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If You Like ‘Shallow Grave’ Why Not Try ‘Greed’

The war films that Hollywood produced during the years of the 1st World War (once America had got into the war) viewed these days are pretty racist, the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans taken to extremes; raped nuns, babies hurled from windows etc. Presiding over a good deal of these atrocities is a man who looks born to play the part of the vicious German officer revelling in callous brutality; Erich Von Stroheim. Such was his popularity in these films the actor was dubbed ‘The Man You Love to Hate’, it was a name and an image he did his best to live up to both as an actor and director, even once the war was over. Von Stroheim was a disciple of the great D. W. Griffith, for whom he had worked as an assistant director and to whom he always acknowledged a debt. But while Griffith’s films sought to exult the human spirit, Von Stroheim revelled in it’s degradation. In many ways ‘Greed’ can be seen as Von Stroheim’s masterpiece, but it’s unlikely that the man himself would agree, this film has a history, and it’s necessary to go into it, at least briefly before continuing with the comparison.

Von Stroheim began as a director at Universal, his first film ‘Blind Husbands’ was hugely successful and so he was given more leeway with his follow up ‘Foolish Wives’. Unfortunately Von Stroheim swiftly began to use this leeway the same way that he would throughout the rest of his career, no one could piss other people’s money up the wall like Erich Von Stroheim. When champagne and caviar was supposed to be onscreen Von Stroheim insisted it was real caviar and champagne even though there was no way an audience could tell. He insisted on realism above and beyond the call of duty, not to mention sanity, and had absolutely no interest in, or concept of, how much he spent. Beyond that it was swiftly becoming evident that he was not making a film of any normal length, however astonishing the footage he was producing something had to be done. Universal’s young head of production, Irving Thalberg, (called the boy wonder and still regarded today as the producer’s producer) took the film away from him. Despite warnings from Thalberg Von Stroheim repeated his extravagance on his next film ’Merry Go Round’ and this time got fired. He needed a more flexible studio and found it in Goldwyn who offered him more or less complete freedom, which he eagerly took to make an adaptation of the novel ‘McTeague’.

Since the beginning of film, books have been adapted for the screen and there has been a consensus that to do a good job, you have to cut, a book takes days to read, a film hours to watch. Von Stroheim may be the only director in history to not subscribe to this way of thinking, he set out to film every page of the book. The film that emerged was over eight hours long with a dinner break in the middle and those who saw it described it as one of the most beautiful and remarkable films ever made; a masterpiece. But at eight hours long it was stunningly uncommercial; would Goldwyn honour their agreement? They never had the chance, while Von Stroheim was shooting, a merger took place and Goldwyn was swallowed up to be part of the new Metro Goldwyn company, which would soon become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM. The new head of production, poached from Universal, was Irving Thalberg. ‘McTeague’ was renamed ‘Greed’ and cut down to a more manageable length, Von Stroheim would not even look at the re-edited film.

‘Greed’ has become something of a cause celebre in discussions of art versus commerce, the evils of the big studios versus the visionary director. But there are a couple of things to consider. I would love to see the original ‘McTeague’, but I doubt I would have gone to a cinema to watch a film of that length. These days with DVD’s etc it might have had a chance but back then it represented a vast amount of money needing to be recouped and the eight hour version would never do that, it was not commercial, it was art for arts sake (which was MGM’s motto, I doubt the irony was lost on Von Stroheim). Secondly, the editing was a superb job. Around six hours has been cut from this film (it’s still almost two and half hours long) and yet one cannot see the joins, one does not feel anything is missing. Which begs the question; is anything really missing? Sub-plots and subtle foreshadowing may have been shorn, but they do not affect storytelling, which is the primary job of the director. Von Stroheim was a visionary, but self control was not a phrase in his lexicon. It is a tragedy that ‘McTeague’ is gone, if only because now we can never compare the two, but the truth is that there is a very real chance that what we are left with is the better film, or at least one you might watch.

So what could this behemoth of cinema history, a social realist film based on a piece of classic American literature (the novel was by Frank Norris), possibly have in common with a relatively low budget horror thriller from Scotland? The clue is in the name of the silent; greed. These are both studies of the corrupting influence of money, what people are willing to do to get hold of it and keep hold of it, more specifically the effect of a large sum of money on a previously close knit group of friends. Beyond that what the films have in common is, on the face of it, a good solid ‘bugger all’, but go deeper and there is more there, points where they touch, if only because they are examining the same subject and coming to the same conclusion. ‘Shallow Grave may not have much in the way of social realism but ‘Greed’ sure as hell has aspects of horror in it. They are both violent and both sexual, ‘Greed’ is the probably the least sexual of Von Stroheim’s films (which usually went to censor baiting extremes with panty sniffing and flagellation) but it’s still there.

The groups of friends have their similarities to start with. Two men and a girl on each side, a combination which may as well have ‘love triangle’ branded on it. The lead character (and despite Ewan McGregor’s subsequent star status Christopher Ecclestone is the star of ‘Shallow Grave’) in each is a quiet man with hidden and violent depths. These depths are clear in McTeague (Gibson Gowland) from the start, he rescues a small bird and when a co-worker knocks the bird out of his hand McTeague hurls the man down a hill into a stream. Ecclestone’s David is more of a mystery, he is the least likely one to end up being truly frightening so it’s all the better when he becomes a psychopath, and Ecclestone is absolutely magnificent. It’s possible to compare Jean Hersholt’s Marcus in ‘Greed’ to McGregor’s Alex at first, simply because they are both men who think they’re funny and would probably be quite annoying if you met them, as money enters the picture they both become bastards. Hersholt is fine in the role (though not the best thing in the film) while McGregor is destined for stardom from the instant he enters, holding his own against Ecclestone’s showier psychotic and even managing to win our sympathy for a character who initially seems extremely unlikely to get it. From the start the girls Trina (ZaSu Pitts) and Juliet (Kerry Fox) are the most sympathetic characters which makes it all the more entertaining when both become increasingly manipulative and greedy. Sympathy is a relative term in this case, in neither film are the leads presented particularly likeable people. There are strong supporting casts in both films (‘Shallow Grave’ boasting an impressive collection of people with ‘Taggart’ on their CV) but it’s all about the leads, these are focussed stories.

Focus in the first contrast worth looking at. ‘Shallow Grave’ is an hour and twenty nine minutes, it is honed to a knife edge. The first plot point of Keith Allen (a great cameo) dying in his room with a case full of money arrives in just over fifteen minutes; textbook storytelling. Von Stroheim was more the type to write his own book, the deus ex machina which introduces improbable wealth in ‘Greed’ is that old chestnut (probably not cliché at the time) of winning the lottery and it takes over half an hour to crop up. On the other hand the central theme of ‘Shallow Grave’, of the effect of money on a group of friends, the sense of greed, takes a while to arrive, it’s only once they have the money it becomes an issue. In ‘Greed’ the lure of gold is there from the start and Von Stroheim uses a brilliant technique to show it; anything gold, fillings, money, canaries, is tinted a bright gold. At first it’s a pretty way of showing gold, but soon enough Von Stroheim starts using it as a way of showing the corrupting influence of money, when something bad is happening he can cut to something as innocuous as the canaries to underline his central point. This is one of the essential differences between the films, ‘Shallow Grave’ is essentially a great story with greed as a secondary theme, ‘Greed’ is a serious and purposeful study of greed in the form of a story.

What about this greed then? The lure of gold. What does it make these people do? Well it certainly changes them, though for different reasons and in different ways. Arguably David is not changed by the money itself, he is changed by the act of sawing a dead man’s hands and feet off and hammering his face into a pulp. By the same token Gibson Gowland’s McTeague is not changed by money because he doesn’t have any, it all belongs to his wife, he’s changed by the way the money changes her into a miser, scrimping and saving every last penny, to the extent that the fortune in ‘Greed’ is never even touched. Trina uses sex to keep McTeague in line and making money for her, while Juliet uses sex to get close to David who has hidden the money. Alex changes the least really, left to his own devices the money would probably not have made him a bigger pain in the arse but more able to indulge his pain the arse tendencies, he has fewer scruples about what they have done. Marcus is one of the most telling one’s, Trina is initially his girl but he gives her up for his friend, then she wins a lot of money and he feels robbed. Throughout the film he feels the money is rightly his but has no interest in Trina, even when McTeague has murdered Trina, Marcus vows to track down the killer purely to get his money back.

Violence is of course the most obvious answer to what are they willing to do. The flatmates do not kill Keith Allen’s Hugo in ‘Shallow Grave’ they merely mutilate his corpse and hide the body. They kill the men coming for Hugo’s money, but that is self defence. It’s what they do to each other that’s most telling, here violence and intimidation knows no limits and former friendships are forgotten. ‘Greed takes an altogether less flamboyant tack, and a grimmer one of course, it’s worth noting that the romance of McTeague and Trina starts with him pulling her teeth (he is a quack dentist) and then kissing her while she is under sedation. Although McTeague ends up killing Trina, the nastiest scene is perhaps where he tries to get the money out of her to go for a drink by biting her fingers. Like of much of Von Stroheim’s output there is something deeply perverse about the image. There is a scene in ‘Shallow Grave’ where, drunk at a party, Alex falls to the ground and Juliet puts her foot first on his chest then in his mouth, it’s the sort of thing Von Stroheim would have recognised and appreciated, as he would David’s voyeuristic peering at Juliet through the holes he has drilled in the ceiling after he retreats to the loft. The most extreme scene in ‘McTeague’ was one cut from ‘Greed’ to shorten it and possibly to avoid local censoring, in this scene Trina strips naked and rolls around in the gold she has spread over her bed, eventually achieving orgasm. Clearly sex is linked to money in both films.

A lot of the time in ‘Greed’ it’s not so much about what people are willing to do as much as how low will they stoop? Trina will do anything rather than lose the money, a rich woman who eats meat not fit for dogs and takes a job no matter how degrading to avoid spending one cent of her lottery win.

The other thing that both films have in common is an air of inevitability, there is never any danger of the money bringing happiness. The sense of something bad is evident from the opening moments of ‘Shallow Grave’ even before it becomes violent it feels like a horror film in it’s camerawork and tone. As soon as the money appears we start seeing the men who are looking for it, getting answers with easy brutality. They are dispensed of by the changed David but then the police show up and the net closes still further. There is no way they are getting away with this and it’s just a question of who ends up dead. ‘Greed’ is of course grim, sordid and down at heel from the get go, that’s part of it’s raison d’etre, it is an unremittingly ugly film that never lets us see a happy side to wealth. We’ve already touched on their first meeting at the dentists, one of their early dates is lunch by a sewer; romantic it isn’t. Even McTeague’s proposal seems an act of intimidation. When the news of the lottery win arrives it is brought by a man with some sort of growth on his face concealed by a plaster, one of a gallery of grotesques Von Stroheim crowbars in. Shortly after the win Trina and McTeague marry in a poor ceremony in their living room, through the window a funeral can be seen passing, if ever a wedding was doomed then it’s this one. Every step Trina takes, forcing greater privations on McTeague, is a step closer to him leaving and to her eventual murder. Marcus meanwhile makes matters worse by reporting McTeague as an unlicensed dentist and taking away their means of income. Now it’s a matter of time.

Having touched on the inevitability of what’s going to happen it’s time to look at what actually does, and if you haven’t seen ‘Shallow Grave’ then this is one of those films where I can’t avoid ruining a good ending if I want to examine the film. So stop reading now, go watch it, then finish reading. You’ll thank me later. The point is of course that ‘Shallow Grave’ does not 100% follow through on it’s grim inevitability; David is killed, Juliet is left with nothing, Alex is nailed to the floor with a knife through his shoulder but, in a magnificent and unexpected twist, he has the money. What seals a happy ending for Alex is firstly the levels of violence he goes through, but more importantly the fact that he tries to help the manipulative Juliet, he loves her and wants to share the money with her. She in return nails him to the floor. Because of this Alex gets the money. The black humour of Hitchcock is smeared all over this (an influence that’s predominant in this film especially it’s voyeurism and clever structure) with the suitcase in which the money is supposedly stored acting as an effective Macguffin. It’s a bloody wonderful ending.

Needless to say the characters in ‘Greed’ are not so lucky, and in fact for similar reasons. The annoying Alex redeems himself by trying to save Juliet, while the put upon McTeague dooms himself by killing Trina after he has already left her. He did not have to, he could have just taken the money, he’s easily strong enough. This act means that a posse follows him as he flees with the money (Marcus a member of it), and in desperation (and stupidity) he heads into Death Valley. The posse will not follow, but Marcus, blinded by his lust for gold, goes in after him. By the time Marcus finds McTeague they are both doomed, and yet they still fight over the money, McTeague bludgeons Marcus to death and then finds that Marcus has handcuffed them together. With no water, and a corpse attached to his arm, McTeague sits down with his blood spattered gold and waits for death.

All of which crystallises the difference between these films; one is art, the other is entertainment. But, like all the best artistic films, ‘Greed’ is entertaining, albeit in a fairly grim Ken Loach kind of a way, and, like all the best entertaining films, ‘Shallow Grave’ is a work of art, albeit a piece of pop art that serious art critics wouldn’t recognise. The films have overlap of course, they are basically the same subjects treated in vastly different ways; violence, insanity, don’t trust your friends. But the main thing they have in common is a conclusion; money will always screw things up. Interestingly Danny Boyle revisited the same subject in his underrated family film ‘Millions’ (2004) and even though he is showing the flipside of the coin where the boy who finds the money tries to do good with it, he comes to the same conclusion.

VERDICT

There are only three silent directors in this book I would comfortably refer to as geniuses; D.W. Griffith goes without saying, as does Alfred Hitchcock (although perhaps not in reference to his silent films), F. W. Murnau is a personal favourite but I think most critics would agree the term still applies. If I were to pick a fourth then it would be Erich Von Stroheim. ‘Greed’ is an astonishingly good film, a work of art, and it would take a whole book to examine the incredible level of detail, the use of imagery and atmosphere, but let’s just say it doesn’t put a foot wrong. But of course, it’s not Erich Von Stroheim’s film as it stands, he has every quality necessary of a director with the exception of focus. He needed a Sistine Chapel on which to let his vision sprawl and film does not lend itself to that. I’ve nothing against long films (although eight and half hours is pushing my tolerance level quite a bit) but not at the expense of storytelling. Von Stroheim unquestionably put artistry before storytelling and in the end it would cost him. Even in the edited version, these tendencies are there.  In ‘Shallow Grave’ however the storytelling is as focussed as it could possibly be. Maybe in purely artistic terms, from a technical perspective, ‘Greed’ is better, it is an absolute triumph, but ‘Shallow Grave’ is infinitely more watchable and the most supremely intelligent thriller made since the death of Alfred Hitchcock. It is imaginative, technically superb, with great performances, and a killer twist. For my money it’s even better than ‘Trainspotting’ which got Boyle so much more attention.

Which should take nothing away from ‘Greed’, it is a great film, maybe it’s difficult viewing but that does not mean it shouldn’t be seen and enjoyed. It is a film that gets better with every viewing because there is so much in there to see. It is a testament to the tremendous and uncontrollable talent of Erich Von Stroheim.

Although the career of Von Stroheim coincided with the end of the silent era it was not talkies that killed him, it was, predictably, his inability to do what he was told or compromise his vision one millimetre. His extravagances grew and the growth of censorship did nothing to curtail his perverse dreams. Erich Von Stroheim epitomises our image of a silent director, dictatorial and autocratic, his rise and fall is a great story I really wish I had the space to tell but, like one of his own films, it has so many facets and stories within stories that it’s the stuff of epic novels. One story from the making of ‘Greed’ I would like to end on though, if only because it is generally agreed to be true and it hits to the core of his popularity and his fate. Rather than using a studio set or nearby substitute, Von Stroheim dragged his crew to Death Valley to shoot the film’s finale. One of the hottest places on earth the fragile film had to be constantly cooled, several members of the crew became seriously ill and the cook actually died. In the centre of all this sat Von Stroheim directing the final fight scene between Gibson Gowland and Jean Hersholt, yelling at them, ‘Fight! Fight! Try to hate each other as you both hate me!’

If you have feedback, you can e-mail Robin here.

Copyright© 2007 Robin Bailes