InfoPeopleFilm ListArchiveLost FilmsTheaters
DVDVHSBooksSearch
Georges Melies on DVD
 
Silent Film Events

ROME
GEORGIA
6 September 2008

WALTHAM
MASSACHUSETTS
8 September 2008

HUDSON
WISCONSIN
28 September 2008

NEW YORK
NEW YORK
3 October 2008

Submit a Press Release
for Your Event

Latest Updates

Added review of
The Story of Petroleum (1923)

Added review of
the 26th Annual Pordenone
Festival of Silent Film

by Lokke Heiss

Added review of
Will Rogers, Performer
by Richard J. Maturi and
Mary Buckingham Maturi

Many new cross links, new and updated listings in The Progressive Silent Film List

Added review of
Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952 by Ray Zone

Updated the
Top 100 Silent Era Films
list

Added review of
the Eureka edition of
Asphalt (1929)

Added review of
the Japan Home Video edition of
Downhill (1927)

Added review of
the Eureka edition of
Spione (1928)

Added review of
the Image edition of
True Heart Susie (1919)

Added review of
the new Image edition of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Added review of
the Image edition of
Hoodoo Ann (1916)

Added review of
The Man from Beyond (1922)

Updated the
Top 100 Silent Era Films list

Added review of
Jackie Coogan, The World’s Boy King by Diana Serra Cary

Added review of
Edgar Kennedy: Master of the Slow Burn by Bill Cassara

Added review of
The Blot (1921)

Added review of
the BSU edition of
Something New (1920)

Added review of
The Delicious Little Devil (1919)

Added review of
Beyond the Rocks (1922)

Added review of
Phantom (1922)

Kino International (USA) has announced a new NTSC deluxe DVD edition of Buster Keaton’s The General (1926). The two-disc set will feature a new high-definition video transfer, accompanied by three optional music scores — the Carl Davis score from Photoplay Productions, a score arranged and performed by Robert Israel, and an organ score performed by Lee Erwin. The set will be available 11 November 2008.
 
MGM Home Video (USA) has announced an eight-disc NTSC collection of Alfred Hitchcock films that will include the first high-quality release of The Lodger (1926) on DVD home video. The boxset will be available 14 October 2008.
 
Kino International (USA) has announced a new NTSC deluxe DVD edition of F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924). The two-disc set will feature the 2003 restoration from the F.W. Murnau Stiftung with a new 5.1 orchestral performance of the 1924 Giuseppe Becce score, along with the USA version originally released on home video by Kino with music by Timothy Brock. The set will be available 30 September 2008.
 
Flicker Alley (USA) and Film Preservation Associates (USA) have announced the impending release of their two-disc NTSC DVD edition of Abel Gance’s J’accuse (1919). Restored to its 1919 premiere form in a joint effort of Lobster Films, Paris, and the Nederlands Filmmuseum, the definitive edition features an orchestral score by Robert Israel, and essay contributions from Kevin Brownlow and Leslie Hawkins. The DVD will be available 16 September 2008.
 
The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (USA) has released their NTSC DVD edition of The Mark of Zorro (1920) starring Douglas Fairbanks.
 
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung (Germany) has announced the recovery of a 16mm reduction negative of Metropolis (1927) in Argentina. Staff members of Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken in Buenos Aires recovered the worn negative, which is said to contain missing scenes not surviving in other prints of the film. Read the F.W. Murnau Stiftung announcement. Read the Zeit Online story.
 
Unknown Video (USA) has released a double-feature NTSC DVD-R edition of The Sea Lion (1921) starring Hobart Bosworth and Bessie Love, and The Average Woman (1924) starring Pauline Garon and Harrison Ford.
 
Kino International (USA) has released their long-awaited NTSC format DVD edition releases of three films by Victor Sjöström. The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) also includes the documentary Victor Sjostrom (1981). Available separately is a double-feature disc of A Man There Was (1917) and Ingeborg Holm (1913).
 
All Day Entertainment (USA) has released their three-disc NTSC DVD collection American Slapstick 2 (1915-1937), including shorts featuring Harold Lloyd, Snub Pollard, Billy West, Larry Semon and Ben Turpin, and the feature comedy Charley’s Aunt (1925) starring Sydney Chaplin.
 
Sunrise Silents (USA) has released Silent Rarities (1911-1928), featuring surviving footage of The Cost of High Living (1916) starring William Duncan and Corinne Griffith; [Chaplin Animation] (circa 1915) with animated characterizations of Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand; Top Sergeant Mulligan (1927) with Lila Lee and Wesley Barry, only reels two and four survive of this six-reel feature; The Country Doctor (1927) with Rudolph Schildkraut and Junior Coghlan, from a one-reel Kodascope abridgement; The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911) directed by Albert Capellani; and Whose Baby? (1917) with Gloria Swanson and Bobby Vernon; transferred from an incomplete one-reel print of this rare title. Also released is a digital edition of the April 1924 issue of Photoplay Magazine.
 
Grapevine Video (USA) has released their NTSC DVD-R editions of The Count of Monte Cristo (1913) starring James O’Neill, The Devil Horse (1926) starring Yakima Canutt, Häxan (1922) directed by Benjamin Christensen, Soul of the Beast (1923) starring Madge Bellamy and Cullen Landis, and A Tale of Two Worlds (1921) starring Leatrice Joy and Wallace Beery.
 
Flicker Alley (USA) and Film Preservation Associates (USA) have released Perils of the New Land (1910-1915), a compilation of social dramas that explore the immigrant experience in early 20th century America. Featured are Traffic in Souls (1913) and The Italian (1915), plus three Edison short films.
 
Kino International (USA) has released their NTSC format DVD edition of the BFI restoration of Franz Osten’s A Throw of Dice (1929). The Indian epic features a cast of thousands, and is accompanied by a new orchestral music score by Nitin Sawhney, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
 
Kino International (USA) has released three more NTSC format DVD editions in their Slapstick Symposium series. Available separately are The Extra Girl (1920) starring Mabel Normand, the second volume of The Stan Laurel Collection (1918-1926), and a double-feature edition of Three’s a Crowd (1927) and The Chaser (1928) starring Harry Langdon.
 
Sunrise Silents (USA) has released their edition of The Vortex (1927), starring Ivor Novello. Also released are digital editions of the April 1925 issue of Photoplay Magazine, and the December 1923 issue of Photoplay Magazine.
 
Flicker Alley (USA) and Film Preservation Associates (USA) have released what will easily be one of the three most-important DVD releases of 2008, a two-disc, 4.5-hour NTSC format edition of Abel Gance’s La Roue (1922). The film has been restored to 20 of the 32 reels of its French premiere, and is presented with an orchestral score composed and conducted by Robert Israel.
 
Kino International (USA) has released a number of NTSC format DVD titles previously available only on VHS. Available separately are The Red Kimona (1925) starring Priscilla Bonner, Lois Weber’s Hypocrites (1915) with Cleo Madison’s Eleanor’s Catch (1916), Alice Guy Blaché’s The Ocean Waif (1916) with Ruth Ann Baldwin’s ’49-’17 (1917), and the Charles Musser documentary Before the Nickelodeon (1982).
 
Criterion Collection (USA) has released their DVD boxset of silent Yasujiro Ozu films, Silent Ozu (1931-1933). The NTSC format set includes Tokyo Chorus (1931), I Was Born, But . . . (1932) and Passing Fancy (1933).
 
Kino International (USA) has released their DVD boxset Houdini: The Movie Star (1919-1923). The three-disc NTSC format set includes the serial The Master Mystery (1919) and the feature films Terror Island (1920), The Man from Beyond (1922) and Haldane of the Secret Service (1923).
 
Nederlands Filmmuseum has preserved unique nitrate prints of three feature films starring Sessue Hayakawa, His Birthright (1918), The Man Beneath (1919) and The Courageous Coward (1919), in response to the upsurge in interest in the Japanese-born Hollywood star. Milestone Film & Video (USA) has released their NTSC format DVD edition of The Dragon Painter (1919) starring Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki. Also included is The Wrath of the Gods (1914).
 
Flicker Alley (USA) and Film Preservation Associates (USA) have released Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913), a five-disc NTSC format DVD boxset that contains more than 170 Méliès films that span the cinema pioneer’s entire career. Several musicians provide accompaniment to the films gathered from film archives worldwide.
 
Kino International (USA) has released their DVD editions of Robert Wiene’s The Hands of Orlac (1924) starring Conrad Veidt, and G.W. Pabst’s Secrets of a Soul (1926). Available separately, the discs are also included in a new boxset, German Expressionism Collection (1920-1926), which includes Kino’s editions of Warning Shadows (1923) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
 
Flicker Alley (USA) and Film Preservation Associates (USA) have released the three-disc NTSC format DVD set Saved from the Flames (1896-1944). Covering a number of short-film genres from dramas to comedies and experimental to jazz, the set presents many silent-era films preserved from endangered nitrate originals.
 
Eureka Entertainment (UK) has released a new PAL format DVD edition of Fritz Lang’s Frau im mond [Woman in the Moon] (1929).
 
Edition Filmmuseum (Germany) has released their two-disc PAL edition of the restored Frank Borzage film The River (1928) starring Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan. The supplementary materials include three early Borzage films from 1915-1916.
 
All-Day Entertainment (USA) has released Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection (1924-1944). Comprised of many short films being released on DVD for the first time, the four-disc set also includes a documentary on Langdon, home movies and audio commentary.
 
Sunrise Silents (USA) has released their edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Road to Yesterday (1925). Also released are digital editions of the October 1913 issue of Motion Picture Story Magazine, the March 1920 issue of Photoplay Magazine, and the September 1926 issue of Motion Picture Magazine.
 
JEF Films (USA) has released their editions of Frank Capra’s That Certain Thing (1928) starring Viola Dana and Ralph Graves, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Little American (1917) starring Mary Pickford, and Paul Sloan’s The Coming of Amos (1925) starring Jetta Goudal and Noah Beery.
 
The University Press of Kentucky (USA) has published Ray Zone’s Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film: 1838-1952.
 
Fox Home Video (USA) has released a fantastic boxset, The Ford at Fox Collection: John Ford’s Silent Epics (1920-1928), consisting of the five John Ford feature films Just Pals (1920), The Iron Horse (1924), 3 Bad Men (1926), Hangman’s House (1928) and Four Sons (1928).
 
Kino International (USA) has released a DVD edition of Ernst Lubitsch’s early film The Doll (1919) with the feature-length documentary Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin (2006). The new disc is available separately and in a economically-priced five-disc Lubitsch in Berlin boxset that includes the previously-released titles in Kino’s Lubitsch in Berlin series: The Oyster Princess (1919) with I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1919), Anna Boleyn (1920), and Sumurun (1920) and The Wildcat (1921).
 
Since the first posting on 8 October 2007, there has been a hot discussion on the Criterion Forum blog site regarding the assertion that a print of F.W. Murnau’s 4 Devils (1928) has survived in a nitrate stash held by a retired engineer living in Tacoma, Washington. Cruel rumor or film recovery of the decade? You decide.
 
Grapevine Video (USA) has released their NTSC DVD-R editions of Love ’em and Leave ’em (1926) starring Evelyn Brent and Louise Brooks, The Man from Painted Post (1917) starring Douglas Fairbanks, Dress Parade (1926) starring William Boyd and Bessie Love, The Red Raiders (1927) starring Ken Maynard, and a Glenn Tryon double feature with Barnum Was Right (1929) and Dames Ahoy (1930).
 
Eureka Entertainment (UK) has released a PAL format definitive two-disc edition of Nosferatu (1922), based on the recent F.W. Murnau-Stiftung restoration, which features the original 1922 intertitles, a new orchestral recording of the original Hans Erdmann music score, a full-length audio commentary, and 92-page booklet. Meanwhile, Kino International (USA) has released a two-disc set American NTSC format edition of the restoration version, sharing many of the same features.
 
Eureka Entertainment (UK) has released a new PAL format DVD edition of Tabu (1931), from the recent F.W. Murnau-Stiftung restoration, which features the F.W. Murnau’s cut of the film, a full-length audio commentary, and an 80-page booklet.
 
Edition Filmmuseum (Germany) has released their PAL edition of the 2006 restoration of Hugo Rütters’ Vom Reiche der sechs Punke (1927).
 
Unknown Video (USA) has released a DVD edition of What Happened to Rosa (1920), starring Mabel Normand. The disc also features Hide and Seek (1913), and musical accompaniment by Ben Model.
 
Sunrise Silents (USA) has released a DVD-R edition of The Ice Flood (1926) starring Kenneth Harlan and Viola Dana. Also available are digital editions of the April 1916 issue of Picture-Play Magazine, the June 1923 issue of Motion Picture Magazine, and the February 1925 issue of Photoplay Magazine.
 
Kino International (USA) has released an exciting two-disc edition of the definitive restoration of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). The set includes the restored film mastered in high-definition, including all of the footage edited from the film before its premiere in its original and intended sequencing, accompanied by a full-orchestra presentation in 5.1 surround sound of the original Edmund Meisel German premiere music score overseen by Eisenstein. Also included is a presentation of the edited film as it originally premiered with optional English intertitles, a documentary on the making and restoration of the film, and a photo gallery.
Top 100 Silent Era Films
Current Top 10
Silent Era Films

1. The General (1926)
2. Metropolis (1927)
3. Sunrise (1927)
4. City Lights (1931)
5. Nosferatu (1922)
6. The Gold Rush (1925)
7. La Passion et la Mort de Jeanne d’Arc (1928)
8. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)
9. Bronenosets ‘Potyomkin’ (1925)
10. Greed (1924)

Complete Top 100 List

 

Search the Site
SEARCH

 
Questions About Silent Films?

Answers may be on our Frequently Asked Questions page.

Website optimized for
KDE and Mozilla empowered
browsers.

 
Website content Copyright © 1999-2008 by Carl Bennett. All Rights Reserved.
Silent Era : Website  is a division of CBX Media.
Contributors  /  Privacy Policy  /  Terms and Conditions of Use  /  Contact
All e-mail addressees associated with this website are located in the State of Washington, and sending mail to these addresses is subject to the provisions of the Revised Code of Washington.

Top of Page