The 1927 version is presented here in an excellent transfer despite some fairly significant damage to the original elements. Black and White scenes show some amazing fine detail. On occasion whites look a little blown out, but for the most part contrast is as perfect as a film of this age is going to look. Colour scenes are heavily damaged and exhibit some major flicker. These portions within the 1927 version still have much better colour/contrast than the 1928 version. The score sounds very good with a wide range of fidelity (it should as it is a brand new recording). It is presented as a Dolby Digital 2.0 track, not a DD 5.1 mix as stated on the Criterion website. Extras on disc one are very informative, but are mostly text and image based, except for the trailers.

The 1928 version is of much lower quality and represents a different film experience altogether.

Some scenes in the 1927 that are colour are presented in B&W in the 1928. Quite a few scenes do not share the same frames, making matching screen capture nearly impossible. The B&W scenes in the later version sometimes look sharper and more detailed than their 1927 colour counterpart. The original 1928 Riesenfeld score sounds thin and has some hiss while being fairly limited in range. It is presented in Dolby Digital 1.0 and compliments the film nicely. The alternate 2004 pipe organ score (DD 2.0 not 5.1) sounds very clean but I still preferred the original mono score for this version of the film.

Extras on disc two include 13:30 min of behind the scenes silent footage, stills and more image/text based extras including costume sketches and portrait stills.

Overall this set is very highly recommended and to have the longer 1927 version of the film in such a high quality transfer represents a real revelation for fans of this or any silent film.out of