Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2026 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Hard Luck (1921)

This two-reel comedy, directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline, stars Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox, with Joe Roberts and Bull Montana.

The films are accompanied by music scores composed, compiled and performed by Frank Bockius, Neil Brand, Timothy Brock, Günter Buchwald, Antonio Coppola, Stephen Horne, Robert Israel, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Rodney Sauer, Dennis Scott, Donald Sosin, and Sandra Wong. Some films feature two optional music soundtracks.

Supplemental material includes a collection introduction by Serge Bromberg (6 minutes); an alternate ending for My Wife’s Relations (1922) from the Lobster Films collection (2 minutes); “Life with Buster Keaton,” an excerpt of one of three 1951 remakes of Buster’s 1950 television episodes (3 minutes); and a 28-page insert booklet with an essay by Jeffrey Vance; an introduction, notes on the versions of the films utilized for this collection, and notes on two versions of The Blacksmith by Serge Bromberg; and analytical notes on the films.

For information about other films in this collection, see our Buster Keaton: The Shorts Collection 1917-1923 on home video page.

Currently, this is our recommended home video edition of the film for North American collectors.

This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is available directly from . . .

Supplemental material includes an introduction by preservationist Serge Bromberg; audio commentary on six films by Joseph McBride; a recently-discovered version of The Blacksmith containing four minutes of previously unseen footage; alternate endings for Coney Island and My Wife’s Relations; a video essay by critic David Cairns; a discussion of Keaton’s style by actor Pierre Étaix; an audio recording of Keaton at a 1962 party; and a 184-page booklet with a roundtable discussion with critics Brad Stevens, Jean-Pierre Coursodon and Dan Sallitt, an essay and with detailed notes on each film by Jeffrey Vance; an essay by Serge Bromberg on the two versions of The Blacksmith and other discoveries; an excerpt from Life with Buster Keaton (1951) in cluding a reenactment by Keaton of Roscoe Arbuckle’s “Salomé dance,” first performed in The Cook and the words of Buster Keaton.

Sight unseen, this is our recommended home video edition of the film for European collectors. North American collectors will need a region-free Blu-ray Disc player to view this edition.

This Region B Blu-ray Disc edition is available directly from . . .

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from a conflation of at least two prints, which appear to be a 35mm print and a 16mm reduction print. The compiled source material is still incomplete and is missing approximately three minutes of footage, which is indicated by brief sections of black frames.

For material that is quite scuffed or otherwise of distracting state, Kino offers viewer-selectable versions that have been digitally cleaned by computer processing.

Supplemental material includes 15 visual essays featuring contributions from Jack Dragga, Ken Gordon, David Kalat, Bruce Lawton, Steve Massa, Ben Model, David B. Pearson, R. Emmet Sweeney and Patricia Eliot Tobias, a series of alternate and deleted shots from Keaton shorts, a presentation of exerpts from comedy films influenced by Keaton, and Keaton cameos in short films of the late 1920s.

This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is accompanied by a custom music score.

For information about other films in this collection, see our Buster Keaton Collection boxset on home video page.

This is a great way to affordably acquire Buster’s films on Blu-ray Discs.

This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The films are accompanied by music scores composed, compiled and performed by Frank Bockius, Neil Brand, Timothy Brock, Günter Buchwald, Antonio Coppola, Stephen Horne, Robert Israel, The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Rodney Sauer, Dennis Scott, Donald Sosin, and Sandra Wong. Some films feature two optional music soundtracks.

Supplemental material includes a collection introduction by Serge Bromberg (6 minutes); an alternate ending for My Wife’s Relations (1922) from the Lobster Films collection (2 minutes); “Life with Buster Keaton,” an excerpt of one of three 1951 remakes of Buster’s 1950 television episodes (3 minutes); and a 28-page insert booklet with an essay by Jeffrey Vance; an introduction, notes on the versions of the films utilized for this collection, and notes on two versions of The Blacksmith by Serge Bromberg; and analytical notes on the films.

For information about other films in this collection, see our Buster Keaton: The Shorts Collection 1917-1923 on home video page.

Sight unseen, this is our recommended DVD home video edition of the film.

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

This remastered DVD edition has been mastered from a conflation of at least two prints, which appear to be a 35mm print and a 16mm reduction print. The compiled source material is still incomplete and is missing approximately three minutes of footage, which is indicated by brief sections of black frames.

Supplemental material includes 15 visual essays featuring contributions from Jack Dragga, Ken Gordon, David Kalat, Bruce Lawton, Steve Massa, Ben Model, David B. Pearson, R. Emmet Sweeney and Patricia Eliot Tobias, a series of alternate and deleted shots from Keaton shorts, a presentation of exerpts from comedy films influenced by Keaton, and Keaton cameos in short films of the late 1920s.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition contains a film that was once thought to have been lost (but has been transferred from a 1987 Raymond Rohauer post-release print) and has been listed as one of Buster’s favorite of his short films. Buster is down on his luck and is looking for a quick way out of this life. Buster eventually finds employment as an armadillo hunter. The toned print utilized appears to have been copied from at least two good 16mm reduction prints and a very good 35mm print (with a final shot from a rough 16mm reduction print).

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on piano by Neil Brand.

While we felt that some of the film excerpts were surprisingly short, the additional material is worth the money just for the inclusion of Hard Luck, the two Educational shorts, the “Awakening” television episode and the Silent Echoes section.

This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition has been mastered from a conflation by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill of 35mm and 16mm prints that range from very-good to fair quality. The compiled source print is generally either an overall flat grey or is contrasty (depending on the original source material), with frame jitters, dust, speckling, scratches, schmutz and beginning decomposition, and is still missing several sections of footage to splices. The introduction in the source print notes that altogether approximately three minutes of footage is missing, and missing footage within a shot is indicated by several black frames.

The film is accompanied with music performed by Robert Israel on the Fotoplayer.

Once the best-available home video edition, we are now advising that collectors choose either the remastered DVD version or the high-definition Blu-ray Disc version from Kino International noted above.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .