Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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Amarilly of
Clothes-Line Alley
(1918)
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This Mary Pickford comedy, directed by Marshall Neilan, features Norman Kerry, William Scott, Ida Waterman, Margaret Landis, Kate Price and Tom Wilson.
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 The Milestone Collection
2000 DVD edition
Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1918), black & white and color-tinted black & white, 67 minutes, not rated, with The Dream (1911), black & white, 10 minutes, not rated.
Milestone Film and Video, distributed by Image Entertainment,
ID5959MLSDVD, UPC 0-14381-59592-5.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 7.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; 10 chapter stops; snapper DVD case; $29.99.
Release date: 11 January 2000.
Country of origin: USA •
Ratings (1-10): video: 6 / audio: 8 / additional content: 6 / overall: 6.
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This DVD edition has been mastered from the 1999 35mm restoration print supervised by the Mary Pickford Foundation. The first thing noticable is the frequently twitchy frame jitters which can be very distracting. Today this could be fixed digitally but until a new edition is produced it must be endured. The greyscale range is broad, with very few highlight burn-outs. There is also the typical amount of dust and speckling, emulsion scrapes and scuffing. The early DVD mastering was OK in 2000 but is now too coarsely encoded to render a good picture and the interlaced disc encoding cannot, in sections of the disc (for whatever reason), be upscaled by HD to present a smooth progressive scan picture. The interlacing shows up most in some of the intertitles.
The film is accompanied by an entertaining music score performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. It’s always a good time with Mont Alto and we hope that this recording is included on future home video editions.
The disc also contains the Mary Pickford IMP short The Dream (1911) presented from a very-good print, with musical accompaniment composed by Ernesto Nazareth and performed on piano by Marco Antonio de Almeida.
This long-out-of-print disc is still the best-looking home video edition of the film but it’s time for a great Blu-ray Disc edition.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
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 Nostalgia Family Video
2010 DVD edition
Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1918), black & white, 66 minutes, not rated.
Nostalgia Family Video, 5269D, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; no chapter stops; clamshell CD case; $14.99.
Release date: 2010.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD-R edition was likely mastered from a 16mm reduction print.
The disc had no navigation menu, chapter stops or package artwork and wass sold in a clear clamshell case.
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NOSTALGIA FAMILY VIDEO has discontinued business
and this DVD-R edition is . . .
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Other silent era MARY PICKFORD films available on home video.
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Mary Pickford filmography in The Progressive Silent Film List
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