D. W. Griffith: Money Mad (1908) 2025 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

D. W. Griffith: Money Mad (US 1908). Harry Solter, George Gebhardt as two robbers. Griffith learns to master blocking and composition in depth. Photo: Film Preservation Society.

MONEY MAD (US 1908) prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. dir: D. W. Griffith. story: based on the short story by Jack London, “Just Meat” (The Cosmopolitan, 03.1907; retitled “Pals”, London Magazine, 04.1908). photog: G. W. Bitzer. cast: Harry Solter, Florence Lawrence, George Gebhardt, Arthur Johnson, Mack Sennett, Jeannie MacPherson. filmed: 28.10.1908, 02,16.11.1908 (NY Studio; undocumented location). rel: 04.12.1908. copy: DCP, 11'39" (from paper print, 684 ft., 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2025. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026) "Money Mad is For Love of Gold on steroids. Griffith adds layers of Grand Guignol to the narrative of two crooks distrusting and killing each other. A little girl is throttled for her wallet. Our two thieves stalk the throttler through urban alleys (anticipating The Musketeers of Pig Alley), strangling him in his cellar and taking his gold. Once at their hovel, they manage to simultaneously stab and shoot each other. We do not stop there. Griffith has previously introduced the prerequisite drunken hag to the occasion, and she finds the bodies – and the gold. In her rapture, she knocks a lit candle off the table, and sets the place ablaze. The last we see of this scene is roiling smoke, heading straight for the audience. Money Mad was Griffith’s 40th release. For Love of Gold was his 9th. But this is misleading. It is more precise to state that a mere three months separated the filming dates of these two titles. Griffith absorbed much in that period – and there was much more to come."

THE PREVIOUS SCREENING: The Griffith Project 1 (1997) n:o 73. 16 mm from paper print, Library of Congress, intertitles missing, 264 ft /15 fps/ 11 min, piano: Edward von Past.

AA: A primitive, atavistic joy of storytelling carries Money Mad. The approach has affinities with school plays and Punch and Judy shows. Reduced to the essentials, Money Mad is sometimes almost abstract, devoid of nuance in psychology and character-building. Yet there is a stark sense of composition, and the characters in their stylized roles can be truly moving. Griffith is unflinching in conveying the brutality of the murders (of the little girl and the old cellar-dweller). The irony of fate and the poetic justice of the two murderers killing each other is conveyed with admirable brevity. This movie already has the Hustonian "vanitas vanitatum" theme of Treasure of Sierra Madre and many "big caper"  stories. The final sequence is a stunner. Only an impenetrable cloud of smoke remains as all is reduced to ashes.

With great pleasure I watch this new restoration of a film that was insufferably painful to watch in the 1997 screening.