CLICK to order from:

Sony Pictures / TCM

Region 1 - NTSC

1.33:1 Original Aspect Ratio
Average Bitrate: 4.29 mb/s
NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen - 1.33:1

Edition Details:
• Robert Osborne Introduction (2:43)
• Galleries (stills, posters, lobby cards)
• TCMDb Article

DVD Release Date: July 2nd, 2012
5 discs in a digipack

Chapters 9

Pre-codes make a great marketing tool to release a number of late 1920's - early 1930's titles released to theaters before July 1, 1934 when the Motion Picture Production Code being enforced by censors. Universal has already released a collection of Pre-Codes (HERE), but Warner is a leader with more titles to choose from - there are a number if Forbidden Hollywood Collections (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) with two more collections being released in July, 2012 (Volume 4, Volume 5).

The Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection is released by Sony Pictures through Turner Classic Movies and being sold exclusively at Movies Unlimited and TCM Shop. There are a number of big stars in this collection - Barbara Stanwyck, John Wayne, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard. Each film is presented on its own single-layered progressive disc in a fold-out digipack. As usual for these TCM releases, the packaging is not perfect and sometimes it's a challenge to get a disc out of its gate. The last 2 minutes of Ten Cents a Dance is overly soft (see last capture), but overall all prints utilized for these transfers are in good shape and have a good contrast, with a number of scratches and lines on the prints. The first scene of Virtue was removed due to censorship, but audio still exists for it, so it's presented over a black screen. Each film features a number of stills, posters, lobby cards as an extra and the first disc starts with a Robert Osborne Introduction to the collection. An excellent collection that we can recommend.

  - Gregory Meshman