Alfred Hitchcock was still a novice film director when he directed his first classic, The Lodger (1926). He bounced around different types of stories and created diverse films throughout his brief silent era phase (nine feature films). The Ring (1927), his sixth film, is among the better of Hitchcock’s silent era films.

A circus sideshow boxer (Carl Brisson) is known for knocking out his average citizen opponents in less than one round, until one day he goes four rounds with and is defeated by a big strapper (Ian Hunter). Brisson has planned to marry the tickettaking gal (Lilian Hall-Davis), but his defeat means his reputation is shot and is out of a job. The strapping Australian stranger identifies himself as the heavyweight boxing champion and offers Brisson a job as his sparring partner. Brisson and Davis go ahead and get married. Meanwhile, Hunter takes a shine to Hall-Davis. Brisson begins to build his career as a professional boxer by fighting through low card bouts. His time is taken with the training and bouts. His wife passes her time with Hunter and begins to feel some affection for the suave brute. By the time Brisson has reached the heavyweight championship, he is forced also to fight Hunter for the love of his wife. Yes, it’s a boxing film. Yes, it’s a love triangle film. Yes, it’s still a Hitchcock film, and still an entertaining film.

Hitchcock continues the creative visual storytelling he experimented with in The Lodger. Most of it is intriguing. The film features, however, more views of bad British teeth than contemporary audiences may be able to tolerate. Hitchcock makes his appearance at 1:30 into the film as the first close-up of a circus barker’s mouth. — Carl Bennett

2007 Lions Gate Entertainment edition

The Ring (1927), black & white, 90 minutes, not rated, with The Manxman (1929), black & white, 84 minutes, not rated, Murder! (1930), black & white, 103 minutes, not rated, The Skin Game (1931), black & white, 83 minutes, not rated, Rich and Strange (1931), black & white, 84 minutes, not rated.

Lions Gate Entertainment, 20860, UPC 0-12236-20860-0.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, two single-sided, dual-layered DVD discs and 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, 25 chapter stops, keep case, $39.98.
DVD release date: 6 February 2007.
Country of origin: USA

After years of cheap home video editions mastered from lousy 16mm prints, we now have a quality home video edition mastered from an excellent 35mm print. While the print has the usual number of flaws inherent in one from the silent era, light speckling, dust, and mild print flaws, the presentation is an absolute pleasure to view, with a broad range of graytones and fine image detail. The film is accompanied by a stereo piano score. The silent films are listed with incorrect release years on the packaging.

Ultimately, this edition is what we had hoped for these many years, a quality presentation from an excellent 35mm print, laying to rest fears that Hitchcock's silents had survived only in mediocre reduction dupes. Throw away your cheapies, this is the DVD edition you'll want for your collection.

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.

1999 Laserlight Digital edition

The Ring (1927), black & white, 89 minutes, not rated, with Number Seventeen (1931), black & white, 66 minutes, not rated.

Laserlight Digital, 82031, UPC 0-18111-99793-5.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-layered DVD disc, Region 0, 3 Mbps average video bit rate, 192 kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese subtitles, 16 chapter stops, keep case, $7.95.
DVD release date: 20 July 1999.
Country of origin: USA

This disc is a series of shortcomings and disappointments: First and foremost, cropping problems are due to bad framing of the 16mm reduction print utilized for the video transfer, with cropped off heads and intertitles being the most distressing flaws of this budget edition. The print of The Ring, which appears to be a Janus Films product, is cropped too much on the top, bottom and left sides of the frame. Occasionally, viewers are presented with acting torsos and knees. Heads are often cut off and, worse, the left side of intertitles and credits are rendered all but unreadable by bad framing, and is not helped much by the lack of overscan cropping on an HD monitor. At times, the picture is excessively contrasty, with highlights and faces blasted out and night scenes too dark. Videotape master glitches show up in the transfer throughout both films on the disc.

That being said, the DVD is virtually identical in quality to the 2003 Brentwood edition. Incidently, we noticed that a German intertitle remained in the print of The Ring, appearing for three frames at 50:46 in the film. Also, the introduction by Tony Curtis features a reproduction of Madacy Entertainment’s DVD edition of Number Seventeen — what’s going on with that?

The music score for The Ring has been cobbled together from a variety of canned sources, including hissing tape recordings and crackling LP records, in a thoughtful but roughly-edited medley.

We cannot recommend this disc without qualification. The transfer of Number Seventeen from a 16mm print features a higher number of artifacts due to over-compression. Number Seventeen is a marginal improvement over the Madacy DVD edition; it is a film that has had a rocky home video history, with transfer problems and hard-to-hear audio that has been the result of the substandard audio recording of the original film. We recommend viewers with audio/video amplifiers set their tone levels to a flat setting (or further reducing the treble) to get the most intelligible audio results from Number Seventeen. The quality of the materials used for the transfer of The Ring and its final visual results are subpar even for a budget-line DVD. Some collectors may want to acquire this inexpensive disc until a better edition is produced.

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.

2003 Brentwood Home Video edition

The Ring (1927), black & white, 82 minutes, not rated, with The Lodger (1926), black & white, 91 minutes, not rated, Blackmail (1929), black & white, 86 minutes, not rated, Juno and the Paycock (1929), black & white, 98 minutes, not rated, Rich and Strange (1932), black & white, 83 minutes, not rated, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), black & white, 78 minutes, not rated, Secret Agent (1936), black & white, 88 minutes, not rated, Sabotage (1936), black & white, 76 minutes, not rated, Young and Innocent (1937), 83 minutes, not rated, The Lady Vanishes (1938), 98 minutes, not rated, The Chaney Vase (1955), 25 minutes, not rated, and The Sorcerer’s Appentice (1961), 26 minutes, not rated.

Brentwood Home Video, 45011-9, UPC 7-87364-50119-9.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, five double-sided, single-layered DVD discs, Region 0, 5 Mbps average video bit rate, 384 kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 mono sound, English language intertitles, no subtitles, 7 chapter stops, five-disc keep case, $19.98.
DVD release date: 7 October 2003.
Country of origin: USA

Another budget edition of Hitchcock’s The Ring doesn’t bring any improvement for Hitch collectors. With framing, tonal quality and source print virtually the same as the Laserlight edition noted above, the only difference between this disc and its counterpart is value for the money. This collection pulls together ten Hitchcock films for yet another cheap DVD release. For dollars to the number of films, this is marginally a better value than the Laserlight edition.

The source material for The Ring is a Janus Films 16mm reduction print that has the same flaws as the print used for the Laserlight edition. Close inspection reveals that the tight misframing is present in the print not the video transfer — although a windowboxed transfer would have minimized the loss of picture information to overscan cropping on many televisions. The lack of overscan cropping on most HD monitors helps marginally. The picture has also been slightly less compressed for DVD storage than the Laserlight edition, resulting in a nearly-imperceptable improvement in visual quality.

The musical accompaniment is another annoying mish-mash of preexisting orchestral recordings of varying quality, which only serves to fill silence, and is presented in 2.0 and 5.1 mono sound — go figure.

Many of the other films in this collection are presented in transfers that are slightly more contrasty than other available DVD editions. Read our review of the Brentwood edition of The Lodger (1926).

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 British silent era films available on DVD home video:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1912-1921)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)
Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (1900-1906)
Hindle Wakes (1927)
The Informer (1929)
Livingstone (1925)
Moulin Rouge (1928)
Piccadilly (1929)
The Return of the Rat (1929)
The Woman He Scorned (1929)