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

The Ancient Law [Das alte Gesetz] (1923)

This German drama, directed by E.A. Dupont, stars Henny Porten and Ernst Deutsch, with Ruth Weyher, Hermann Vallentin, Avrom Morewski, Grete Berger, Robert Garrison, Kálmán Zátony and Werner Krauss.

This dual-format edition has been mastered from the 2017 3K restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek utilizing a number of archival print materials, including Swedish, French, Russian, American and Italian export prints. The original German intertitles and running order have been restored from German cernsorship records, and the color-tinting follows surviving examples in the Swedish and American prints.

The film is accompanied by two music scores: a score composed by Donald Sosin and performed on piano and violin by Sosin and Alicia Svigals, and an orchestral score composed by Philippe Schoeller. Both accompaniments are excellent.

The DVD edition has, of course, been prepared from the same digital restoration as the Blu-ray Disc.

Supplementary materials include the surviving excerpt of Der Film im Film (1923), a contemporary German documentary on film production in Weimar Germany, featuring the different personalities of several famous directors of the era at work on the set including Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene and E.A. Dupont; “Insights into the Restoration,” a 15-minute demonstration with raw scans of the different nitrate source materials of Das alte Gesetz, illustrating how the reconstruction was completed; a stills gallery of rare production stills and original archival materials; introductions to the two new musical scores commissioned for the restored film; a 20-page insert booklet featuring two essays on The Ancient Law, an appreciation of the film and its historical context written by film historian and scholar Cynthia Walk, and an overview of the restoration process by Daniel Meiller, Head of Audiovisual Collections, Deutsche Kinemathek.

This is our recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc / Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com.
This Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc / Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is also available directly from . . .

The film is likely to be accompanied by these two optional music scores: an orchestral score composed by Philippe Schoeller, and a score composed by Donald Sosin and performed on piano and violin by Sosin and Alicia Svigals.

Supplementary material includes two optional music scores; a restoration demonstration; the surviving excerpt of Der Film im Film (1923), a contemporary German documentary on film production in Weimar Germany; an insert booklet; and a data PDF with documents.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Germany: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.de. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Other GERMAN FILMS on the silent era available on home video.