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Silent Era Home Page  >  Home Video  >  From the Manger to the Cross
 

SILENT ERA FILMS ON HOME VIDEO
Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2009 by Carl Bennett.
All Rights Reserved.

From the Manger
to the Cross

(1912)

Produced by The Vitagraph Company of America, this early American feature-length religious epic features location cinematography shot in Israel and Egypt, and uses many quotations from the Holy Bible for its expository intertitles.

2003 Image Entertainment edition

From the Manger to the Cross (1912),
color-toned black & white, 70 minutes, not rated,
with The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905), color-tinted and color-toned black & white, 44 minutes, not rated.

Film Preservation Associates, distributed by Image Entertainment,
ID1917DSDVD, UPC 0-14381-1917?-?.
Windowboxed 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-layered DVD disc, Region 1, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 8 chapter stops, keep case, $24.99.
DVD release date: 8 April 2003.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 7 / additional content: 7 / overall: 6.

This edition features a windowboxed video transfer mastered from a good rerelease 35mm print from circa 1919 that appears to be little better than a standard 16mm reduction print. The windowbox presentation allows the maximum amount of surviving image to be viewed on all television monitors.

While the source material is of acceptable quality — that is, accepting its soft image details, and jittery and contrasty picture — the video transfer appears to be an older analog transfer that doesn’t come up to DVD quality standards.

The film is accompanied by a piety-evoking music score performed on theater pipe organ.

A definite case where the importance of the content surpasses quality concerns, there may never be a better-looking DVD edition of this film than this.

 
USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase
a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
 
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase
a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.
Other silent era religious films available on home video:
Ben-Hur (1925)
Christus (1915)
Joan the Woman (1915)
The King of Kings (1927)
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ (1905)
Nathan the Wise (1922)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
The Ten Commandments (1923)

Other EARLY FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS of the silent era available on home video.

 
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