Greed (8Hour Cut Of Silent Film)
Level 4 – Charter Web
Only 12 people have seen the full 8 hour cut at a special screening in January 1924, many of them proclaiming that they had just witnessed the greatest film of all time and that it was unlikely a better film would ever be created. It’s not entirely clear how the additional scenes became lost (allegedly, the footage was destroyed by a janitor), although many rumors of existing copies have been spread and some later disproved. Von Stroheim himself has confirmed that Benito Mussolini was once in possession of a copy of the original cut, but the fate of this copy (as well as the other rumored copies) is entirely unknown, and none of the lost scenes have been publicly discovered to this day. The original 8 hour cut has been dubbed by some as the “holy grail” of film archivists.