The Prisoner of Zenda

Don't Buy the Grapevine DVD
The five-star review here must be for the Warner Brothers Archive Collection DVD of "The Prisoner of Zenda." If it were for the Grapevine Video release, I'm sure it would have mentioned the abysmal quality of the DVD. Grapevine's transfer to DVD was made from an extremely bad print of the film, with absolutely no attempt at restoration. Many of the title cards are so dark as to be unreadable; surely it would have been a simple matter to create new title cards for this release--unless the Grapevine people couldn't read them either. The contrast in one section of the film is so high that characters and objects are reduced to featureless blobs on the screen.

I agree completely with the other reviewer's comments on the acting and the cinematic qualities of the 1922 film. I'll be returning the Grapvine DVD, and I'm willing to try the Warner Brothers release, but in the meantime I'll stick with the 1937 Ronald Coleman version.

Excellent Version of Oft-told Tale
The 1922 "Prisoner of Zenda" is surely one of the best silent films ever made. Its major actors knew better than to over-emote and it obviously had a very competent director in Rex Ingram. Even though the plot,costumes, and scenery are straight out of an operetta, the players mostly come off as natural, demonstrating that good acting was not something that somehow emerged with the advent of sound. Even Ramon Navarro as the villainous Rupert of Hentzau shows himself to be far more than just a pretty face as he turns his role into a droll, animated tour de force.

The picture begins in the manor house of Englishman Rudolph Rassendyll, the camera zeroing in on the extremely beautiful eyes of Lewis Stone, by now a 43-year-old stage veteran who, in most other respects, looks like a rather ordinary middle-aged man in trim physical condition. But, of course, there is nothing ordinary about Stone's histrionic talent and, besides, he has all the charm that made him so beloved as...

The Prisoner of Zenda
The item came on time and was packed in easey open container I would buy from this company again the DVD is without flaw

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