Actual Film Length

I'm presuming it's just the usual matter of what projection speed the silent movie was reproduced at. Even though a silent movie can look pretty much identical if projected, at time of copying, at slightly faster or slightly slower speed - often not enough speed difference for a casual viewer to readily notice (either can look entirely natural) - it can make a considerable difference in presentation length. This question arises frequently where variant copies of silent movies are concerned.

As a sentence in the Wikipedia feature article about silent movies states, "Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films."

The original film length is 2:16:30. There's another version at 1:39:00. It's more than likely the shorter version came out first after restoration, and subsequent editions followed when missing elements were found around 2001, I believe. Plus, a lot of the original negatives were mixed and missing title cards. I read some versions have added title cards to them not original to the film.

I believe Kino Entertainment has two versions out: a shorter version on their DVD release and a longer version on their Bluray but I'm not 100% positive of that, it's something I read awhile ago.

-Nam

I'm on the road less traveled...