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

The House with Closed Shutters (1910)

The House with Closed Shutters (1910) is a D.W. Griffith Civil War drama of cowardice, ostracism and unexpected bravery, featuring Henry B. Walthall, Dorothy West and Charles West, that accelerates the passage of time toward the end of the story through expository intertitles and subtle visual changes to the settings (and not-so-subtle makeup changes).

The set is made up of one Blu-ray Disc featuring the remastered HD edition of the film, with music performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, while two other DVD discs represent the content of the 2002 Kino DVD edition noted below.

Mysteriously, this edition has disappeared from all Amazon sites — likely due to pressure from the cancel culture movement.

This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition is available directly from . . .

The film is presented with music performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

The supplemental material includes a 44-page insert booklet.

North American collectors will need a region-free Blu-ray Disc and/or a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

The set is made up of one DVD disc featuring the remastered HD edition of the film, with music performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, while two other DVD discs represent the content of the 2002 Kino DVD edition noted below.

Mysteriously, this edition has disappeared from all Amazon sites — likely due to pressure from the cancel culture movement.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is available directly from . . .

This DVD edition of The House with Closed Shutters (1910) has been transferred from a good to very-good 35mm source print is likely a silent era rerelease print, given the differences in main titles and intertitles content and typography to other surviving prints, and this print’s inclusion of a cast list. There is some early print decomposition to be seen in the first reel of the film, and the majority of the whole print is scuffed, speckled and a little dusty. Several frames of the print are lost to splices. The horizontal framing of the video transfer appears to be close to the hard lines of the print, but the vertical framing crops the top of the picture (with more of the bottom of picture visible than in other video editions) for the sake of a full-frame image.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on piano by Jon C. Mirsalis.

Mysteriously, this out-of-print edition has disappeared from all Amazon sites — likely due to pressure from the cancel culture movement intending to eliminate The Birth of a Nation from the face of the earth. This DVD edition is also included in Kino’s Griffith Masterworks boxset.

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

Appearing on Disc Four: Inverted Narratives: New Directions in Storytelling, The House with Closed Shutters (1910) has been transferred from a good to very-good 35mm print from Film Preservation Associates. The video transfer is a bit darker than usual allowing for controlled picture details in highlights, but overall the picture is a little flat.

The transfer framing is a bit tighter than the Kino edition noted above, with more of the top portion of the picture visible but sacrificing about 10 percent of the bottom of the picture.

The film is presented with a music score performed on synthesizer by Eric Beheim. As usual, the synthesizer sounds Beheim has chosen are a bit annoying.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition has been transferred at slightly faster-than-natural-speed from a good to very-good 16mm reduction print, that features a fairly balanced greyscale range but a few times loses picture details in highlights, leaving faces almost featurelessly white. This is by no means the worst print we’ve seen of this film.

The film is presented with an abruptly compiled music score performed on MIDI-based digital piano.

Note that the opening titles appear to be original, as opposed to the Kino edition noted above.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a fair but tightly-cropped 8mm reduction print. The results are substandard and the video transfer runs at faster than a natural pace. The image details are rough and compression artifacts are easily seen on large screens.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from inappropriate preexisting recordings.

This is not an edition worth buying, even at this low cost, as the film is available on home video in other, better-looking editions. Save your money.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other CIVIL WAR FILMS of the silent era available on home video.