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

Spite Marriage (1929)

Buster Keaton’s last silent film is a very good comedy, but shows emerging signs of studio meddling and the restriction of Keaton’s creative process. Tightly scripted and shrewdly planned to hold down production costs, Spite Marriage (1929) nonetheless still succeeds with modern audiences.

The film is accompanied by its original synchronized Movietone optical soundtrack.

The supplementary material contains an audio commentary on The Cameraman recorded in 2004 by Glenn Mitchell, author of A-Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion; Time Travelers, a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring interviews with John Bengtson and film historian Marc Wanamaker; Spite Marriage (1929), Buster Keaton’s next feature for MGM following The Cameraman, in a new 2K restoration, with a 2004 commentary by film historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance; So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM, a 2004 documentary by film historians Kevin Brownlow and Christopher Bird; The Motion Picture Camera (1979), a documentary by A.S.C. cinematographer and film preservationist Karl Malkames; an interview with James L. Neibaur, author of The Fall of Buster Keaton: His Films for MGM, Educational Pictures, and Columbia; plus a 40-page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Imogen Sara Smith. Mitchell’s commentary is entertaining but a little uninformed, as he makes a small number of unresearched and inaccurate statements regarding actors’ filmographies and the survival status of a couple of films. Mitchell also manages to mispronounce Marion Davies’ name more than once.

With the tremendous improvement in visual quality in this disc, we highly recommend this edition of The Cameraman as the best DVD available on home video.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is also available directly from . . .

The film is accompanied by its original synchronized Movietone optical soundtrack.

The supplementary material contains an audio commentary on The Cameraman recorded in 2004 by Glenn Mitchell, author of A-Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion; Time Travelers, a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring interviews with John Bengtson and film historian Marc Wanamaker; Spite Marriage (1929), Buster Keaton’s next feature for MGM following The Cameraman, in a new 2K restoration, with a 2004 commentary by film historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance; So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM, a 2004 documentary by film historians Kevin Brownlow and Christopher Bird; The Motion Picture Camera (1979), a documentary by A.S.C. cinematographer and film preservationist Karl Malkames; an interview with James L. Neibaur, author of The Fall of Buster Keaton: His Films for MGM, Educational Pictures, and Columbia; plus a 40-page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Imogen Sara Smith. Mitchell’s commentary is entertaining but a little uninformed, as he makes a small number of unresearched and inaccurate statements regarding actors’ filmographies and the survival status of a couple of films. Mitchell also manages to mispronounce Marion Davies’ name more than once.

With the tremendous improvement in visual quality in this disc, we highly recommend this edition of The Cameraman as the best DVD available on home video.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition is also available directly from . . .

This DVD edition has been mastered from 35mm source materials that range from very-good to excellent.

The film is presented with its original synchronized music score from 1929, well-reproduced in digital mono sound.

The collection’s supplementary material includes the modern documentary So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton at MGM by Kevin Brownlow. Also included is audio commentary by Glenn Mitchell, author of A-Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion on The Cameraman; commentary by John Bengston, author of Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton and Jeffrey Vance, author of Buster Keaton Remembered on Spite Marriage; and photo montages from the silent films.

The collection is recommended, even though it is out-of-print.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .