Like The Valley of Silent Men on the first disc of the set, Back Pay (1922) looks like an as-is presentation. Natural grain, no obvious restoration processing, nice encoding. It looks wonderful.
Back Pay is transferred at 21fps and encoded at 24fps. Too stuttery, but as good as it’s gonna get in our 24fps-or-nothing world.
Flicker Alley’s presentation of Mother (1926) is a bit of a throwback to when silents were released on home video with whatever print the distributor happened to own. Nowadays, with so many movies getting processed to death, it’s jarring to see a major silent presented as-is from a well-worn print. Still, the transfer is nice. Natural grain, no major compression issues, and most importantly, no restoration artifacts.
As you can see, it’s rough, but it’s nicely encoded. I suppose it could be processed with new grading and stabilization, but it’s so easy to be heavy-handed, that I think I’d prefer this. Besides, it’s clearly not first-generation material, so what’s the point?
The End of St. Petersburg (1927), also well-worn, derives from Mosfilm’s 1969 restoration. It runs at a variable frame rate, primarily 24fps (most of the time) and 18fps, step-printed in 1969. I wonder about the accuracy of this. 18fps makes sense for slower scenes in the first half, but the dips in speed are drastic and inconsistently applied as the action and editing get faster in the climax.
FA’s transfer has further stretching that results in random single frames being duplicated, mostly in the second half. Many of these are easy to miss amid the frantic action. However, it’s another nice encode.
When Mosfilm step-printed in 1969, they introduced a lot of debris. You can see this when frames get repeated; you end up with the same image getting completely different layers of dirt and different exposures. They also introduced gate weaving and occasional out-of-focus frames (at splices). By undoing their step-printing, we can get non-destructive repair:
The difference is slight, but the right side is a little cleaner and gate weave is more natural and less…slippery. It may not be noticeable in this short clip, but over the course of the movie, and on a big screen, the 1969 step-printing defects are visible.
I am very curious what original material actually exists and its condition. Alas, Ukraine. Oh, well…
Mother is transferred at 20fps and encoded at 24fps. The End of St. Petersburg is transferred with a variable frame rate, 8-24fps, and encoded at 24fps.
A bare-bones transfer that presents the film as-is. The light scratches and unsteadiness don’t detract at all. It’s old. It’s made by hand. It doesn’t need to look “pristine.”
Take a look at the grain. Looks natural and the video compression doesn’t screw it up: