The Garden of Eden (1928) on

Another young and optimistic girl leaves her small European town for the big city, in search of fame and fortune. She is quickly disillusioned and soon accompanies an elderly woman friend of mysterious means to Monte Carlo, where the two begin living the high life. The girl soon finds love among the elite, but she cannot accept her lover’s advances because of her true station in life.

The charm of Corinne Griffith and Charles Ray is quite apparent in this fun little comedy-drama directed by Lewis Milestone, who is best remembered for the Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Louise Dresser as Rosa shows a slightly-lighter side of her screen personality than in other performances of Dresser’s that are available on home video.

Of note is the supporting work by Lowell Sherman as the carefree playboy Henri d’Avril and by Maude George (of Erich von Stroheim films fame) as nightclub impressario Madame Bauer. — Carl Bennett

Our first look at this disc was generally a pleasant experience. With this home video edition being our first viewing of The Garden of Eden (1928), we were happy to have discovered the film’s simple charm and to view more performances by Corinne Griffith and Charles Ray.

The film has been well transferred in a slightly windowboxed presentation from a very-good to excellent 35mm print, with a few minor flaws that include moderate emulsion scuffing, some scratches and dirt, etc. The windowbox framing allows as much of the print’s picture to be seen on all televisions. The main credits and certain insert shots of letters have been framed in smaller windowboxes to ensure full readability of the frame’s content.

The DVD itself has been well prepared. The transfer to disc maintains much of the quality of the source transfer as well, with very good looking still frames and no obvious interlacing artifacts that are often the result of overcompression of the video information.

Robert Israel has provided another fine music score (digitally recorded), performed on an Allen Renaissance theater pipe organ and piano. It is worth noting that Israel’s work never fails to please.

Among the supplementary materials are a collection of lobby cards, cast bios, newspaper ads, promotional materials and stories, and suggested promotional schemes from the 1928 press book; ten productions stills; a section “Color in The Garden of Eden,” which covers the presumed lost Technicolor dream sequence that was originally in 1928 prints and includes more exerpts from the 1928 press book and also seven stills from the sequence.

The Toy Shop (1928) features Joseph Swickard and child actress Virginia Marshall. A short Technicolor film, with a synchronized music and sound effects track. The source print is a good to very good color 35mm print that of similar quality to other surviving Technicolor films, and that is that some scenes have extremely dark shadows and image detail is blurry and color slightly smeary. There are some vertical scratches throughout the film and splices at the end. The DeForest Phonofilm soundtrack is consistent with other tracks of the time, good with some pops, crackles, and dynamic distortion.

Hollywood the Unusual (1927) is a fascinating look at the unusual architecture of late 1920s Hollywood. If you thought that Los Angeles had only recently lost touch with reality, take a look at these views of southern California buildings from the late 1920s. The film includes a view of the recently-opened Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Transferred full-frame from an excellent 35mm color-toned print, the film is accompanied on piano by Alan Boyd.

Both of the prints of the shorts were supplied by the Library of Moving Images and the transfers sport a persistent LMI logo in white type in the lower right-hand corner. Since the video sources on a DVD are usually protected against unauthorized copying by digital encryption scheme, the logo identifying LMI’s prints are unnecessary and are annoyingly intrusive. Source print credits after the end of the films and in the disc’s packaging should be enough promotion to suit LMI — the logos do not belong in the video transfers.

We certainly welcome the future efforts of this new home video company — especially if they will be bringing more generally-unknown, quality silent era films to the home video market. We recommend this disc.

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.