Definitely a marathon of a movie, not a sprint. Stay hydrated, and summon the patience of Job. You also might want to leave a trail of popcorn to the kitchen in case you should become dazed and disoriented. The original film was about 8 hours long, hacked down to about two and a half hours by the studio over director Eric von Stroheim's wishes, and then reconstructed via stills in 1999 to about 4 hours. I'm not sure what to say about that - I hate the butchery and how the original was lost, but on the other hand, even the reconstructed version feels far too long. It gets good in the second half, and truly great at the end, but it's a long haul to get there, and just not compelling enough to recommend without reservations. And in an irony not lost on me, I notice the length of my review is also far longer than any sane person will care to read. I broke it up hour by hour:
First hour - 3 stars. I can't really think of anything that stands out as remarkable in the long drawn out setup of this dentist and the woman he falls for. To be honest, I thought of not investing the time to watch the rest, but buoyed by the high average rating, soldiered on. It's pretty creepy when he kisses her when she's under sedation in his chair, and pretty weird/contrived when her cousin, a rival for her affections, simply steps aside when he finds out this guy loves her too. Maybe the best part was Gibson Gowland, whose appearance is so striking, or the coloring in of the gold items from time to time, which was done by hand (like the recurring image of those bony arms sifting through a pile of gold coins). Oh, and I liked to setting in San Francisco as well, with a still of the Ferry Building and some footage in the Cliff House area overlooking Ocean Beach.
Second hour - 3 stars. The young woman improbably wins the lottery, thus setting up drama, as her ex-boyfriend realizes the riches he could have shared. The film continued to plod along, making me think of a lumbering dinosaur, maybe one of the large sauropods. Or that I was in the dentist chair, sans novocaine, and the dentist was in there with primitive tools extracting a tooth, while my eyes rolled back in horror and drool began hanging from my lip. Meanwhile, the story of the old man and woman in the apartment building who hear each other through paper thin walls and are attracted to one another is cute, but most of this subplot (and another) was edited out. Surreal little details abound, like the spanking of three kids while looking at wedding gifts, which seemed excessive. Zasu Pitts's performance is hit and miss and she overacts in the wedding night scene, but some of von Stroheim's camera work is nice, seeing her walk ethereally down the hall, and the pan back out of the bedroom at the end ... though I was still waiting for cinematic magic, or something truly compelling.
Third hour - 4 stars. The film takes a dark turn and gets good here. Some stills show a dream sequence of an old junk dealer discovering treasure in a graveyard, another subplot that appears to have been a real shame to have lost. The face of this guy (Cesare Gravina) is pretty striking, as is the violence of his actions to try to get back an imagined wealth from his young wife (Dale Fuller), providing another layer to this squalid tale of humanity. Also lost was a vicious wrestling match at the picnic between the old rivals, and in the still we see them tearing at each other like animals. Another element of drama is introduced as the married couple argue over money, with the woman wanting to be much more careful with their lottery winnings than her husband. Zasu Pitts does much better in these scenes, and the one where she's in her husband's lap, stroking his head and pulling it down to her chest, saying "Do you love me, Mac, dear? Love me big - BIG?" before the rival shows up is a good one. So is the interleaved tight shots on the cat looking up at the birdcage, which made me think of evil intent even as he says he's going away and wishes them well. There is artistry in the filmmaking here, with interesting camera angles, the use of faces in both foreground and background, and fantasy elements like a shot of a giant hand squeezing two writhing figures when times get hard for the couple. The film gets even darker when the guy has lost his job, starts drinking, and then pushes her around. "And yet this brutality in some strange inexplicable way aroused in Trina a morbid, unwholesome love of submission" we read, but I'm not we really see that in the actions which follow.
Fourth hour - 4.5 stars. The morality tale bakes in a little more completely as the film comes down the stretch, with the conflict between the miserly wife and spendthrift husband coming to a head, and her old suitor not out of the picture either. Von Stroheim lays it on a little thick with intertitles like "Accursed thirst for gold! What dost thou not compel mortals to do?" and the man then goes back to the mines, following a contrived "blind and unreasoned instinct." Eventually the action reaches Death Valley, and this is where the film truly shines. The footage on location is very dramatic, the artistry in the way the sky is contrasted with the earth is magnificent, and whole thing is reflective of spiritual bareness.
First hour - 3 stars. I can't really think of anything that stands out as remarkable in the long drawn out setup of this dentist and the woman he falls for. To be honest, I thought of not investing the time to watch the rest, but buoyed by the high average rating, soldiered on. It's pretty creepy when he kisses her when she's under sedation in his chair, and pretty weird/contrived when her cousin, a rival for her affections, simply steps aside when he finds out this guy loves her too. Maybe the best part was Gibson Gowland, whose appearance is so striking, or the coloring in of the gold items from time to time, which was done by hand (like the recurring image of those bony arms sifting through a pile of gold coins). Oh, and I liked to setting in San Francisco as well, with a still of the Ferry Building and some footage in the Cliff House area overlooking Ocean Beach.
Second hour - 3 stars. The young woman improbably wins the lottery, thus setting up drama, as her ex-boyfriend realizes the riches he could have shared. The film continued to plod along, making me think of a lumbering dinosaur, maybe one of the large sauropods. Or that I was in the dentist chair, sans novocaine, and the dentist was in there with primitive tools extracting a tooth, while my eyes rolled back in horror and drool began hanging from my lip. Meanwhile, the story of the old man and woman in the apartment building who hear each other through paper thin walls and are attracted to one another is cute, but most of this subplot (and another) was edited out. Surreal little details abound, like the spanking of three kids while looking at wedding gifts, which seemed excessive. Zasu Pitts's performance is hit and miss and she overacts in the wedding night scene, but some of von Stroheim's camera work is nice, seeing her walk ethereally down the hall, and the pan back out of the bedroom at the end ... though I was still waiting for cinematic magic, or something truly compelling.
Third hour - 4 stars. The film takes a dark turn and gets good here. Some stills show a dream sequence of an old junk dealer discovering treasure in a graveyard, another subplot that appears to have been a real shame to have lost. The face of this guy (Cesare Gravina) is pretty striking, as is the violence of his actions to try to get back an imagined wealth from his young wife (Dale Fuller), providing another layer to this squalid tale of humanity. Also lost was a vicious wrestling match at the picnic between the old rivals, and in the still we see them tearing at each other like animals. Another element of drama is introduced as the married couple argue over money, with the woman wanting to be much more careful with their lottery winnings than her husband. Zasu Pitts does much better in these scenes, and the one where she's in her husband's lap, stroking his head and pulling it down to her chest, saying "Do you love me, Mac, dear? Love me big - BIG?" before the rival shows up is a good one. So is the interleaved tight shots on the cat looking up at the birdcage, which made me think of evil intent even as he says he's going away and wishes them well. There is artistry in the filmmaking here, with interesting camera angles, the use of faces in both foreground and background, and fantasy elements like a shot of a giant hand squeezing two writhing figures when times get hard for the couple. The film gets even darker when the guy has lost his job, starts drinking, and then pushes her around. "And yet this brutality in some strange inexplicable way aroused in Trina a morbid, unwholesome love of submission" we read, but I'm not we really see that in the actions which follow.
Fourth hour - 4.5 stars. The morality tale bakes in a little more completely as the film comes down the stretch, with the conflict between the miserly wife and spendthrift husband coming to a head, and her old suitor not out of the picture either. Von Stroheim lays it on a little thick with intertitles like "Accursed thirst for gold! What dost thou not compel mortals to do?" and the man then goes back to the mines, following a contrived "blind and unreasoned instinct." Eventually the action reaches Death Valley, and this is where the film truly shines. The footage on location is very dramatic, the artistry in the way the sky is contrasted with the earth is magnificent, and whole thing is reflective of spiritual bareness.