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SILENT ERA FILMS ON HOME VIDEO
Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2009 by Carl Bennett.
All Rights Reserved.
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King Lear
(1916) |
The Thanhouser Film Corporation’s production of King Lear (1916) stars renown actor Frederick Warde as Lear, with support from director/actor Ernest C. Warde, Ina Hammer, Wayne Arey and Edith Diestal.
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2007 Thanhouser Company Film Preservation edition
The Thanhouser Collection, DVD Volumes 7, 8 and 9 (1910-1917),
black & white, 302 minutes total, not rated,
including King Lear (1916), black & white, 36 minutes, not rated,
with Daddy’s Double (1910), black & white, 16 minutes, not rated, The Winter’s Tale (1910), black & white, 13 minutes, not rated, Nicholas Nickleby (1912), black & white, 31 minutes, not rated, Cymbeline (1913), black & white, 22 minutes, not rated, King Rene’s Daughter (1913), black & white, 42 minutes, not rated, Tannhäuser (1913), black & white, 40 minutes, not rated, When the Studio Burned (1913), black & white, 14 minutes, not rated, An Elusive Diamond (1914), black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, The Marvelous Marathoner (1915), black & white, 13 minutes, not rated, The Vagabonds (1915), black & white, 13 minutes, not rated, and The Woman in White (1917), black & white, 68 minutes, not rated.
Thanhouser Company Film Preservation Incorporated,
unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, three? single-sided, single-layered DVD-R discs, Region 0, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops, keep case, $24.95.
DVD release date: September 2007
Country of origin: USA
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 2007 TeleVista edition
King Lear (1916), black & white, 64 minutes, not rated.
TeleVista, no catalog number, UPC 0-29502-19164-1.
Windowboxed 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-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, 6 chapter stops, keep case, $19.95.
DVD release date: 2 October 2007.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 3 / audio: 7 / additional content: 0 / overall: 4.
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This overpriced edition (for the quality tendered) has been mastered from a fair-to-good contrasty 16mm reduction print of sufficiently low quality, with its blasted-out highlights and plugged-up shadows, to make many of the medium-shot facial features hard to discern and some of the intertitles hard to read. A shame.
