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

One Week (1920)

Buster Keaton and his new bride are gifted a kit home and Buster builds it with predictable results. The film features the first of Buster’s daredevil gags with a falling wall and an open window (modeled after a similar gag in an earlier 1919 Arbuckle/Keaton film Back Stage), which led to the same gag in Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).

This first release from Buster as a solo comedian was actually preceeded by the production of The High Sign (1921), which was held from release in an to attempt to present an even better film for his freshman effort.

This remastered Blu-ray Disc collection has been mastered from the best 35mm print materials available. Not all of the source prints are of 35mm quality, however. Some prints are of only good quality as the surviving material is either contrasty and blurred from multiple print duplications or preserved from 16mm reduction prints.

For material that is quite scuffed or otherwise of distracting state, Kino offers viewer-selectable versions that have been digitally cleaned by computer processing.

Among the supplementary content created for this collection are 15 visual essays featuring contributions from Jack Dragga, Ken Gordon, David Kalat, Bruce Lawton, Steve Massa, Ben Model, David B. Pearson, R. Emmet Sweeney and Patricia Eliot Tobias, a series of alternate and deleted shots from Keaton shorts, a presentation of exerpts from comedy films influenced by Keaton, and Keaton cameos in short films of the late 1920s.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Supplementary material includes an introduction by preservationist Serge Bromberg; audio commentary on six films by Joseph McBride; a recently-discovered version of The Blacksmith containing four minutes of previously unseen footage; alternate endings for Coney Island and My Wife’s Relations; a video essay by critic David Cairns; a discussion of Keaton’s style by actor Pierre Étaix; an audio recording of Keaton at a 1962 party; and a 184-page booklet with a roundtable discussion with critics Brad Stevens, Jean-Pierre Coursodon and Dan Sallitt, an essay and with detailed notes on each film by Jeffrey Vance; an essay by Serge Bromberg on the two versions of The Blacksmith and other discoveries; an excerpt from Life with Buster Keaton (1951) in cluding a reenactment by Keaton of Roscoe Arbuckle’s “Salomé dance,” first performed in The Cook and the words of Buster Keaton.

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

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This remastered DVD collection has been mastered from the best 35mm print materials available. Not all of the source prints are of 35mm quality, however. Some prints are of only good quality as the surviving material is either contrasty and blurred from multiple print duplications or preserved from 16mm reduction prints.

For material that is quite scuffed or otherwise of distracting state, Kino offers viewer-selectable versions that have been digitally cleaned by computer processing.

Among the supplementary content created for this collection are 15 visual essays featuring contributions from Jack Dragga, Ken Gordon, David Kalat, Bruce Lawton, Steve Massa, Ben Model, David B. Pearson, R. Emmet Sweeney and Patricia Eliot Tobias, a series of alternate and deleted shots from Keaton shorts, a presentation of exerpts from comedy films influenced by Keaton, and Keaton cameos in short films of the late 1920s.

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.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition of the brilliant One Week (1920), has been produced by David Shepard. The windowboxed video transfer utilizes a very-good to excellent 35mm source print.

The film is accompanied by an older music score performed on theater organ by Gaylord Carter.

For information on the other Keaton releases in this collection, see our The High Sign on home video page and The Saphead on home video page.

This edition of Buster Keaton’s first solo short film will please viewers with its quality picture image and pleasant musical accompaniment.

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 accompanied by a custom music score by The Alloy Orchestra and is the principal reason to own this collection (if you like their music).

As noted above, better-looking editions have subsequently been issued on Blu-ray Disc and DVD and this disc is not recommended. This edition was later reissued on manufactured-on-demand DVD-R disc and both the DVD and DVD-R editions are now out-of-print.

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 edition has been discontinued and is . . .

To order a DVD edition, you must enter “Replace My VHS Title with Standard ‘No Frillz’ DVD” in the comments section at order checkout.

NOSTALGIA FAMILY VIDEO has discontinued business and this DVD-R edition is . . .