Word: stroheims
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...told this to George Stevens Jr. and Richard Kahlenberg of the American Film Institute, they would probably go off into a corner and cry quietly. As President and Archive Director respectively, Greed is of more than routine interest to them: Erich von Stroheim made it in 1924 and his first edited version was eight hours long; making concessions to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he re-edited the film, finally stopping at a four-hour cut. At that point MGM seized it, cut it to two hours and ten minutes, and the remaining six hours has been missing ever since...
Greed, as Stroheim's masterpiece and one of the highest-echelon Establishment classics, is known only in a version one-quarter the length of the original. Rumors-and-little-else have kept alive the hope of seeing the complete 40 reels someday--prints have been said to exist in secret vaults from New Mexico to Denmark. And Greed is only one of 250 films on the American Film Institute's "preliminary rescue list" of films which do not exist in America on 35mm acetate stock...
...ferrets out American films of artistic and historical value that have disappeared for one or another reason. Some have vanished (like Hawks' Scarface, produced by the ubiquitous Howard Hughes, and all 35mm prints of Ford's Stagecoach) and the problem is one of location; others, like whatever remains of Stroheim's original cut of Greed, are in serious danger of destruction by decay. Until the last decade, film was made from a nitrate base, both flammable and subject to erosion. The film archivist works against time: the older the film, the more likely the chances of physical degeneration...
Still Richard Roud, the program director, was hard put to fill his two-week schedule. To solve his problem Roud admitted vintage flics that should certainly have been left under dust, such as Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March...
...secret agentry. He must find and disarm the demolition charges placed on a German freighter, so that in the event of Allied capture, the Germans will not be able to scuttle their precious rubber cargo. Equipped with forged Nazi credentials and the suavest German accent since Erich von Stroheim. Brando climbs aboard the freighter, captained by Yul Brynner, and loses no time in going on the prowl...