Movie |
Greed | Murder
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The great Italian cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo died suddenly of hepatitis (aged only 45) during the making of this movie, with many weeks of the five-month shooting schedule to go before completion. His operator, Pasqualino De Santis, took over as director of photography, but refused credit in this capacity, although he would quickly go on to international renown with his work for Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Joseph Losey, and others.
Three dream sequences were filmed (though ultimately scrapped) of the women fantasizing Cecil's death and their inheritance.
This movie opened first in London, some two months before its American opening. At its premiere, it ran to two hours and thirty minutes, and almost all British reviews commented on its being overlong. By the time it went on general release in Britain, it had been cut by eighteen minutes, and this version is the one shown on television and released on DVD. Herschel Bernardi, prominently billed in the original advertising, had his role deleted entirely, although there is a brief and now-inexplicable reference to his character late in the movie. Massimo Serato appears only for a second or two in Capucine's first scene. Both actors are, however, featured in the cast list at the end, although Serato's surname is misspelled as "Serrato".
Anne Bancroft was originally cast as Merle McGill, but she turned it down for a stage role.
The ballet music to which Cecil Fox is seen dancing in his bedroom is the famous "Dance of the Hours", a short ballet piece, representing the third act finale of the opera "La Gioconda" composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. It was first performed in 1876. The choreography and the music represent the perennial struggle between light and darkness. They also symbolize the hours of the dawn, day, twilight, and night.
"Merle McGill: I guess it must be hard for you to understand, Inspector, a man like me and Cecil Fox. Inspector Rizzi: Not hard at all. Merle McGill: But how can I say it, Inspector... He was my first... man. Somehow you just never forget your first man. Inspector Rizzi: I remember mine - vividly. [Merle throws him a curious glance] Inspector Rizzi: He also got away."
"Cecil Fox: Nothing like gold to pass the time. It is even the color of time... Gold. How little most people value time, little people. Like everything else, they will choose what's more, not what's better. Even time, they will pray to live 100, long, miserable years and feel cheated if they had say 50 of the best. Quantity yes, quality no. Venice is tiny and precious. Los Angeles is gigantic and terrifying. Who wants it? Most people, that's who. There's good time and bad time, you know, the clocks don't give a damn what time they measure. We do. We special ones. We slow down for the good. We sip it second by second like great wine. We speed up the bad. The little people, chumps, swallow time like hamburger. One hundred years of well done hamburger, they will all settle for that. If I were to tell you that for me, the next 10 minutes of my life will be fuller and richer than the next 10 years for any chump in London, Paris, Rome, New York, or Bangkok, would you know what the hell I was talking about?"
