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

His New Profession (1914)

This Keystone comedy stars Charles Chaplin, with Jess Dandy, Charley Chase, Cecile Arnold, Harry McCoy and Roscoe Arbuckle in support.

This four-disc DVD collection has, for the most part, been mastered from 35mm source material to render the best-looking editions of these Keystone films on home video. The prints are often conflated from two or more 35mm prints, with missing footage duplicated from 16mm reduction prints. The results are generally very-good to excellent, with moments of fair to good footage. Many of the 35mm source prints are worn, but the picture clarity allows the identification of supporting actors and extras much easier than from earlier home video editions from substandard 16mm and 8mm reduction prints.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Antonio Coppola.

The collection’s supplemental material includes Charlie et sa Belle [Charlie’s White Elephant] (1916), Inside the Keystone Project (2010) documenting the Chaplin Project (10 minutes), Silent Traces: The Keystone Locations (2010) with John Bengtson, author of Silent Traces (12 minutes), and a stills gallery.

Overall, the improvement in quality over previous home video editions is so great that you’ll toss your other Keystone Chaplin discs when you see this collection. Highly recommended!

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is also available directly from . . .

This low-budget DVD edition has been mastered from a good 16mm reduction print of the 1918 rerelease version of the film, which had been reedited with new intertitles and released with a new film title. The source print is quite cropped in its top and left sides. On most monitors, standard or HD, heads will be cut off and players cut in half by the errant cropping.

Far from ideal, with so many budget video producers releasing the film in cheap DVD sets, it is unlikely that that edition will be better to worse than any other until a quality edition is produced.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

No doubt, just as rough.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Have they no shame in their repackaging attempts to deceive the consumer?

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other KEYSTONE comedy films available on home video.