The House That Shadows Built (1931)
Documentary • 47m
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx, Ben Taggart, Charles Ray, Sarah Bernhardt, Lon Chaney, Miriam Hopkins, Sylvia Sidney, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Ruth Chatterton, Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, Betty Compson, Robert Coogan, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Phillips Holmes, Harold Lloyd, Herbert Marshall, Mary Pickford, Wallace Reid, Charles Ruggles, Lilyan Tashman
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 1 year ago
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slow.pics (opens in a new tab)Overview
The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.
Director: D.W. Griffith
Sources: filmpreservationsociety.org (opens in a new tab)
4K scan of 35mm https://www.filmpreservationsociety.org/inventory/kid-boots-bluray-2025
Director: D.W. Griffith
Film Preservation Society Blu-ray Douglas Fairbanks Lost Films Double Feature as extras
Director: D.W. Griffith
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Unfortunately looks like got an AI upscale pass with the focus being all over the places see https://slow.pics/c/CN22JOv0
Director: Fred Niblo
Sources: hometheaterforum.com (opens in a new tab) · YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Film Preservation Society Blu-ray is a newer restoration than the previous Cohen one. From various review like Robert Harris and Damn Fool Crusade this new restoration is really good.
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Director: Steve James
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has excellent master in SDR and a good encode. BD caps here.
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor audio: The 2.0 is fine but unremarkable, the 5.1 is presumably an upmix with a botched, strongly raised LFE channel which makes the entire track unlistenable on well-tuned equipment. Audio graphs here.
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
While it's included on both Criterion The Palm Beach Story extras and Arrow's Sullivan's Travels' extras, Criterion uses a different source and is vastly superior, see caps
Director: Ebrahim Golestan
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