*SOLD OUT*

The Secret Cinema will be returning to Glen Foerd to screen one of the most legendary films of the silent era, Erich von Stroheim's 1924 masterpiece Greed. Organist Don Kinnier will bring this silent movie to life with his accompaniment on our recently restored 1902 Haskell pipe organ. Concessions will be available for purchase at our pop-up bar before and after the event, including soft pretzels, soft drinks, beer and wine.

Please note that this event will take place in the art gallery on the second floor of the building, which has stair access only.  

7:00PM | Doors open for check-in, bar, and self-guided tours of the mansion.
7:30PM | Film screening begins.

Greed (1924, Dir: Erich Von Stroheim)
Erich Von Stroheim’s silent epic, Greed has sadly become more famous for footage that MGM discarded than for the masterpiece that survives. Based on Frank Norris’ naturalistic novel McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, it graphically depicts the slow descent into madness of a simple-minded miner-turned-dentist and his bride (depicted with brilliance by Gibson Gowland and Zasu Pitts), as each becomes obsessed with gold. Von Stroheim, in his past work having already battled studios over expenses and running times, decided to not only film every page (and more) of the source book, but to shoot virtually every scene in the locations Norris described. Thus, nothing was shot in a studio. Only buildings that survived the San Francisco 1906 earthquake were used, to match the period of the novel. The insistence on filming authentic locations would include bringing cast and crew to dangerously hot Death Valley -- the United States’ hottest and most inhospitable place -- in August. Fourteen crew members became sick, and one cook died of heatstroke. The director told the press, “I decided to make an absolutely literal film transposition of a novel that has been accepted as a classic of American literature.” He made Greed, “without a single important change, except the title. I made it so that it could be said, ‘As Norris wrote it, so von Stroheim produced it.’”

Reportedly some 85 hours of film were shot over seven months. The editing process took a year, with the Goldwyn studio ordering Von Stroheim to make it shorter and shorter. An initial 42 reel version was seen by only a handful of insiders, who proclaimed it the greatest film ever made. Von Stroheim decided to cut it down to 24 reels, which would still require Greed to be shown over two nights with intermissions (most silent features consisted of six or seven approximately 15-minute reels). The studio insisted on further cuts, which Von Stroheim refused to participate in. During this process, Goldwyn merged to become MGM, whose Irving Thalberg wanted Greed to be much shorter. Finally the film was cut to ten reels -- edited by, according to Von Stroheim, “a hack with nothing in his mind but a hat.” This is the version that survives today, and only still photos remain of the missing footage. Sub-plots and some characters were removed entirely, but the basic plot remains. Greed is still an original, bold masterpiece, and a high point of the silent era.