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

Johanna Enlists (1918)

This World War I comedy-drama, directed by William Desmond Taylor, stars Mary Pickford, with Anne Schaefer, Fred Huntley, Monte Blue, Douglas MacLean, Emory Johnson, John Steppling, Wallace Beery and Wesley Barry.

A simple farm girl (Pickford) discovers love as a regiment of soldiers, preparing to ship out to Europe, temporarily camps on the family property. Very soon a convalescing lieutenant (Johnson) and Private Vibbard (Blue) are jealously vying for the attentions of young Johanna, which comes to a head and results in a courtmartial. Archie Van Rensselaer (MacLean) is appointed to be judge advocate in the proceeding. Soon, Johanna forgets the brash lieutenant and private in favor of Archie’s even, mature temperament. Johanna’s tearful testimony is presented at the proceeding, which degenerates down to the burning question: who among her would-be suitors will Johanna choose, the lieutenant or the private?

Pickford is highly entertaining in one of her best endearing, spirited young woman roles. Her transformation from farm girl to maturing young woman is represented in part by her change from a girlish Louise Fazenda hairdo to a young woman’s loose, long blonde curls. Her transformation is also reflected in her clothing and in her evolution from infatuations to true romance.

Among the film’s comic idiosyncrasies are the shots of Johanna discreetly undressing before the camera (including Pickford’s brief remonstrative glances at the audience) and of the military regiment band playing during their overnight camping stay on the Ransallar farm because, after all, no self-respecting soldier would ship off to the war in Europe without his trombone.

This simple romantic comedy-drama cleverly disguises the light-handed, war bonds propaganda that only comes to the forefront at the film’s end. Audiences expecting, from the film’s title, to see the diminutive Pickford rallying the boys in an over-the-top charge with rifle and bayonet in hand may be disappointed.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc / DVD edition has been mastered from a high-definition digital reconstruction performed by the Library of Congress and the Mary Pickford Foundation from an archival 16mm reduction print that is missing a portion of the third reel. Missing footage is covered by stills and new intertitles prepared from the original editing continuity (the main titles include a resetting of the production credits that are missing from the source print). We assume that some digital clean-up of the HD scan has been performed but the picture still contains some examples of dust, speckling, scratches, splices, exposure fluctuations, frame jitters and other flaws that sre not all that distracting. The HD scan adequately captures what picture details are present in the reduction print materials but one cannot expect the results that come from nitrate 35mm prints.

Note: Our file copy of this multidisc set (and possibly all first release copies) has the discs mislabelled, with the Blu-ray Disc labelled as DVD and vice versa. The DVD (still frame directly above) looks nearly as good as the BD but experienced eyes with see that the standard resolution of DVD does not present the moderate quality of the 16mm reduction quite as clearly as does the Blu-ray Disc.

The film is accompanied by a custom music score composed and compiled by Dan Light and performed by a small ensemble (including guitars, banjos, mandolins, upright bass, piano, violin, flute, clarinet, trumpet and harmonica). The music is pleasant and does the job of appropriately accompanying the film’s story.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary for Johanna Enlists by film historian Marc Wanamaker; a presentation of the Biograph short A Beast at Bay (1912), with a music score performed on synthesizers by Dan Light; and a slideshow photo gallery (128 images). We do take umbridge with the presence of a large MPF (Mary Pickford Foundation) logomark that has been added to the lower right corner of the entire Biograph film. We are thankful this was not done to the main feature but we do highly resent its presence in this short film that is underrepresented on home video. The 35mm source print is finely detailed, with a common amount of scratches, dust, speckling, emulsion chipping, splices, frame jitters and other flaws remaining in the HD scan. The original intertitles have been replaced with reset titles that include at least one spelling error. As would be expected, our viewing preference for the short film is from the Blu-ray Disc, which renders best the image quality of the excellent but damaged 35mm source material.

Sorely needed for years, we highly recommend this multidisc set as the best home video edition of this film that is available (just look at the Alpha Video screen capture below). There is still hope that a complete 35mm print of this film will be recovered in the near future. In the meantime, we have this well-produced edition for our home video collections.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc / Region 0 DVD edition from Amazon.com. Support Silent Era.
This Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc / Region 0 DVD edition is also available directly from . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a good 16mm reduction print, but the video transfer is a little grey and flat, with a persistent bluriness that has to be a combination of the source print and the low-resolution video transfer. For example, the blurry low-resolution picture renders actor Steve Murphy and other supporting players nearly unrecognizable.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from inappropriate preexisting jazz and orechestral recordings. Cheap and lazy on Alpha’s part.

This is not even a good home video edition and (after the release of the VCI Blu-ray / DVD edition above) is only worthy of the trash can.

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 is also available directly from . . .