We can't blame the director, since the film was "butchered", but what I saw was seriously flawed. I've seen many great silent films, and this isn't in the same league with them. "Intolerance" is a better film on a similar subject.
Motivation is the worst problem. It feels wrong that someone upon winning a lottery would refuse to spend a cent of it, and suddenly become the world's worst miser. Her love for the money becomes more important than any other human emotion or comfort. We read of old people like this dying filthy and destitute, with a hidden fortune, but the sudden onset here feels wrong. Some of the greed shown is created because of the stinginess of others. The husband has a strange lack of influence over the wife, especially for the time, perhaps because the human love and friendships in the film are shallow and phony. It is a dark movie.
There are some terrific views of streetcars and street scenes in early San Francisco; of interurbans and outside Shellmound Park in the East Bay. The Death Valley scenes probably had more visual impact then, as today they seem commonplace. So I felt the images as well as the story petered out to an unsatisfying end.
Motivation is the worst problem. It feels wrong that someone upon winning a lottery would refuse to spend a cent of it, and suddenly become the world's worst miser. Her love for the money becomes more important than any other human emotion or comfort. We read of old people like this dying filthy and destitute, with a hidden fortune, but the sudden onset here feels wrong. Some of the greed shown is created because of the stinginess of others. The husband has a strange lack of influence over the wife, especially for the time, perhaps because the human love and friendships in the film are shallow and phony. It is a dark movie.
There are some terrific views of streetcars and street scenes in early San Francisco; of interurbans and outside Shellmound Park in the East Bay. The Death Valley scenes probably had more visual impact then, as today they seem commonplace. So I felt the images as well as the story petered out to an unsatisfying end.