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

Children of Divorce (1927)

This Frank Lloyd drama stars Clara Bow, Esther Ralston and Gary Cooper. Support is offered from Einar Hanson, Norman Trevor, Hedda Hopper and Edward Martindel.

Childhood friends Kitty (Bow) and Jean (Ralston) are in love with the same man (Cooper). What will prevail — love or friendship? Heartache and sacrifice ensues.

The Library of Congress acquired the original camera negative of the film in 1969. The negative was beginning to shows signs of decomposition and the archive produced fine-grain photo-chemical preservation duplicate materials at that time. In 2000, the Library undertook a photo-chemical restoration of the film as the camera negative decomposition had advanced and about one-fourth of the footage was unusable. With a conflation of the camera negative and the 35mm preservation materials the restoration was complete. A small amount of decomposition remains in the restoration from the state of the camera negative in the 1960s, hard printed into the 1969 preservation materials, as is seen in the insert shots of Clara writing a letter toward the end of the film.

— Carl Bennett

The film is accompanied by a music score compiled and arranged by Rodney Sauer and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Supplemental material is limited to a feature-length documentary on Clara Bow by Elaina Archer and Hugh Munro Neely.

Sight unseen, this is our recommended home video edition of the film.

This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc (BD-R) edition is available directly from FLICKER ALLEY through . . .

This dual-format Blu-ray Disc / DVD edition has been mastered in 4K high-resolution from the very-good to excellent 2000 restoration by the Library of Congress utilizing what remains of the original camera negative and preservation materials copied in 1969. The restoration source material does have light amounts of dust, speckling, scrapes, schmutz, and fine vertical scratches that remain present in the picture of this edition.

The film is accompanied by an entertaining music score compiled and arranged by Rodney Sauer and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Always a favorite.

The DVD (still frame above) fares nearly a well as the Blu-ray Disc in giving a very filmlike picture with only a slightly-perceptual loss of image sharpness.

Supplemental material is limited to a feature-length documentary on Clara Bow by Elaina Archer and Hugh Munro Neely; and a 12-page booklet that includes an excerpt from David Stenn’s Clara Bow biography, a note on the film’s restoration by Larry Smith of the Library of Congress, notes on the music score by Rodney Sauer, and notes on the making of the documentary by Hugh Munro Neely.

Given that this film has previously only been available in bootleg home video editions produced from substandard 16mm reduction prints, we enthusiastically recommend this high-quality Blu-ray Disc/DVD combo edition of this long-out-of-circulation Bow film. Unfortunately, this edition is now out-of-print but the film has been reissued on BD-R (noted above).

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc / Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Support Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray / Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Support Silent Era.
This Region A Blu-ray / Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other silent era GARY COOPER films available on home video.