Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved. |
Greedy
Neighbors
(1933)
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This short feature drama, directed by Pengnian Ren, stars Lizhu Wu and Feiguang He, with Feijuan Wang, Zhang Yi, Dongxia Wang, Yanjuan Sun and Xiuying Sang.
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BoYing
1999 DVD edition
Greedy Neighbors (1933), black & white, 41 minutes, not rated.
BoYing,
BD068, UPC 9-787885-720612, ISBN 7-88572-061-6.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 6 NTSC DVD disc; 1.66:1 aspect ratio picture in letterboxed 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 7.6 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 50 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate (no audio); Chinese language intertitles, optional Chinese and English language subtitles; 12 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; unknown suggested retail price.
Release date: 1999.
Country of origin: China
Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 0 / additional content: 0 / overall: 3.
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This DVD edition has been mastered from fair to good 16mm reduction print. The source material is quite worn, with filmbase wear throughout the film being quite visible in the picture’s highlights. At other times, the print is dark enough to lose details in shadows. The analog video transfer is OK but the print is contrasty enough to lose image details in faces in many shots. The picture is presented in a letterboxed format rendering a cropped image of an approximately 1.76:1 ratio., losing picture information on the top and bottom of the frame (not to mention the picture information that was already lost at frame edges due to the close cropping that is common in vintage 16mm prints).
The film is not accompanied by a music score. Some kind of audio leakage is barely audible and does not appear to relate to the film. Also, the English subtitles are so badly translated that they are nearly as indecipherable as the Chinese intertitles. Lotsa luck following the story. You may just end up reading the subtitles for comic effect.
For desperate want of a better disc, this is (reluctantly) our recommended home video edition of the film. North American collectors will need a region-free NTSC DVD player to view this edition.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued
and is . . .
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Other CHINESE FILMS of the silent era available on home video.
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