When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.
Direction
Stroheim's obsessive realism: real locations, real heat, real suffering.
Cinematography
Death Valley sequence shot at 120°F with actual dying animals.
Acting
Zasu Pitts' face contorts from sweetness to hoarding madness.
Director
Erich von Stroheim
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Only 140 minutes survive of Stroheim's original 9-hour cut. MGM burned the rest for silver recovery. Film history's greatest act of vandalism.
Stroheim insisted on shooting in actual Death Valley summer. Actors passed out. Camera oil melted. The suffering you see is documentary.
US
