What happened to the story of McTeague?: A comparison of novel and film

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, Bielefeld University, language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction This paper will deal with a critical analysis and comparison of the novel McTeague: A story of San Francisco, written by Frank Norris and published in 1899, and the 2 hour version of the movie Greed produced in 1924 by Erich von Stroheim. First of all, I will give a short summary of the novel, pointing out several aspects that make it a typical naturalistic novel. Then I will go on by giving some brief background information on the production of the movie, describing its metamorphosis from a nine hour epos to a commercial film of about 2 hours and 15 minutes. According to this, I will discuss this shortening, give examples of what was left out of the original version and try to give reasons for that. Furthermore, I will look at the effects this had on the original story and discuss the question whether the film version can still be regarded as belonging to the naturalistic genre. Doing so, I will discuss complete scenes and shorter passages which are mentioned in the book and not in the novel and vice versa, and passages that are slightly changed. I claim that Greed is still a naturalistic piece of art though in a weaker form by pointing out striking elements that remained in the movie.