Silent Era : Home Video : Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, N.J. (1964) Review

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Before Hollywood
There Was Fort Lee, N.J.
Early Moviemaking
in New Jersey
(1964)

This documentary covers the early years of film production, which was somewhat concentrated in Fort Lee, outside the city of New York.

2003 Image Entertainment edition

Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, N.J.:
Early Moveiemaking in New Jersey (1964), color and black & white, 40 minutes, not rated,
with The New York Hat (1912), black & white, 16 minutes, not rated, The Wishing Ring (1914), color-toned black & white, 60 minutes, not rated, and exerpts from A Girl’s Folly (1917), color-toned black & white, 30 minutes, not rated.

Film Preservation Associates, distributed by Image Entertainment,
ID1855DSDVD, 0-14381-18552-2.
Windowboxed 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, dual-layered DVD disc, Region 0, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 10 chapter stops, keep case, $24.99.
DVD release date: 20 May 2003.
Country of origin: USA

Our first look at Thomas Hanlon’s documentary shows a very-good source print, with modern view inserts of some of the sample film clips.

Surprisingly, with such a short documentary, we feel that the films should be the focus of this disc and the documentary should be its supplementary material. Overall, the image quality is very-good and the experience a little like sitting in a classroom and watching a 16mm print.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase
a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.

Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase
a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

Other silent era-related documentaries available on home video:
American Experience: Mary Pickford (2005)
Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982)
Birth of a Legend (1966)
Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965)
Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies (2001)
The Chaplin Puzzle (1992)
Chaplin’s Art of Comedy (1966)
Chaplin’s Goliath (1996)
Charlie Chaplin: The Forgotten Years (2003)
Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin (2003)
Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995)
Clara Bow: Discovering the ‘It’ Girl (1999)
Discovering Cinema (1908-2004)
Douglas Fairbanks: The Great Swashbuckler (1976)
Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin (2006)
The Film Parade: A History of Early Cinema (1933-1947)
Forgotten Silver (1997)
Fritz Lang: Circle of Destiny (1998)
The Gentleman Tramp (1975)
The Great Chase (1963)
Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (1962)
Kingdom of Shadows (1998)
The Last Diva: Francesca Bertini (1982)
Laurel and Hardy’s Laughing 20s (1965)
The Legend of Rudolph Valentino (1982)
Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000)
The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon (2004)
Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998)
The Man You Loved to Hate (1979)
Mary Pickford: A Life on Film (1997)
Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde (1997)
Memories of the Silent Stars
Olive Thomas: Everybody’s Sweetheart (2004)
Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat (1977)
The Railrodder (1965)
Rudolph Valentino: The Great Lover (2006)
Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography (1996)
Silent Britain (2006)
Slaphappy: The Movie (2004)
So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton at MGM (2004)
30 Years of Fun (1963)
Unknown Chaplin (1983)
Victor Sjöström (1981)
The Way to Murnau (2003)
When Comedy Was King (1960)
Without Lying Down (2000)

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