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

The Iron Mask (1929)

When Douglas Fairbanks released his final silent film, The Iron Mask (1929), he chose to nod acknowledgement toward the recently-established trend to sound films with a spoken prologue and a mid-story exposition bridge, appearing as D’Artagnan.

This sequel to Fairbanks’ The Three Musketeers (1921) is based on the musketeer novels by Alexander Dumas, and features the often-filmed story of twin heirs to the throne of France separated at birth by the evil Cardinal Richelieu (Nigel de Brulier) and raised separately. Richelieu manages the also separate the four musketeers, and makes D’Artagnan bodyguard to the young prince of France. When the twins are grown, De Rochefort (Ulrich Haupt) plots to substitute the boy raised as the prince for his twin who grew up embittered and mean, and thus control the royal throne. The musketeers (now grown old) learn the truth of their birth and help defeat the plans of the now dead Richelieu and the conniving De Rochefort and restore the throne of France to its intended heir.

For years the synchronized sound elements (Vitaphone discs) were thought to be lost. When the film was rereleased under the auspices of the Fairbanks estate by Odyssey Pictures Corporation in 1952, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. dubbed his father’s introductory speech and narrated the film, which has been stripped of its original intertitle cards. New music was composed for this film by Allan Gray and the narration was written by Richard Llewellyn.

Recently, copies of the original Vitaphone soundtrack discs were recovered, and they have been resynched to preservation prints of the film. In 1999, Photoplay Productions premiered their composite restoration of the film, which had utilized a print held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Vitaphone discs (for Fairbanks’ prologue and midfilm narration), and featured a new music score written by Carl Davis.

— Carl Bennett

The film is likely to be presented with a music score composed by Carl Davis and performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

This will likely be the best available home video edition of The Iron Mask.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is also available directly from . . .

Fortunately the Vitaphone sound discs for the original part-talkie version of The Iron Mask were recently recovered and utilized for a new 1999 edition of The Iron Mask produced by Patrick Stanbury and Kevin Brownlow of Photoplay Productions.

The 35mm print utilized for the video transfer is generally of higher than very-good quality but isn’t quite of consistently excellent quality. Image details are a little soft and the overall greyscale range is slightly contrasty. The print is very lightly speckled, but the transfer is generally free of other flaws. The transfer is also a little on the dark side, which helps to hold the print’s highlight details.

Carl Davis has written another excellent music score, performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra in digital stereo, which accompanies the film well in its — in turns — romantic, comedic, swashbuckling and menacing moments.

Disc supplements include outtake footage, a stills and artwork gallery, brief essays, and exerpts from the 1952 version of the film.

Overall, this remains the best DVD edition of the film we have seen and we highly recommend this Kino DVD edition of the film.

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.

The film is likely to be accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

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

The disc also contains a slight supplemental section.

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.
DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

This DVD edition has been mastered from a very-good 16mm reduction print, but the older analog video transfer appears to be subpar, with occasional video glitches, dark streaking to the right of type in intertitles, and signs of image strobing in fast lateral action.

The film is accompanied by a collection of preexisting monaural orchestral recordings from a variety of sources, which begs the question why St. Clair Vision thinks that 5.1 surround sound is justified, other than to dupe an unknowing consumer into thinking they are getting a disc of value.

With better editions to be had, why would you consider this one?

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 . . .

Word has it that a logomark appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture throughout, and that it is accompanying by a repeating prerecorded soundtrack. Best to avoid altogether.

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.

The video transfer for this Navarre edition is of the 1952 rerelease version and features a generously cropped presentation of a very-good 16mm reduction print that generally maintains a good range of greytones but occasionally is contrasty. Some shots are overexposed.

The sound rerelease reproduced the original film (which looks as though it were taken at approximately 18-20 frames per second) at the sound speed of 24 frames per second so that action is generally too fast, though not terribly so. Some footage frames in the sound rerelease were double printed to extend the length of the original shots. Many overlapping dissolves were created where originally there were straight cuts between shots. At least one shot was reproduced forward then reversed to lengthen the shot and another tracks in and out (by way of an optical printer) on an original shot of the iron-masked king. A videotape glitch rolls through the picture at 56:13.

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 . . .

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

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

Seek and destroy.

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.

Which version is presented here — original silent or sound rerelease — is also unknown.

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

Other silent film music scores by CARL DAVIS available on home video.