Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
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A Reckless Romeo
(1917)
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In A Reckless Romeo (1917), a drunken Roscoe comes home at 3:00 AM to his wife’s ire. The next day, he goes for a trip to an amusement park with his steaming wife and mother-in-law. Roscoe draws the wrath of a jealous boyfriend (Al St. John) when he flirts with the wrong pretty girl. The flirting and the resulting fight is captured on film by a passing newsreel photographer, only to be seen by Roscoe, his wife, his mother-in-law, and the jealous boyfriend at the movie theater the next day! Another film that had been presumed lost, A Reckless Romeo was recovered by the Norsk Filminstitutt in the late 1990s.
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 The Milestone Collection
2003 DVD edition
The Cook and Other Treasures (1917-1920), color-tinted black & white and black & white, 70 minutes total, not rated, including A Reckless Romeo (1917), color-tinted black & white, 23 minutes, not rated.
Milestone Film & Video, distributed by Image Entertainment,
ID1035MLSDVD, UPC 0-14381-10352-6.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 1 NTSC DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 5.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $24.99.
Release date: 11 February 2003.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 6 / audio: 8 / additional content: 8 / overall: 7.
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While Buster Keaton does not appear in A Reckless Romeo, this volume of two short Roscoe Arbuckle films, offered with a Harold Lloyd short, makes a good companion volume to Kino International’s Arbuckle & Keaton collections. Here are further examples of Arbuckle’s talent as a film comedian.
The presentation of A Reckless Romeo sources from the sole known surviving print held by the Norsk Filminstitutt, a very-good 35mm positive that is moderately speckled and dusty, lightly scratched, and moderately but consistently scuffed, with a persistent and sometimes distracting case of frame jitters early in the film. The tonal range of this color-toned presentation is generally a smidge less than excellent, as is the image detail.
The films are accompanied by music scores composed and performed on piano by Philip Carli, one of the best of the current practitioners of silent film accompaniment. The stereo recording is well reproduced here.
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USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued
and is . . .
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 The Milestone Cinematheque
2012 DVD edition
The Cook and Other Treasures (1917-1920), color-tinted black & white and black & white, 70 minutes total, not rated, including A Reckless Romeo (1917), black & white, 23 minutes, not rated.
Milestone Films, Mile0087,
UPC 7-84148-00874-5, ISBN 978-1-933920-41-2.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to ? fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at ? Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $24.95.
Release date: 12 June 2012.
Country of origin: USA
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The DVD edition noted above has been rereleased in new packaging and distributed directly through Milestone Films.
You can expect the same quality from this edition as from the edition reviewed above.
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This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available from
MILESTONE FILMS through . . .
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Other silent era ROSCOE ARBUCKLE films available on home video.
Other SHORT COMEDY FILMS of the silent era available on home video.
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Roscoe Arbuckle filmography in The Progressive Silent Film List
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