Treasures from American Film Archives

Imagine tossing together a random sampling of obscure novels, short stories, magazine articles, and excerpts, slapping the label "treasures" on the whole shebang, and then asking people to pony up a C-note for the lot. While I have nothing but the highest admiration for the folks who toil in the meticulous and largely unsung art of film restoration and preservation, Treasures from American Film Archives is a maddeningly serendipitous collection of 50 works (from mere snippets to hour-plus--and often dull--early feature films), ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, spread across 4 DVDs in no discernible order whatsoever. Included among the 11 hours worth of work compiled here are: the (technically) interesting 1922 film The Toll of the Sea (the first Technicolor effort, albeit 2-color), the preternaturally stylish 1928 short The Fall of the House of Usher, and the impressive, special effects laden 1909 short Princess Nicotine. On the other hand, the excerpts from the 1930 Rural Life in Maine are exactly as exciting as the title, the pulsing psychedelic images of 1968's OffOn are pretty monotonous sans chemical substances, and Interior: New York Subway (1905) offers little historical value since almost the entire 5 minute short looks ahead into the tunnel. Finally, some of these "treasures" are already readily available in other programs where they make much more sense (such as The Autobiography of a Jeep (1943) in Uncle Sam: The Movie Collection, Vol. 2 [see VL Online]), or are included here as excerpts when the full original can be easily found (the 1939 classic Tevye, for instance). Likely to be of little interest to general audiences and of questionable usefulness for reference collections, this is only recommended for exhaustive cinema collections. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)