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

Mother Machree (1928)

This John Ford drama features Belle Bennett, Victor McLaglen, Neil Hamilton, Philippe de Lacy, Pat Somerset, Constance Howard, Ted McNamara and Ethel Clayton.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a VHS videotape off-air recording (from an American Movie Classics cablecast) of an incomplete 16mm reduction print. Not helped by the low-resolution of VHS, the picture is not sharp (despite the disc’s high video encoding bit rate) with blurry image details and closed up shadow details. Upscaling HD systems may not be able to totally get rid of the picture interlacing of the NTSC signal. The source print has a moderate amount of dust and speckling. Despite the disc packaging claims that the film runs 75 minutes, the surviving film runs lass than half an hour. With more than half the film missing, the storyline takes a jump from the circus into the Cutting household then the presentation ends abruptly.

The film is accompanied by the film’s 1928 rerelease Movietone synchronized soundtrack. The audio is a bit wobbly and crackles thanks to the VHS dupe.

This is only one of a handful of bootleg home video editions of the film available through Internet auction sites. Not really recommended, but when you just have to see an obscure John Ford film . . .

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is (possibly) . . .