Originally gold tinting was added to the film for gold, brass beds, gold teeth, gilt frames, and the canary cage. This tinting is absent from any surviving prints.
Original length as edited by Stroheim was 42 reels; later cut by Stroheim to about 24 reels; cut by Rex Ingram to 18 reels; cut to 10 reals by the studio.
A new TV version, jointly released by Thames Television / Turner Entertainment, features a new score bu Carl Davis.
In 1999, Turner Entertainment pieced together a reconstructed four-hour-plus version using the existing footage and still photographs of the deleted scenes (done a la recent restorations of A Star Is Born (1954) and Lost Horizon (1937)). This was produced according to an original continuity outline by director Erich von Stroheim to bring it as close to the director's original vision as possible. This most recent version also contains a new stereo score by Robert Israel.
In 1999, a 239 minute cut was restored by Rick Scmidlin using still photographs to fill in for the action.