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

Zaza (1923)

Gloria Swanson stars as the lead character from the famed French play by Pierre François Samuel Berton and Charles Simon. Directed by Allan Dwan, the film features support from H.B. Warner, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Lucille La Verne, Mary Thurman and Ivan Linow.

This Blu-ray Disc edition, produced for home video by Robert Sweeney and Bret Wood, has been mastered from a good to very-good 35mm print with a moderate patina of print wear, speckling and the occasional scratch. Unfortunately, the dupey print quality is no better than a very-good 16mm reduction print. While no digital image stabilization appears to have been performed, the picture is relatively stable with little movement within the frame. The high-definition video transfer produces a fairly filmlike picture, with more emphasis on reproducing the look of a film print than on getting a sharper image with a swarm of contrasty pixels (the result of over-sharpened film grain) — as in many early HD transfers of silent films — that emphasize a false sharpness over a more organic look. We laud this approach to reproducing a black & white HD image and the scanning system it was performed on.

The film is accompanied by an entertaining piano music score by Jeff Rapsis.

The supplementary material includes audio commentary by author Frederic Lombardi; and a 12-page insert booklet with promotional materials and an essay by Imogen Sara Smith.

Of course, we recommend this Blu-ray Disc as the best available home video edition of the film.

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