Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Leap Year (1922)

Roscoe Arbuckle’s last feature film was pulled from the Paramount release schedule in the USA in the wake of the Virginia Rappé death scandal. Instead, the film was released in Europe to hopefully earn back its production costs in a market that was not so enamored with the sensationalized and not-so-factual American newspaper reports.

This DVD edition has been mastered from a fair to good 16mm reduction print that is contrasty and soft in its image details. We certainly wish that better source materials had survived as this edition’s picture is typically quite featureless in many facial details with closed-up shadows.

The film is accompanied by a music score compiled by Rodney Sauer and Susan Hall, and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary of selected films including Character Studies, A Flirt’s Mistake, Leading Lizzie Astray, Leap Year, The Waiters’ Ball and Wished on Mabel; an image gallery of Arbuckle cartoons drawn by Tom Bertino (16 images); and a 36-page insert booklet with film notes, images and notes on the musical accompaniment.

For now, this is our recommended home video edition of the film. As of 2008, this four-disc collection is out-of-print and can only be found as a sell-out or used item.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is presented with a soundtrack comprised of vintage jazz recordings.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from REEL CLASSIC DVD through . . .

Not recommended, even though we haven’t viewed the edition, but we are open to surprises.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from ALPHA VIDEO through . . .

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .