Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Silent Naruse (1931-1934)

Contents: Flunky, Work Hard (1931), No Blood Relation (1932), Apart From You (1933), Every-Night Dreams (1933) and Street Without End (1934).

This five-film collection, culled from the earliest years of Mikio Naruse’s career, shows us the development of one of Japan’s boldest filmmakers. Rapid camera framing from character to character, close-ups, montage, and swift camera moves are not unusual in Naruse’s work here.

Due to the entrenchment of the Benshi narrator tradition in Japanese film exhibition, the production of Japanese silent films extended well into the 1930s. These five films are excellent examples of the continued development of the Japanese silent film.

This DVD collection has been mastered from five good to very-good 35mm source prints. Most of the prints are a bit dark in the midtones of the greyscale range which makes the overall picture seem a little dull. Moderate amounts of dust, speckling, emulsion chipping and scuffing, schmutz, and other print flaws are present in most of the prints. That said, the viewing experience is overall very-good.

The films are accompanied by music scores composed by Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz. On all discs, audio channel 1 is devoid of any content, audio channel 2 must be chosen to hear the music score performed by a small ensemble.

For our comparative reviews of the individual films in this collection, see our Flunky, Work Hard on home video, No Blood Relation on home video, Apart From You on home video, Every-Night Dreams on home video and Street Without End on home video pages.

As would be expected of a Criterion Collection release, this collection has been lovingly produced for home video and is enthusiastically recommended. This out-of-print collection is well worth pursuing on the backstock and used disc market.

This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .