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

The Paleface (1922)

Go West (1925) is another of the underrated Buster Keaton comedies and is worth discovering.

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.

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 early DVD edition, produced for home video by David Shepard, was previously released VHS videotape in 1994 and on laserdisc in 1995. The windowboxed video transfer has been produced from a very-good 35mm print, which is relatively clean, with only a moderate amount of dust and speckling.

The film is accompanied by an older music score performed by an anonymous small orchestra.

For information on the other Western-themed Keaton releases in this collection, see our Go West on home video and The Scarecrow on home video pages.

Despite the older analog mastering, we still recommend this edition of The Paleface on DVD home video.

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 Paleface (1922) and The Blacksmith (1922), two very good Keaton shorts, are the standouts on this disc, which appear to be presented from video transfers originally prepared by David Shepard for home video release by Kino International. Both films have utilized 35mm print materials for the transfers, which feature a broad range of greytones and very good image detail. However, experienced eyes will detect a slightly lower-quality appearance to these shorts on this Navarre disc over the Kino editions, due to the higher MPEG compression of the video information. Both films are accompanied by canned orchestral music scores.

If viewers are more budget than quality conscious, this disc will be a good buy. However, we recommend the Kino International DVD editions of these films over this disc from Navarre.

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 compiled music score of preexisting recordings.

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 . . .