From the beginning of the film you’ll be grateful for the new video transfer in this DVD edition, which corrects the severe overcropping of the main credits present in Kino’s earlier home video edition of Sadie Thompson released on laserdisc and videotape in 1990. The remainder of the new transfer seems to frame the image on a shot-by-shot basis since the DVD cropping appears to be much the same as the laserdisc at some times, at other times the difference of additional picture image is quite pronounced. The sides of several intertitles were clipped off by the laserdisc framing. The cropping of the new transfer is more open, but some inset shots of handwritten letters will still have the left and right edges of the lettering cropped off when viewed on some television monitors. We take the opportunity to again lobby for windowboxed framing of silent era films to the edges of most television’s overscan cropping to allow as much image to be seen as possible.
The preservation print utilized for the video transfer was a bit contrasty, being slightly blown-out in the highlights and slightly closed off in the shadow areas of the image. The new transfer holds highlight detail while opening up some of the shadow images that were lost on laserdisc. The soft focus and slightly sepia cast to the greytones of the laserdisc transfer have been corrected and improved in the DVD transfer, which features neutral greytones and sharper image detail. The transfer speed of the DVD is also very slightly slower than the laserdisc transfer making the pacing of the film’s action even more natural. The actual running time of the Kino International restoration, including introduction and end credits, is 93.5 minutes. An additional 3 minutes of exit music, running over a black screen, concludes the program.
An original music score was composed by Joseph Turrin for Kino’s 1987 restoration. That score, nearly all woodwinds and horns in its arrangement, was performed by a small orchestra and is flawlessly reproduced here in a Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack.
The DVD specific extra features are fronted by the amusing main menu screen. Four groupings of supplementary material begins with the section “Background Essays,” subtitled “The Many Faces of Sadie Thompson.” The section is divided into the following subsections that are presented in 56 screens of text and images. “The True Sadie” details author Somerset Maugham’s chance encounter with a prostitute that he saw on a South Seas cruise, who became the model for Sadie Thompson. “Sadie on Stage” covers the play adaptation of Maugham’s story and includes a reproduction of an original program for the production of Rain starring Jeanne Eagels (a very Sadie Thompsonish actress). “Big Screen Sadie” includes a brief bio of Gloria Swanson, a handful of Swanson and Raoul Walsh stills, production stills from the 1928 film, a sample page from Walsh’s scenario with handwritten notes, and a reproduction of an original herald for Sadie Thompson, with original print ads.
The next section is titled “Scene Comparisons” and is presented in two subgroupings entitled “Meet Sadie Thompson” and “Sadie’s Wrath Unleashed.” Both subsections feature text exerpts from Maugham’s original story and the play adaptation Rain by Colton and Randolph. Also featured are excerpts from the 1928 and 1932 films. The section “Sadie’s Wrath Unleashed” shows how Swanson’s enthusiastic, spitfire performance puts to shame the deliberately-paced 1932 talkie performance of Joan Crawford.
The section “The Lost Ending” features a text exerpt from Raoul Walsh’s scenario, and exerpts from the 1928 and 1932 film adaptations to give a sense of the different approaches to the film’s conclusion. And the section “Photo Gallery” features 50 still photographs from the film, which can be stepped through by DVD remote or viewed hands-free in an automated slide show format.
This new DVD edition of Sadie Thompson, ably produced by Bret Wood, is enough of an improvement in the video transfer alone to coax collectors to upgrade their copies from Kino’s previous edition. The inclusion of the supplemental material should be mere icing on the cake. We recommend this home video edition of Sadie Thompson.
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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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