Visionary.

The title and message are very blunt but the film's delivery is anything but. Using the film's runtime to full advantage, von Stroheim allows these characters to develop slowly and naturally and to let the various manifestations of greed reveal themselves slowly and to ever increasing negative effects. The acting is a big part of this as the effects on the characters' personalities are just as important as the actions. The finale is the culmination of everything that precedes it, perfection.

It feels a bit too one note at points for its four hour runtime, and the characters often drift in to caricature, but there's still something quite magnificent about it. The sheer scope of it, the relentlessness (culminating in one of the best and most startlingly grim endings I've ever seen), the wealth of emotion. I'm not convinced it it the masterpiece everyone says it is, but I still found it to be great.

I can't imagine it going for ten hours, four was more than enough to develop the characters and hammer the themes again and again (and again). The film works with it's time, though, and it's certainly a singular work on its subject--much like Intolerance, though told on a more personal level. It takes a while but it does get emotional and even exciting. It's a basic film, but it does well what it sets out to do.

132-minute version.

coldeki climax, detaylar ve imgeler (kedi, akordiyon, kuslar) manyak sahneler (cenazeli dugun, alt%u0131nlarla dolu yataga girme)

#69

Silent, but deadly.

Good film.

Four hours of this is enough, I don't even want to know how the hell it ever went on for over nine hours. As you would expect, the story is extremely blunt and one-note. To Stroheim's credit, though, he does manage to get a lot of mileage out of that note. Despite making its point early and often, the film somehow never feels repetitive. For such a lengthy work, it goes by pretty quick, culminating with one hell of an ending.

# 64

Magnificent. However butchered it may have been by the studio after they took it out of von Stroheim's hands, this is one of the best silent films that somehow escaped the ashcan

# 64

Totally uncompromising and harsh, especially when you consider the era in which it was made. The ending sequence is total perfection, completely capturing the insanity of the situation and the tortured logic of the pathetic characters. The ending is brilliantly abrupt and hopeless. A brutal, unrelenting film.

It's interesting to see how Stroheim is able to carry what is essentially a one-note story for four hours and avoid boring the audience. The pacing is brisk, the variety of characters helps keep the action varied, and the settings are often visually distinctive (esp. death valley). That said, the main narrative revolves around the same three characters doing the same kinds of things to each other for most of the film's run time, albeit with a predictable escalation.

67

64

More than a masterpiece. Sets out to tell all the truth about man's lust for wealth.The finest piece of mad realism ever perpetrated. Von Stroheim took his actors to Death Valley so that they could really sweat out those climactic passions, and it shows. Pitts does fine work as a tragedienne.