMENSION." -Ann Hornaday, THE WASHINGTON POST For your consideration BEST PICTURE BEST FILM EDITING Jon Gregory, ACE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Dick Pope, BSC "This was like an exhumation for me. In a tiny coffin, I found a lot of dust, a terrible smell, a couple bits of backbone and a shoulder bone." – Erich von Stoheim