Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Black Watch (1929)

This imperialist historical drama, directed by John Ford, stars Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy, with support from David Rollins, Cyril Chadwick, Lumsden Hare, Roy D’Arcy, David Percy, Mitchell Lewis, Claude King, Walter Long, David Torrence and Francis Ford. A moustached Randolph Scott appears as an extra and can be clearly seen but John Wayne can be difficult to identify.

This full-sound film displays a number of the shortcomings of early synchronized sound film production, including a slow, deliberate pacing to the delivery of dialogue and a number of incidental songs and music that hold the film’s action hostage that can make it tough going for modern audiences. The film could have been a full two reels shorter had they delivered dialogue at a natural pace and trimmed most of the bagpipes and sappy songs.

A 23-year-old Myrna Loy is exotically beautiful in this early starring role. Roy D’Arcy makes a gloriously smarmy smiling snake of a villain.

Ultimately, this shmaltzy and somewhat illogical film can be a drudge to watch due to its plodding pace and clunky dialogue (I don’t think that Indians actually say “thee” as much as they do here) but it is a must-see for John Ford fans.

— Carl Bennett

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good 35mm print, which has some dust, speckling, a few fine vertical scratches, some sprocket damage to the picture early in the film, and other print flaws. There is some picture bounciness that is likely due to mild print shrinkage. Sharp-eyed viewers will see compression artifacts in the complex image details of the picture. OK viewing but could be better.

The film is presented with its original synchronized soundtrack, which is a bit noisy (no surprise there).

In the absence of better, this is our recommended home video edition of the film. Passable until a high-quality edition comes along (without permanent subtitles), but the quality of the surviving source material certainly demands better than this.

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

This DVD-R edition, acquired through eBay, has been mastered from a VHS videotape copy of a 16mm reduction print. The videotape displays a number of video tracking glitches throughout and is distressingly coarse in its smeary picture details. The source print itself has the usual amount of dust and speckling, schmutz, large timing marks, with occasional sprocket damage and missing frames lost to print breakage. (By the way, that is Randolph Scott in the lower left portion of the screen capture above.)

The film is presented with its original synchronized soundtrack. Dialogue is audible but occasionally a significant amount of buzzing and hiss comes to the forefront when no other sound is on the soundtrack. Annoying audio distortion is generously supplied by the subpar VHS videotape.

Why a still from Three Girls Lost (1931) with John Wayne and Loretta Young should be used for this cover art is a mystery since Wayne is indistinguishable among this film’s cast and Young doesn't appear here at all. Home video amateurs. Not a good (or legal) presentation.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other silent era JOHN WAYNE films available on home video.