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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Kid’s Auto Race
(1914)
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Indicative of the occasional practices of the Keystone Film Company during the years of 1913-1914, when the film release schedule exceeded their production capabilities, quick little films were either purchased or produced on the fly to fill out the split-reel films in the Keystone schedule. Sometimes the Keystone staff took advantage of civic events to serve as a backdrop to these largely improvised films. Kid’s Auto Race (1914) is a prime example of such a film.
In his second film role, Charles Chaplin appears for the first time in his famous makeup and wardrobe improvising as a motion picture camera ‘lens louse’ against the backdrop of a boy’s soapbox car race competition. Henry Lehrman is the frustrated film director who tries to keep Charlie out of the camera frame.
— Carl Bennett
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 Flicker Alley
2010 DVD edition
Chaplin at Keystone (1914), black & white, 590 minutes total, not rated
including Kid’s Auto Race (1914), black & white, 7 minutes, not rated.
Flicker Alley, FA0018,
UPC 6-17311-67579-9, ISBN 1-893967-57-3.
Four single-sided, dual-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD discs, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops; four slimline DVD keepcases in cardboard slipcase; $79.95.
Release date: 26 October 2010.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 8 / audio: 8 / additional content: 8 / overall: 8. |
