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

The Pilgrim (1923)

The Pilgrim (1923) stars Charles Chaplin in the last of his short films made under his First National contract.

The film is presented with the established music score composed by Charles Chaplin.

The disc’s supplemental material includes an introduction by David Robinson.

This being nearly identical in content to the 2004 Warner Home Video edition noted below, owners of that edition may not feel the need to acquire this Park Circus edition. This edition, currently the only high-quality edition in print, is recommended for those who want to add the film to their collection now. With no high-definition home video option, we recommend this edition.

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. Purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Our first look at the discs reveals the high quality one would expect from video transfers utilizing 35mm prints and negatives from Chaplin’s own film collection. The detail and greyscale ranges are consistently excellent. However, we have had problems with the disc displaying properly to a 16:9 high-definition television when played from one of our DVD players. The picture fills the 16:9 monitor in width (already wrong for a 4:3 format picture) and crops the top and bottom of the picture to do so. No amount of manipulation of the picture settings ideally resolves the issue. Other DVD players will not have this issue.

Be aware that that isn’t the only issue with the production of this set. Despite how they are labeled, disc 1 is disc two and disc 2 is disc one. Confused? So were we.

The disc includes the option to view the films in the Chaplin Revue form that Chaplin assembled for release in 1959 (including Chaplin’s overview introduction) or as the individual films themselves — appealing to collectors who want the individual films presented as closely as possible to their original form.

The supplementary material includes the unreleased Chaplin film How to Make Movies, the war bond comedies The Bond and [Harry Lauder] (1918), outtakes from Shoulder Arms and Sunnyside, informal momento films, introductions by David Robinson, stills and posters galleries, and trailers.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD collection has been mastered from archival 35mm print materials. It appears that the masters from the 1993 Chaplin: A Legacy of Laughter laserdisc series have been utilized for this and other year 2000 Chaplin DVD releases.

The films are accompanied by music scores supervised by Chaplin from the soundtracks of his approved rerelease prints.

Supplemental material includes Chaplin’s noncommercial short film Nice and Friendly (1922); rejected footage from Shoulder Arms; and footage of General Leonard Wood’s visit to the set of Shoulder Arms.

This disc is now contractually out-of-print to make way for another Chaplin family-authorized compilation of these films. This edition is still available as a previously-owned item but the costs asked are usually outrageous.

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 . . .

Other silent era JACKIE COOGAN films available on home video.