Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Cub (1915)

This comedy-drama, directed by Maurice Tourneur, stars Johnny Hines and Martha Hedman, with was.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 35mm fine-grain positive photochemically duplicated from a 28mm reduction print, a joint restoration of the Library of Congress and the National Film, Television and Sound Archives of Canada funded by the American Film Institute. The analog video transfer (which may date to the 1990s) and/or the source print cuts off the left portion of the picture with some cropping of the top and bottom of the frame. Despite the cropping, intertitles remain readable in full. Given the analog pedigree of the transfer, it should be no surprise that the picture is soft in its image details. Dust, speckling, schmutz, frame jitters, and other minor flaws are seen. On high-definition equipment capable of picture upscaling the intertitles still show evidence of interlacing but the live action is relatively smooth with no visible signs of an interlaced image. Intended to discourage video bootlegging, occasionally the website address for the society will appear in the lower part of the picture. We wish that video publishers did not feel compelled to do this as it is distracting from the viewing experience for the collector of the disc. All of that said, the viewing experience is reasonably good.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on piano by Philip Carli recorded live at Cinesation in 1997. The presentation includes a brief video clip of a young Carli from the performance.

This out-of-print disc is still the only home video edition of the film we are aware of.

ENCORE ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this DVD-R edition is . . .

Other silent era JOHNNY HINES films available on home video.