Editing in "Greed"

The editing in Greed was very smoothly done. As most people know, the film by Erich Von Stroheim was more than 9 hours long originally. It was cut down to five hours, then three, then finally 2 1/2. To the people that never knew that the film was chopped up, the film would most likely flow smoothly in their minds while they're viewing it. If you watch, the storyline seems to make sense, and everything happens in a decent order, right? Wrong. if you look closely enough at the film, you can tell that parts have been removed, or scenes have been cut in half. The editors wanted the film to still make sense to it's audience while remaining in a sensible time frame. A part I particularly remember is when the character McTeague was about to leave town to become a dentist. There was suppoed to be a time lapse of his travels to go and pursue his career, but instead we see a huge jump cut. In a way, the jump cut works, because time still passes and there he is at his own dentstry practice, but it's still a bit awkward. The editors could have done a better job with this crucial part of the story if you ask me. Had it been me, I would have cut down his travels in half, not cut them out completely, so the audience can see. The editors did a good job on cutting down those rediculous 9 hours, and the story flowed pretty decently, but I wish they would have done a bit more with it.