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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Sally
(1929)
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This musical drama, directed by John Francis Dillon, stars Marilyn Miller and Alexander Gray, with Joe E. Brown, T. Roy Barnes, Pert Kelton, Ford Sterling, Maude Turner Gordon, E.J. Ratcliffe and Jack Duffy.
Unfortunately, this early all-talking, all-color film has only survived in a substandard black & white reduction print.
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 Warner Archive Collection
2009 DVD edition
Sally (1929), black & white, 101 minutes, not rated.
Warner Home Video,
no catalog number, UPC 8-83316-22479-3.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R 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 7.4 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 language intertitles, no subtitles; 10 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $19.95 (reduced to $14.99).
Release date: 1 December 2009.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 4 / audio: 6 / additional content: 0 / overall: 4.
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This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a fair 16mm reduction print that is a quite dupey and even blurry. Some footage that was shot silent plays at a faster-than-natural speed. Despite this being a Vitaphone sound-on-disc production, some of the source material may actually originate from a sound-on-film print (at least, for the opening titles) as a substantial amount of the left-hand side of the picture has been cropped out (presumably to accommodate an optical soundtrack). Ultimately, pretty tough going for most audiences.
The film is accompanied by its original synchronized soundtrack.
This is our recommended home video edition of the film.
This review was updated in 2026.
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This
Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
WARNER HOME VIDEO through . . .
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Other TECHNICOLOR FILMS of the silent era available on home video.
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