Pre-Order Our Dancing Daughters (1928) (Warner Archive Collection) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

I've still got the laser disc release of this film (which is pretty poor quality). I've already ordered my copy and am hoping for a much better print. Great movie!

WAC wouldn't release it unless a new scan was used for the best video presentation possible.

 

[Patrick McCart]

As it's quite obscure I'll add my recommendation for a terrific lively entertainment with marvellous performances from Joan Crawford and Anita was a new experience to see a picture from the silent/sound transition, although Photoplay presented THE IRON MASK with it's sound prelude some years ago. In order to avoid cropping the full frame picture to add the soundtrack from original discs, with generous help from Dolby Laboratories it was added using Dolby Digital, (along the sprockets) and that has to be a record for the earliest film to use digital sound.

The 35mm print of Safety Last! I saw in the mid-2000s originating from the then-new UCLA restoration was printed full aperture with Carl Davis' orchestral score encoded on the Dolby Digital track.

Preordering this disc along with a few others in this wave. Looking forward to this!

 

[Malcolm Bmoor]

Let's hear it for pedantry.....

Without looking up dates I'm sure that IRON MASK had the digital track first as it was my idea to suggest a method of preserving full frame that Kevin Brownlow hadn't thought of.

Sorry if research proves me wrong as it's not important, except this modern trick avoids all that frame cut off for which there was no alternative pre-Dolby Digital.

Here's another scrap of trivia: At least one of the annual C4 sponsored restorations/presentations was shown at London's old Sadlers Wells theatre. When the replacement new theatre was being planned the management needed to build up its proposed uses so asked Photoplay to promise to use it. The theatre was therefore designed with a projection booth large enough to fit the variable speed projector required.

IRON MASK was to be the first film shown but the hire company found that whereas the booth was suitable the corridor leading to it wasn't so the projector couldn't be installed and IRON MASK was back projected from the back of the stage.