The Great Gabbo
(1929)
on
|
With Erich von Stroheim’s final feature film of the silent era, Queen Kelly (1928), having been shut down in midproduction, he took on an unusual starring role in an independently-produced full-sound film directed by the fallen director James Cruze.
Von Stroheim plays a mean vaudeville ventriloquist who pushes away the woman who loves him and immerses himself in conversations with his dummy. When the Great Gabbo achieves Broadway success and he again crosses pathes with his love, Gabbo must wrestle with his own neurotic illusions and her jealous singing partner. When his lover refuses to come back to him, Gabbo’s hard shell cracks to reveal the nut inside.
As was the case with several early sound films, The Great Gabbo is saddled with a number of average musical numbers (some of them silly, all of them fairly representative of late 1920s musical theatre). But the highlight of the film is von Stroheim’s slow-paced and quirky performance. — Carl Bennett
|
 2003 Kino International edition
The Great Gabbo (1929), black & white, 96 minutes, not rated, with Blind Husbands (1919), color-toned black & white, 93 minutes, not rated.
Kino International, K246, UPC 7-38329-02462-8.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, dual-layered DVD disc, Region 1, 4.5 Mbps average video bit rate, 192 kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, no subtitles, 17 chapter stops, keep case, $29.95.
DVD release date: 10 June 2003.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 9 / audio: 5 / additional content: 6 / overall: 7.
|
|
 This DVD edition has been prepared from a 35mm restoration print prepared by the Library of Congress. The print appears to have been duplicated (for the most part) from the original nitrate negative, with the print’s excellent image detail and very broad range of graytones well-maintained in Kino International’s full-frame video transfer.
As noted in the disc’s supplemental section, the restoration print features more footage than has been seen in theatrical prints and home video editions over the years, but musical numbers that were shot in the Multicolor process are presented here in their surviving black & white form, and the “Ga-Ga Bird” production number is missing altogether as it is presumed lost.
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. |
 |
|
