Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
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The River
(1928)
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Frank Borzage’s lyrical romantic tale, one of the great films of 1928, stars Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan (best remembered from F.W. Murnau’s City Girl).
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 20th Century Fox
Home Entertainment
2008 DVD edition
Murnau, Borzage and Fox (1925-1932), black & white and color, 1080 minutes total, not rated, including The River (1928), black & white, 57 minutes, not rated.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment,
35622, UPC 0-24543-56220-7.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 1 NTSC DVD disc (twelve DVDs in the set); 1.20:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 9.2 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English and French language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; 16 chapter stops; clothbound binder with disc pockets in clothbound box; $239.98.
Release date: 9 December 2008.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD edition of Frank Borzage’s The River (1928) has been mastered from a good to very-good Movietone 35mm duplicate print (the picture being cropped to an approximate 1.20:1 ratio).
Some collectors have reported scuffed discs that are packaged in die-cut pockets within the binder, and problems playing the double-sided 7th Heaven/The River disc. This disc packaging choice has been a disturbing trend in larger boxsets like this one and the plastic-slipcased Hitchcock collection with their die-cut disc pockets within stiff cardboard pages. Our own copy of this set has presented no playback problems with the discs on Sony and Panasonic BD players. Others have complained that the set is bulky at seven pounds and hard to handle, with its large binder and two full-size books.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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 Edition Filmmuseum
2008 DVD edition
The River (1928), black & white, 55 minutes, not rated, with The Pitch o’ Chance (1915), black & white, 25 minutes, not rated, The Pilgrim (1916), black & white, 28 minutes, not rated, Nugget Jim’s Pardner (1916), black & white, 25 minutes, not rated, and Murnau, Borzage and Fox (2008), color and black & white, 105 minutes, not rated.
Edition Filmmuseum, 36, UPC/EAN 4-260100-330368.
One single-sided, dual-layered, Region 0 PAL DVD disc (two DVDs in the set); 1.20:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 576 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 50 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, optional German and French language subtitles; chapter stops; standard two-disc DVD keepcase; €29,95.
Release date: January 2008 (second edition, August 2008; third edition, November 2018).
Country of origin: Germany
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This PAL DVD edition has been produced by Cinémathèque Suisse, Cinémathèque de la Ville de Luxembourg, and Filmmuseum München, reconstructing the 43 minutes of surviving footage combined with a scene from a Swedish print, still photographs and bridging intertitles.
The films are presented with music scores by Günter A. Buchwald performed on piano, violin and viola.
The supplemental material includes a stills archive from early Borzage films and The River, and DVD-ROM files including contemporary documents and information on The River and Borzage’s early films, including writings by Hervé Dumont.
This high-quality edition is recommended to all. North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition. Those who have NTSC-only players will want to acquire the Murnau, Borzage and Fox boxset noted above to collect The River and the Janet Bergstrom documentary on Murnau and Borzage.
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This Region 0 PAL DVD edition is available directly from . . .
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Other silent era FRANK BORZAGE films available on home video.
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