Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2026 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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Hollywood
A Celebration of the
American Silent Film
(1980)
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This acclaimed multi-part documentary, directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill and narrated by James Mason, features interviews with directors Allan Dwan, Henry King and King Vidor; actors Viola Dana, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Lillian Gish, Leatrice Joy, Colleen Moore, Gloria Swanson and Blanche Sweet; cinematographers Karl Brown and Byron Haskin; writers Anita Loos and Adela Rogers St. Johns; stuntman Harvey Parry; and Agnes de Mille.
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 Network Distributing
2010 DVD edition
Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980), black & white, 676 minutes, not rated.
Network Distributing,
unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number.
Four single-sided, single-layered, Region 2 PAL DVD discs; 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 ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard four-disc DVD keepcase; unknown suggested retail price.
Release date: 2010.
Country of origin: England
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This PAL DVD edition has been mastered from the original broadcast materials.
The documentary is accompanied by its original soundtrack featuring music composed and conducted by Carl Davis.
Despite all of the illegal editions and spurious Internet uploads, this is our recommended home video edition of the documentary. 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 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued
and is . . .
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 Loving the Classics
2026 DVD edition
Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980), black & white, 676 minutes, not rated.
Loving the Classics, no catalog number, no UPC number.
[?] Four? single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R discs; 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 ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard four-disc DVD keepcase; $62.99 (raised to $64.88).
Release date: 7 January 2026.
Country of origin: USA
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This DVD-R edition has likely been pirated from a DVD, laserdisc or VHS videotape edition of the television documentary (or from the Internet Archive).
The documentary is accompanied by its original soundtrack.
Note that this company apparently has a history of pirating other home video editions or pirating television network recordings to produce their products. Be aware that purchasing pirated home video editions does not benefit the original edition producers nor the composers whose music is often pirated as well.
While this is unlikely to be a legal edition, if you must own it, here it is.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .
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Other silent era-related DOCUMENTARIES available on home video.
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