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Title: Don't Buy the Grapevine DVD
Review: The five-star review here must be for the Warner Brothers Archive Collection DVD of "The Prisoner of Zenda." If it were for the Grapevine Video release, I'm sure it would have mentioned the abysmal quality of the DVD. Grapevine's transfer to DVD was made from an extremely bad print of the film, with absolutely no attempt at restoration. Many of the title cards are so dark as to be unreadable; surely it would have been a simple matter to create new title cards for this release--unless the Grapevine people couldn't read them either. The contrast in one section of the film is so high that characters and objects are reduced to featureless blobs on the screen.I agree completely with the other reviewer's comments on the acting and the cinematic qualities of the 1922 film. I'll be returning the Grapvine DVD, and I'm willing to try the Warner Brothers release, but in the meantime I'll stick with the 1937 Ronald Coleman version.
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