The Deadliest Sin

Unearthing Greed in Frank Norris' McTeague

While Frank Norris' novel McTeague includes the lengthy subtitle "A Story of San Francisco," it could easily have been summed up by the title given to Erich von Stroheim's 1925 film, Greed. Although McTeague is an apt example of a turn-of-the-century novel, its attempt to capture modern life in San Francisco leads to a drawn out story filled with long passages detailing the city and life on Polk Street. Stroheim's film, on the other hand, does credit to the novel's time and place while providing it with a singular focus at which Norris fails.

Stroheim battled with MGM over the length of the film. His original 96 hours of raw film were edited down to three and half hours by his friend and editor Rex Ingram. But MGM wanted it to be more marketable, so the studio's editor June Mathis cut it to ten reels (about two hours, fifteen minutes). The result is a trimmer, more succinct story, which focuses clearly on the major failing of its characters.

Norris spends half the novel setting up the relationship between McTeague and his wife-to-be Trina Sieppe, but Greed is beyond that point after the first half-hour of the film. The quicker pace is accomplished by the deletion of several characters and side stories that added richness to McTeague. For example, the plotline surrounding Maria Macapa and the junk peddler Zerkow is completely abandoned. Likewise the interaction of the elderly people in the building, Old Grannis and Miss Baker, is never broached.

Each of these relationships provides another point of view regarding the theme of greed, and it is unfortunate that they could not be explored. Maria's insane obsession over the fictitious gold plates of her youth is an obvious example. She tells her story repeatedly, always beginning the same way, "There were more than a hundred pieces, and every one of them gold." The greed of the peddler Zerkow is fueled by Maria's story, so much so that he eventually asks her to marry him. In the end, his avarice leads him to beat Maria, demanding to know where the fictitious gold dinnerware is stored, but by then Maria's sanity has returned and she no longer feeds his mania. In the end, the story of the golden plates leads to her death and Zerkow's.

On the other side is the story of the elderly people in the building, Old Grannis and Miss Baker. The two have lived the twilight of their lives in close proximity, never daring to speak to one another. It is only through McTeague and Trina's good fortune, first with the lottery ticket and then with their marriage, that the two neighbors see each other at all. Despite their circling orbits and fondness for each other, each is unwilling to breach the barrier separating them until Old Grannis has some good fortune of his own. He has sold the rights on a device he created to bind pamphlets. At first this causes him some distress. He thinks that without his device that he will no longer have any sense of purpose, no hobby with which to pass the time. Because of this newfound wealth (and with a little prodding from Trina), he finally confronts Miss Baker and confesses his feelings for her. In this way, Norris shows that money, even riches, are not to be feared, only obsession with wealth.

Perhaps the most striking absence from Greed, however, is the subplot regarding McTeague's desire for a gilded tooth as a sign for his dentist parlors. Early on in McTeague, Norris writes:

"But for one thing, McTeague would have been perfectly contented… It was his ambition, his dream, to have projecting from that corner window a huge gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive. He would have it some day, on that he was resolved…" (Pg. 4-5).

Eventually McTeague receives this object of desire from Trina as a birthday present. The item that had once seemed to be an unattainable pinnacle of his career was handed to him as a gift, purchased by his love before they were married. Yet this object becomes a sticking point with McTeague. When he loses his practice because he does not have a dentistry license, he must sell everything in his offices. Yet, this one object he refuses to part with. As the McTeagues fall into financial ruin, he clings to this object (one of his few remaining possessions) even though it no longer has any practical purpose. When he finally does decide to sell it, he receives a mere five dollars for it -- when he could have sold it for ten when he first went out of business. The gilded molar is not only a symbol of his success as a dentist, but also the love he and his wife once shared. Selling it, and so cheaply, is the proverbial straw. After this act, McTeague is inconsolable. Seeing his life with Trina at an end, he steals her savings and leaves her for good.

Yet, for all of the things missing from Greed, Stroheim manages to create a film that is powerful even 75 years later. Despite the fact that Greed is a silent movie, the story communicates clearly to the audience. With a sparing use of cue cards, Stroheim keeps the story moving forward through wonderful close-ups, fade shots, and some good acting. The fading transition as McTeague's mother watches the traveling dentist and imagines her son in his place is simple, but shows a remarkable invention in storytelling for the time. True, the acting may seem a bit corny by contemporary standards, but only through the first part of the film. By the end, the characters are so real that they transcend the screen. The brutality with which McTeague attacks Trina in the schoolhouse is frightening. Even though the beating takes place off camera, it is violent and shocking. The entire scene in Death Valley is a masterpiece of realism. The audience is with McTeague in that wasteland, looking over the shoulder, waiting to be discovered.

Most importantly, the central theme of the film is clear. Stroheim returns to the avarice in the characters again and again. Trina's miserly traits seem to spring up overnight, but the director shows it to the audience in a number of ways. Whether through ghastly images of long, bony arms and fingers fondling gold, or ghostly dreams of golden riches, Trina's obsession is clear. The scene in the schoolhouse where she pours the gold on the bed and then sleeps in it is particularly striking. It is unfortunate that Norris' image of her naked "taking a strange ecstatic pleasure in the touch of the smooth flat pieces the length of her entire body" could not be fully realized in the cinema of 1925. Such an erotic scene would have further helped communicate Trina's obsession with gold.

Stroheim's extended film has been considered by many to be the greatest film never seen. The loss of so much footage from an excellent filmmaker is a blow to film history. Nevertheless, despite all that was lost in whittling it down to two hours, the final version of Greed stands on its own as a silent masterpiece.