Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Seven Chances (1925)

One of his most-successful comedies, Seven Chances (1925) features Buster Keaton as Jimmie Shannon, a man who must be married in less than a day in order to inherit a large fortune (by seven o’clock on his 27th birthday, which is today). Unfortunately, his true love (Ruth Dwyer) and several other ‘first choices’ (the seven chances — in reality Hollywood starlets identified in the film by name) turn him down flatly. Seemingly hopeless, Buster’s misfortune gets worse as a newspaper story, placed by his well-meaning business partner (T. Roy Barnes), informs the public of his inheritance situation producing a flood of would-be brides that turn aggressive in their matrimonial competition.

Among the memorable gags is an extended sequence, created by accident, with Buster chased down a hillside by a number of small to enormous boulders. During a preview showing Buster noted that a gag sequence of him running away from the brides downhill was falling flat, until the audience saw him briefly running away from rolling rocks that he had accidently dislodged from the hillside. Director Buster went back into production, shooting an extension to the sequence with myriad prop boulders chasing him, and ultimately the brides, away.

The film’s story was the basis for the limp Chris O’Donnell and Renée Zellweger comedy, The Bachelor (1999).

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been transfered from high-quality 35mm nitrate print materials held by the Library of Congress, as licensed by the new owner of the Raymond Rohauer collection, Cohen Film Collection LLC.

The camera negatives for the opening Technicolor sequence have been lost, but it is presented here from the best available surviving 35mm print materials. The sequence has been digitally composited by Eric Grayson to render as clear and faithful a representation of the original color as is possible today. The remainder of the film is presented in a conservatively brown (rather than orange) sepia-toned picture (which will appear as slightly brownish to nearly black & white, depending on the color settings of your system) featuring of the high quality of image detail we had always hoped we could see from the surviving prints. The high-definition video transfer does still show much of the source print’s fine speckling, dust and other flaws — but, honestly, we don’t care. The results are stunning . . . especially when compared to the hard-to-find small company VHS videotape editions of just 20 years ago.

The film is accompanied by the same excellent music score by Robert Israel, performed on piano, woodwinds and strings (with an extended theater organ sequence), that accompanied Kino’s previous DVD edition from 2000 and their 1990s home video editions issued on laserdisc and VHS videotape. The score still sounds great after having been reprocessed for 5.1 surround sound, and we are happy that it is still associated with the best available home video editions of the film.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary by Bruce Lawton and Ken Gordon; an examination of the Technicolor sequence in Seven Chances by Eric Grayson (6 minutes); an amazing video essay on Keaton locations by John Bengtson (10 minutes); a production photo gallery (16 images); the Edison short How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904) (10 minutes); and a complete presentation of the Three Stooges in Brideless Groom (1947) (17 minutes).

The Grayson Technicolor supplement is intriguing as it gives us a simultaneous look at the Library of Congress black & white preservation print, a new HD transfer of the nitrate Technicolor print (now faded almost completely to orange-red) held by the Library of Congress, a baselight color-corrected HD version and a digitally composited combination of the black & white print with color elements to achieve the closest approximation of original Technicolor release prints. The short supplemental section gives us an idea of what went into the more than 80 hours of digital work to achieve the high-definition Technicolor sequence presented in this edition.

This older Kino Blu-ray Disc edition, an improvement over the already high-quality video master produced by David Shepard in 1995, is still our enthusiastically recommended home video edition of this film. What a pleasure to watch!

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This Blu-ray Disc boxset includes the high-definition home video release of Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances.

This boxset edition of Seven Chances is identical to Kino’s single-disc Blu-ray Disc edition noted above.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a music score arranged and conducted by Robert Israel.

Supplementary material includes audio commentary on The Navigator by historians Robert Arkus and Yair Solan; audio commentary on Seven Chances by historians Joel Goss and Bruce Lawton; video essay on all three films by David Cairns; a featurette on the making of The Navigator and Keaton’s fascination with boats as sources of comedy by historian Bruce Lawton; audio interviews with Buster Keaton and Irwin Allen from 1945 (6 minutes), with Buster Keaton and Arthur Friedman from 1956 (32 minutes), with Buster Keaton and Robert Franklin from 1958 (56 minutes), with Buster Keaton and Herbert Feinstein from 1960 (48 minutes), and with Buster Keaton and Studs Terkel from 1960 (38 minutes): a Harry Sweet short comedy from 1926 (19 minutes); and a 60-page insert booklet with articles on the three films, historical writings, and photographs.

Sight unseen, this is our recommended European home video edition of the film. North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by the same excellent music score by Robert Israel, performed on piano, woodwinds and strings (with an extended theater organ sequence), that accompanies several other editions of the film.

Supplemental material includes the featurette “Buster Keaton: The Daredevil” (4 minutes, excerpted from the 2018 documentary The Great Buster: A Celebration); and two modern Cohen trailers for the restorations of these two films.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition is also available directly from COHEN MEDIA GROUP through . . .

The film is accompanied by a music score arranged and conducted by Robert Israel. We are happy with the repeat here of this excellent score.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary for Seven Chances by film critic Adam Nayman; audio commentary for Sherlock Jr. by film critic Matt Singer; a Three Stooges short A Brideless Groom (1947) that recycles the premise of Seven Chances (17 minutes); and Edison short How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904) directed by Edwin S. Porter (10 minutes).

Completists! We note that this is the only home video edition we are aware of to include the alternate black & white introduction footage of Buster, Ruth and her dog.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is also available directly from . . .

The camera negatives for the opening Technicolor sequence have been lost, but it is presented here from the best available surviving 35mm print materials. The sequence has been digitally composited to render as clear and faithful a representation of the original color as is possible today. The remainder of the film is presented in a conservatively brown (rather than orange) sepia-toned picture (which will appear as slightly brownish to nearly black & white, depending on the color settings of your system) featuring of the high quality of image detail we had always hoped we could see from the surviving prints. The high-definition video transfer does still show much of the source print’s fine speckling, dust and other flaws — but, honestly, we don’t care. The results are stunning . . . especially when compared to the hard-to-find small company VHS videotape editions of just 20 years ago.

The film is accompanied by the same excellent music score by Robert Israel, performed on piano, woodwinds and strings (with an extended theater organ sequence), that accompanied Kino’s previous DVD edition from 2000 and their 1990s home video editions issued on laserdisc and VHS videotape. The score still sounds great and we are happy that it is still associated with the best available home video editions of the film.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary by Bruce Lawton and Ken Gordon; an examination of the Technicolor sequence in Seven Chances by Eric Grayson (6 minutes); an amazing video essay on Keaton locations by John Bengtson (10 minutes); a production photo gallery (16 images); the Edison short How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904) (10 minutes); and a complete presentation of the Three Stooges in Brideless Groom (1947) (17 minutes).

The Grayson Technicolor supplement is intriguing as it gives us a simultaneous look at the Library of Congress black & white preservation print, a new HD transfer of the nitrate Technicolor print (now faded almost completely to orange-red) held by the Library of Congress, a baselight color-corrected HD version and a digitally composited combination of the black & white print with color elements to achieve the closest approximation of original Technicolor release prints. The short supplemental section gives us an idea of what went into the more than 80 hours of digital work to achieve the high-definition Technicolor sequence presented in this edition.

We recommend this as the best-looking DVD home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition, produced by David Shepard, has been transferred from excellent 35mm material, which appears to be an original nitrate positive, and the older windowboxed video transfer (originally intended for laserdisc and VHS videotape releases) still looks good on a high-definition monitor played from a deck capable of line-doubling up to 1080p. A few textures in the picture show signs of color prisming, creating a rainbow pattern of red, green and/or blue, that are a sure sign of older NTSC video transfer equipment. The broad tonal ranges in the source material is well reproduced in the video content. The film opens with a two-color Technicolor sequence that is a bit faded from its original color balance due to the age of the source material. Still, we savor each moment of surviving Technicolor footage from the silent era and are happy with its inclusion in this edition.

The film is presented with a music score arranged and conducted by Robert Israel, a small ensemble performance of strings, horns, piano and percussion, with an extended theater organ sequence. As always, the music is excellent and adds immeasurably to the viewing experience, but the organ music gives the impression of having been spliced in from another source.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

Other TECHNICOLOR FILMS of the silent era available on home video.