Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: DVD EAN: 9786305302223 Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Silent, NTSC ISBN: 6305302227 Label: Image Entertainment Manufacturer: Image Entertainment Number Of Items: 1 Picture Format: Academy Ratio Publisher: Image Entertainment Release Date: March 23, 1999 Running Time: 94 minutes Sales Rank: 62368 Studio: Image Entertainment Theatrical Release Date: December 31, 1921
Description: Tol'able David is a magnificent film, carefully transferred from the best available elements, and starring the great Richard Barthelmess (Broken Blossoms) in the title role. This silent classic chronicles David's passage into adulthood as he confronts three crooks looking for trouble. A delightful gem from film's early years.
Digital Life Reviews
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Charming story in spite of some flaws
This 1921 coming-of-age melodrama is set in a provincial small town in West Virginia, home of the Kinemons and the neighboring family the Hatburns. The hero of the story, David Kinemon (Richard Barthelmess), knows he's no longer a little boy, yet no one around him, not even his love interest, Esther Hatburn, seems to understand that. No matter what he says or does to try to prove that he's becoming a man, growing up, becoming more mature, they still think of him and treat him as a kid. Even when his older brother Allen's wife Rose gives birth to a son, making David no longer the family baby, his mother still insists that he'll always be her baby. His one big ambition, to drive the mail wagon, is continually denied because his father and brother don't think he's old or responsible enough yet to do it.
Trouble invades this small farming town when some cousins of Grandfather Hatburn show up and make ... Read More
Rating: - So-so undistinguished silent film
This film is a lukewarm piece of americana. It is meant as a hymn to a bygone pastoral era but seems contrived and manipulative to me. The directing is competent, the acting fair. Nothing stands out here but the scenery. The laughably speedy manner in which members of David's family are crippled, his dog shot, his father dies of a heart attack (all in one afternoon) is a bit over the top. It is only mildly pleasant, nothing more. Not a terrible film but not that important or indispensable either.
Rating: - Great! Much More Than 'Tolerable'!
Watching this film is an amazing experience -- something like a great mixture of looking through the personal scrapbook of someone from a bygone era, hearing a wonderful legend retold, and feeling your own visceral emotions fired with electricity.
In making the film, the characterizations and plot were designed in such a way that they are familiar but also unique. The story defies some of what have come to be conventions (stereotypes) for supporting roles. And, it betrays what have always been simpler expectations for a story with a happy ending. While there is sorrow and loss in modern film and earlier film, here they are portrayed without the often contingent silver-linings. Bad things happen in this film...and we are not given the immediate sense that all will be right in the end.
The title role is filled admirably by Richard Barthelmess. He did fine work here -- no wonder it led to his ... Read More
Rating: - A Silent David and Goliath
Tol'able David is one of the finest silent films which I have seen. It seems more realistic than many silents. This is partly because of the location shooting, partly because the story is neither overly melodramatic nor comic. Barthelmess as the David character gives a wonderful performance while Torrance as the Goliath character is only just a little over the top in his villainy. He was perhaps more suited to the comic monster type of his later Captain Hook. The real revelation though, is Hulette. She is almost completely forgotten now, but clearly had great talent. Her performance is realistic and charming. She is quite simply adorable. The print on this DVD has been formed from separate sources. Thus it looks slightly different from scene to scene. There is some damage, but it rarely detracts. It is however, slightly distracting to see variations in the tinting. It is inconsistent to have one green scene when the ... Read More
Digital
Life Shop
Henry King items subject to availability. Some restrictions
may apply. DVD
Tol'able David presented by digi2005.com Digi2005.com is
an Amazon.com
Associate
Digital Life Music News:
Job security not an issue for Jets' Mangini (Baltimore Examiner)
By DENNIS WASZAK Jr. Dec 26, 2008 AP Sports Writer | 12/26/08 5:35 PM In this Dec. 7, 2008 file photo, New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini paces the sidelines against the San Francisco 49ers during the second half on an NFL football game in San Francisco.
more News
- Charming story in spite of some flaws
- So-so undistinguished silent film
- Great! Much More Than 'Tolerable'!
