Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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The Crowd
(1928)
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King Vidor’s late, great silent feature The Crowd (1928) features Eleanor Boardman and Vidor discovery James Murray in a tale of crushed ambitions and self acceptance. One of the great films of the entire silent era.
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 Bach Films
2013 DVD edition
The Crowd (1928), black & white, 100 minutes, not rated.
Bach Films, unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 2 PAL DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, optional? French language subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; unknown suggested retail price.
Release date: 16 September 2013.
Country of origin: France
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This French PAL DVD edition has likely been mastered from 35mm materials. Initial reports on the visual quality are favorable.
Among the supplemental material is an interview with Jean-Loup Bourget, five lobby card reproductions, and an insert booklet.
This DVD edition has not been viewed but may be the best-looking home video edition available. If not, the MGM Home Video laserdisc from the 1990s would still be the best edition. North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued
and is . . .
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 BoYing
2007 DVD edition
The Crowd (1928), black & white, 103 minutes, not rated.
BoYing, BD891, UPC 9-787885-72696-6, ISBN 7-88572-696-7.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 192 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, optional Chinese language subtitles; 18 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; unknown suggested retail price.
Release date: 2007.
Country of origin: Hong Kong •
Ratings (1-10): video: 4 / audio: 4 / additional content: 0 / overall: 4.
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This Chinese DVD edition has been mastered from a VHS videotape copy of a video transfer from a good to very-good 16mm source print. BoYing disc encoding has always left us wanting, and this is no exception. The results here are a little dark and flat, with soft image details due in part to the analog video source tape and in part to the substandard source print. Quite a bit of dust and speckling remains in the transfer, indicating to us an overall disregard for delivering quality to the end consumer. One small advantage to the English-speaking collector are the optional subtitles which can be turned off.
The film is accompanied by a cobbled-together music score comprised of preexisting orchestral recordings that have been reprocessed for ersatz surround sound.
This is not a recommended edition. We still recommend the long out-of-print MGM laserdisc edition as the current best home video edition of The Crowd.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued
and is . . .
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 Tesco
2009 DVD edition
The Crowd (1928), black & white, 103 minutes, not rated.
Tesco, unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English? language intertitles, optional Spanish language subtitles?; chapter stops; 12-page insert booklet; standard DVD keepcase; unknown suggested retail price.
Release date: 2009.
Country of origin: Spain
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This Spanish DVD edition has been mastered from a commercial VHS videotape, and reportedly the results are not very good. A 12-page booklet is included.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued
and is . . .
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Other silent era KING VIDOR films available on home video.
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