Recommended Public Domain DVDs

[Gregory]

This topic has been explored a bit in the threads for Alpha and VCI, but I know there must be more films out there that I should see that are only available in cheap PD releases. Many of these are sort of hard to shop for because they're distributed somewhat differently, and I often don't even think to seek them out. Some of these I've gotten from the library, the most recent one for example being Hitchcock's Easy Virtue, which was one of the last two of his films I'd yet to see. If the film is good enough, I'm willing to buy these things even if picture quality is bad. The last one I actually purchased was Stevens's Penny Serenade, which I found quite interesting. I'd long thought about buying Beat the Devil but then saw the film on an airline flight, diminishing the need to get a crappy-looking DVD of it. One Eyed Jacks is another one I've been meaning to get for a long time.
I'm interested in what PD films others recommend, aside from Alpha and VCI releases for the most part, which I've already explored pretty well.

[fiddlesticks]

You saw Beat the Devil on an airline flight?

Anyway, have you looked through the Vintage Film Buff catalog? They sell DVD-Rs of PD films for $20 a pop ("List Price $24.90, Our Price $19.90, You Save $5.00!"), which is pretty steep, although they're having a 20% off sale through the end of the month. There's even a thread about this label here.

[Scharphedin2]

Excellet thread, Gregory, it could turn out to be extremely useful.

Televista is a label that I just recently became aware of. I am not even sure that they have a website, and I do not know how many releases they have to their credit. However, I saw captures from their release of Lubitsch's Carmen, and based on these stills, it would seem that their release is at least a class or two better than the existing releases from Sunrise and Grapevine. The film itself is really good, with a very enticing performance by Pola Negri. Here is the Amazon link to the disc. I would be very interested in hearing other forum members comment on this label.

Then there is Vintage Filmbuff, which already has a thread of its own, and I have only very recently begun to explore their very extensive catalogue. However, it is clear that the quality of the discs is consistently very good, considering that all their releases are sourced from 16mm prints. Take a thrawl through their website, and you will find dozens and dozens of primarily '30s American cinema; many pre-codes, and quite a few very notable films with major stars and directors attached.
My first purchase from the label was a six film set of films starring Anna May Wong, and it was generally such high quality that I have been back for more several times since, and I have far from exhausted their list of interesting titles (somewhere around 300 all told, with a handful of new ones added each month).

Mainly of interest to the silent film fans (and I am not sure that these really quailfy as pd companies) are Grapevine, Sunrise, Unknown Video, ReelClassicDVD and Looser Than Loose. All of these have of course been discussed to greater or lesser extent in separate threads.

Passport's 5DVD collection of Cecil B. DeMille's early films is definitely also worth a look. 16 films for something like $20. I have only so far viewed the first two discs in the set, but the four films on disc one from 1915 and 1916 look great. Joan the Woman on disc two suffered from over-compression in certain scenes, but was otherwise also very decent. I have always given Passport a wide berth, but this release made me wonder, if other of their mammoth sets are worth picking up... any comments?

[Antoine Doinel]

Great Guy is a pretty decent Cagney pic where he rails against bureaucratic corruption. There are plenty of public domain DVDs floating around or you can watch it at the Internet Archive (which has a good amount of PD stuff) here.

[Gregory]

I would be very interested in hearing other forum members comment on [Televista]... Passport

Me too. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for at present. I'd love to explore things like Vintage Film Buff et al but funds are tight and I probably shouldn't be buying anything for the next month or two. So I'm especially interested in looking for good PD films that sell for around $8-$9, or less. Gypsy Blood a.k.a. Carmen looks great, so I've earmarked that one -- thank you. I see it's 18 bucks at Amazon, but I hope I'll eventually be able to come across it more cheaply.

You saw Beat the Devil on an airline flight?

Yeah, I thought that might sound a little unbelievable. It was an Air Canada flight, where you can pick from a huge number of movies to watch on the seat-back displays. I also saw Minnelli's Father's Little Dividend and about four or five mediocre-to-bad Canadian films!

Great Guy is a pretty decent Cagney pic where he rails against bureaucratic corruption. There are plenty of public domain DVDs floating around or you can watch it at the Internet Archive (which has a good amount of PD stuff) here.

Unfortunately, it looks like the PD releases are about 10 minutes short of the original runtime. I don't expect this film to get a restoration, of course, but it is a problem when something is presented in incomplete form. Internet Archive indeed looks like a good way to go.

[dx23]

Televista is a company that produces bootlegs. They have run by other names, but i remember they releasing a White Dog DVD several months before Criterion announced they were releasing theirs. Televista simply releases things they have no rights to, so you can imagine the quality of their products.