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

Sunnyside (1919)

This short film from Charles Chaplin’s First National years, Sunnyside (1919), is an idyllic country comedy.

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 . . .

This budget DVD compilation follows the suit of other Brentwood big box releases: put as many films onto five or six discs as possible, irregardless of print quality and sell them as cheap as possible. With so many quality versions of the later Chaplin films available, the chief attraction of this collection will be the presence of the 1914 Keystone films. But don’t expect them to be mastered from anything but 16mm reduction prints.

The documentary The Chaplin Puzzle, written by Joe Adamson, features narration by Burgess Meredith.

Don’t consider buying this collection for the later Chaplin films. The Essanay, Mutual and First National films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints (see below). The main attraction of this set is the fairly complete collection of the Keystone films (nine of the 35 films are not in the collection — one, Her Friend the Bandit [1914], is presumed lost).

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 . . .

This budget DVD compilation follows the suit of other Chaplin collections: put as few films onto as many discs as possible, regardless of print quality, and sell them as cheap as possible. And don’t expect them to be mastered from anything but subpar 16mm reduction prints. However, this edition's source prints are OK, but the analog video masters have a significant number of videotape glitches. As for the disc mastering, there are a large number of pulldown frames with overlapping picture information, which creates jerky movement in fast action.

Don’t consider buying this collection. The First National films have all been released on DVD home video and The Kid on Criterion Blu-ray Disc in far superior editions transferred from 35mm print material.

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.
DELTA ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .

This budget DVD compilation follows the suit of other big box Chaplin collections: put as many films onto as many discs as possible, irregardless of print quality and sell them as cheap as possible. With so many quality versions of the later Chaplin films available, the chief attraction of this collection will be the presence of the 1914 Keystone films. But don’t expect them to be mastered from anything but 16mm reduction prints.

This edition utilizes the same analog video transfer as other budget DVD home video editions, including those from Delta.

Don’t consider buying this collection for the later Chaplin films. The Essanay, Mutual and First National films have all been released on DVD home video in far superior editions transferred from 35mm prints (see below). The main attraction of this set is the fairly complete collection of the Keystone films (nine of the 35 films are not in the collection — one, Her Friend the Bandit [1914], is presumed lost).

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 SHORT COMEDY FILMS of the silent era available on home video.