That von Stroheim's most famous film exists as a mere sliver of its original length of over eight hours perversely befits a director whose own characters are often victims of cruel, ironic twists of fate. Despite his infamously meticulous perfectionism, his penchant for shooting over schedule and budget, and testing the censors with transgressive content, fate somehow allowed von Stroheim to direct a Hollywood feature depicting squalor, vice and grim realism with no stars, no glamour and an epic length. Shooting on-location in urban slums, von Stroheim's passion for authenticity and exposing the seamy side of life found an ideal outlet in the adaptation of Frank Norris' naturalistic novel McTeague. Complex characterizations within an elaborately realized atmosphere relate the tale of a slow-witted, sensitive hulk of a man whose nervous fiancée wins the lottery, thus triggering a series of repressed resentments and dark, uncontrollable drives that lead to betrayal, murder and a searingly nihilistic ending. All of the subplots and secondary characters were excised with MGM's relentless scissors, yet his urgent vision – a harrowing amalgam of the magical and the real – still shatters the silent screen. Just as his characters could not escape their inherited destinies, the willful von Stroheim tempted fate with a radical labor of love and paid for it dearly.