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

Au secours! (1924)

This late comedy starring Max Linder, directed by Abel Gance, was his final completed film. Max takes up a bet that he can stay in a haunted castle for an hour.

This DVD edition has been mastered from a good to very-good 16mm source print prepared by The Images Film Archive in 1979. The resulting picture is a little flat, with a bit more than the usual amount of dust, speckling, print damage and fingerprints.

The film is presented without any musical accompaniment. The audio tracks are encoded into the disc but there is no music.

The appearance of the first of Abel Gance’s films on DVD home video is quite welcome, and surprisingly beats a DVD edition of Napoléon (1927) to market. (Let us hope also that a DVD of the Francis Ford Coppola produced edition is neglected in favor of Kevin Brownlow’s recent restoration of that Gance epic.) We are certain that this DVD will aid viewers in a reassessment of Gance’s cinematic career.

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Other silent era ABEL GANCE films available on home video.

Other FRENCH FILMS of the silent era available on home video.