McTeague and Trina first kiss. In 1932 film theorist Andrew Buchanan called von Stroheim a montage director, stating that "each observation would be captured in a 'close-up' and at leisure, he would assemble his 'shots' in just the order which would most forcibly illustrate the fact." In the 1950s film critic André Bazin praised von Stroheim's use of mise en scène and noted his "one simple rule for directing. Take a close look at the world, keep on doing so and in the end it will lay bare for you all its cruelty and ugliness." Despite von Stroheim's reputation as a perfectionist, Greed contains anachronisms. In the scenes on Polk Street, the main characters are clothed in 1890s fashions, but the extras wear 1920s clothing. Von Stroheim did his best to avoid such historical mistakes; he shot only those buildings that were from the era Greed was set in, and he kept motor vehicles out of sight while filming. Daniels stated that, despite his desire for authenticity, von Stroheim sometimes had walls knocked out of real locations to achieve a desired camera position. Themes Frank Norris's novel belongs to the literary school of naturalism founded by French author Émile Zola. McTeague depicts the fate of its lower-class characters in terms of heredity and their environment, with the belief that "man's nature, despite free will, is determined by genetic and environmental factors" and that heredity controls fate, despite efforts at upward mobility. This literary style was influenced by Charles Darwin and portrayed characters whose higher states of being, the rational and compassionate, are in conflict with their lower states, the bête humaine (human beast). McTeague was first published in 1899 and was inspired by an October 1893 murder case in which Patrick Collins, a poor husband with a history of beating his wife Sarah, finally stole her money and stabbed her to death at her San Francisco workplace. Sarah Collins worked at the Lest Norris kindergarten, which was financed by Norris's family. Von Stroheim did not see Greed as political and told a journalist that he considered it to be like a Greek tragedy. Despite the characters' struggles with poverty and class, von Stroheim followed the naturalist technique of portraying characters whose lives are driven by fate and their inner nature. Von Stroheim employed variations of this theme in his other films, which often involved a commoner falling in love with