SOURCE: "Norris & McTeague," in Stroheim, University of California Press, 1968, pp. 23-97.

In the following essay, Finler provides a scene-by-scene analysis of Greed.

Stroheim's … film [Greed] was shot for the Goldwyn Co. It was to be a vast adaptation of Frank Norris's novel McTeague. The fidelity of the screenplay to the novel is such that any consideration of the film should involve Norris as well as Stroheim.

Frank Norris was born in Chicago in 1870. He lived and studied for a while in San Francisco, but much of his life was spent travelling as a foreign newspaper correspondent. When he died at the age of thirty-two he had completed a number of stories and novels. With a very different background and career, Stroheim shared some of Norris's creative vision.

Norris was a dedicated writer who detested the kind of novel which was popular during the 1890's and which he called...