Flicker Alley

[dwk]

If I'm correctly interpreting something, and it happens, it would definitely be a US release (I don't like being cryptic, but I don't want to burn a something that has been reliable.)

[Finch]

Flicker Alley are going to release The Garden of Eden on a Flicker Fusion BD.

Flicker Alley and San Francisco Film Preserve proudly announce the return of The Garden of Eden, director Lewis Milestone’s 1928 romantic comedy, joining the Flicker Fusion series in a new deluxe Blu-ray edition that showcases the new restoration alongside substantial newly produced bonus features.

Nearly a century after its big screen debut, director Lewis Milestone’s romantic comedy has been fully restored by the San Francisco Film Preserve, in collaboration with the George Eastman Museum, and the Library of Congress, and arrives with a brilliant new score composed and performed by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius.

Corinne Griffith, with her husband, Walter Morosco, producing, headlines as aspiring opera singer Toni LeBrun, who leaves her family’s humble bakery to follow fame and fortune in Budapest. Instead, however, she finds herself a cabaret chorus girl working for the delightfully menacing Madame Bauer (Maude George) and dodging advances from the likes of Baron Henri D‘Avril (Lowell Sherman). Soon, Toni is off to Monte Carlo with the cabaret’s seamstress, Rosa (Louise Dresser), and soon winds up in a complicated love triangle between charming suitor Richard Dupont (Charles Ray) and his determined uncle, Colonel Dupont (Edward Martindel).

Boasting gorgeous production design by William Cameron Menzies, The Garden of Eden was originally released with an early Technicolor dream sequence that, unfortunately, no longer exists in any form. This new release includes a reconstruction of that three-minute sequence utilizing rare still photographs. Viewers have two bonus feature options of watching the color reconstruction, with explanatory notes, on its own, or in a version with it re-inserted back into where it originally appeared in the film.

Bonus Materials Include:

Audio Commentary - Harlow Robinson, author of Lewis Milestone: Life and Films, offers an in-depth behind the scenes look at the production of The Garden of Eden and the incredible life of Milestone.

5.1 Surround & 2.0 Stereo DTS-HD Master Audio Options - On the new score composed and performed by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius

Restored Color Sequence - Comprised of rare still images, this dream sequence can be viewed on its own or placed within the larger feature via seamless branching.

Syncopating Sue (1926) - A restored fragment of director Richard Wallaces’ lost romantic comedy, starring Corinne Griffith. This new restoration arrives courtesy of the San Francisco Film Preserve, in collaboration with the National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute, Warsaw. Poland.

The Inimitable Corinne Griffith: The Orchid Lady of the Screen - A visual essay from historian David Pierce, narrated by Claire Lockhart, that explores the life of The Garden of Eden’s beguiling star.

Restoration Demo - A short look at the painstaking process of scanning and preserving the available elements, including two surviving 35mm nitrate reels.

Image Gallery - Featuring production stills and promotional material

Booklet Insert - Featuring a new essay by Harlow Robinson, exploring the making of The Garden of Eden

Optional Language Tracks - English language intertitles with optional subtitles on the main feature in Dutch, French, German, Irish, Italian, and Spanish

Optional Double-Sided Slipcover - Available either as a standard release or, exclusively from https://www.flickeralley.com/, special limited edition double-sided slipcover that showcases exclusive artwork

Blu-ray Authoring by David Mackenzie of Fidelity In Motion

All Region Encoding (A,B,C)

[Stefan Andersson]

Slightly Scarlet has been restored by the Film Noir Foundation. Showing in Palm Springs in May, as part of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival.

All according to info from Alan K. Rode here: https://variety.com/2026/film/news/noir ... 236697221/


A DCP of The Crowd, credited to Blackhawk Films, is showing at the 2026 San Francisco Silent Film Festival in May:

https://silentfilm.org/event/the-crowd/

[FrauBlucher]

Is the limited edition slipcover for He Who Gets Slapped worth the extra $5?

[Feego]

For me it was. It is a thing of beauty, and I’m saying that as someone who generally has no use for slipcovers.

[FrauBlucher]

I never keep them myself. I usually discard them. But this looks amazing and it’s so much better than the standard cover. So, you sold me

[hearthesilence]

The Garden of Eden

It's still impossible for me to read that title without mentally pronouncing it like the song.

[FrauBlucher]

How often does FA have a sale?

[swo17]

Maybe just for Black Friday?

[FrauBlucher]

Thanks swo17. That's what I thought too but wasn't sure. I'll probably pay their price for a couple of titles. I don't mind helping out a label like FA

[FrauBlucher]

I watched The King of Kings. Biblical films are not something I usually gravitate to. But I was curious about this and DeMille. I definitely enjoyed it. Not sure why there is a lack of respect for DeMille. I thought this was well done and kept me interested. I will say I'm surprised this was a Criterion film in the early days of CC.

I thought it looked tremendous. The 2 color technicolor sequences are beautiful. All the people involved in this restoration deserve lots of praise.

[Stefan Andersson]

Discussion about The Crowd, the score, the original cue sheet, the alternate endings and censorship, with input from Rodney Sauer:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38891

"New 4K Restoration by Blackhawk Films"
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php? ... r6seWC0JdP#

[FrauBlucher]

After watching THE KING OF KINGS, I just watched HE WHO GETS SLAPPED. Two blind buys. Totally scored on these. The latter was terrific. What a brilliant humanistic story symbolized by a ‘clown’. The human emotion that goes from zero to a hundred as fast as a humiliating slap for him takes us from witnessing the mortified to laughter which shows the cruelty in that. What a heart wrenching moment that gets played out over and over as some form of painfully wanting acceptance.

This has to be Chaney’s most heartfelt devastating roles, even more so than THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. It’s too bad he left us before sound films became the norm.

[Finch]

Flicker Alley and the University of Las Vegas, Nevada proudly announce Howard Hughes in Hollywood, the first volume of a planned two-volume series that spotlights, for the first time ever, early works by the mogul turned Hollywood hitmaker. This set includes Two Arabian Knights (1927), restored by the Academy Film Archive, and The Racket (1928), newly restored by Flicker Alley. Both include new bonus features and are available for the first time on home video in any format.

Just 20 years old when he arrived in Los Angeles, Hughes left a mark on the filmmaking industry through sheer determination. Although his two earliest forays into producing remain lost, his first two hits, Two Arabian Knights and The Racket survive, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Hart Wegner, founding faculty of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Film Studies program, who was instrumental in acquiring the extensive Howard Hughes motion picture papers and film materials for UNLV.

Based on a then-recent pulpy adventure serial, Two Arabian Knights was reimagined as a comedy of male bonding. With director Lewis Milestone at the helm and William Boyd and Louis Wolheim headlining as the title pair, the story follows two American soldiers, captured by German forces and sent to a prison camp, escaping to Arabia where they meet and compete for the affections of the lovely Mirza (Mary Astor), who has her own reasons for wanting to go on the run. Two Arabian Knights, which went on to win Best Directing (Comedy Picture) for Milestone at the first Academy Awards®, is presented in a stunning restoration by the Academy Film Archive and features a triumphant orchestral score performed by the Robert Israel Orchestra.

Hughes followed that hit with The Racket, a ripped-from-the-headlines proto-noir showcasing a new type of cinema gangster, Italian Americans, and the big city political corruption that empowered them. Thomas Meighan stars as James McQuigg, an honest cop trapped in a barrel of bad apples. He’s pitted against Louis Wolheim as Nick Scasi, modeled on famed Chicago gangster Al Capone. Lewis Milestone once again helms the directing, with veteran cinematographer Tony Guido photographing the action. With a nomination for Outstanding Picture at the very first Academy Awards® ceremony, and largely unseen for nearly a century The Racket offers a choice of two brilliant orchestral scores, one by Neil Brand and one by Robert Israel.

Additional materials have been made available by the Howard Hughes Motion Picture Records at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Generous underwriting has been provided by a grant from the Sunrise Foundation for Education & the Arts, with the Villa Aurora / Thomas Mann House, Inc. serving as an administrative partner.



BONUS MATERIALS INCLUDE:

Audio Commentaries - Historian Harlow Robinson, author of Lewis Milestone: Life and Films, discusses Two Arabian Knights while film critics Farran Smith Nehme and Glenn Kenny together discuss The Racket

Rare Outtakes from The Racket - 44 minutes of on set footage and various takes, filmed for The Racket, but later reused for Hughes’ Scarface (1932)

Howard Hughes in Hollywood (2026) - A look at Hughes’ arrival in Hollywood and his earliest efforts in the industry, scripted by film historian David Pierce and narrated by Flicker Alley’s Jeffery Masino

Howard Hughes and the First Academy Awards (2026) - Film historian Randy Haberkamp explores the origins of the Academy Awards and Hughes’ early wins as a producer

Hart Wegner Remembrance - A look at the UNLV Film Department’s founding faculty member Hart Wegner, late professor emeritus of German, Comparative Literature, and Film Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose work was instrumental in preserving Hughes’ legacy

Image Gallery - Featuring production stills, promotional material, and rare documents from UNLV’s Howard Hughes archives

Souvenir Booklet - Featuring a new essay by film historian Imogen Sara Smith, vintage reviews, conservation notes, and introductions on each score

Reversible Cover Artwork

Blu-ray Authoring by David Mackenzie of Fidelity in Motion

All Region Encoding (ABC)

Release Date: July 14, 2026

[What A Disgrace]

An essential looking little release, but I have to wonder what exactly a volume 2 could entail.

[domino harvey]

Two Arabian Knights (Lewis Milestone 1927) One of two films to win a Best Director Oscar without being nominated for Best Picture (though technically it was for "Best Comedy Direction"), this is a nicely paced buddy pic about two American GIs in WWI who make their way out of a German prison camp and into the arms of Arabs. This is a charming movie, with some nice chemistry between the two leads (their romantic rivalry seems like a placeholder for their own attraction, a la Wings) and a handful of decent laughs. Plus the recurring dick jokes in the film show the Academy wasn't always so highfalutin!

the Racket Borderline-incoherent prohibition gangster pic that finds Milestone oddly adrift-- the talkies he made immediately following this are all more cinematic and fluent in film language and function better as silent art than this actual silent film does. Why is this here [in Best Picture at the Oscars], I ask for the nth time about the nth film.