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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Is Money
Everything?
(1923)
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This romantic drama from B-film studio D.M. Film Corporation of Detroit, Michigan, stars Norman Kerry (without his signature moustache), Miriam Cooper and Martha Mansfield in a story of greed, business corruption and marital infidelity.
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 Grapevine Video
2010 DVD edition
Is Money Everything? (1923), color-tinted black & white, 60 minutes, not rated.
Grapevine Video, no catalog number, UPC 8-42614-10396-4.
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 6.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); LPCM 2.0 mono sound encoded at 1.5 Mbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 12 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $14.95.
Release date: 7 May 2010.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 5 / additional content: 0 / overall: 5.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good color-tinted 35mm nitrate print. A moderate but distractingly apparent amount of speckling and dust is present in the source material, which also is marred with light emulsion damage, schmutz, a few splices and light filmstock wear. The print may be missing its final seconds, as a finale title card (incorrectly tacked-on) identifies the film as “A James Cruze Tiffany Production.”
The older analog full-frame video transfer is a little dark in its shadows, but is of reasonable quality in tonal ranges and image detail. Later in the film, the transfer is lighter in its highlights resulting in lost picture details, namely in faces.
The picture compression of the digital master is perhaps higher than it could have been, rendering a picture that is very-good on standard equipment but a little rough on HD equipment, with some horizontal elements like eyelids, mouths and table edges flickering between horizontal NTSC scan lines. Overall, the picture quality is only marginally better than could be rendered from an excellent 16mm reduction print.
The film is accompanied by an abruptly-edited compiled score of prerecorded film music from the 1930s that is functional but uncompelling. Despite its shortcomings, we recommend this home video edition of this small studio production.
That being said, for now, this is our recommended home video edition of the film.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .
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 Loving the Classics
201? DVD edition
Is Money Everything? (1923), black & white, 58 minutes, not rated.
Loving the Classics,
no catalog number, 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 stereo sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $19.99.
Release date: 201?
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD-R edition has likely been mastered from a 16mm reduction print.
The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.
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This
Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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