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

Within Our Gates (1920)

This independent drama, directed by Oscar Micheaux, features Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin and Jack Chenault.

The sole surviving print of the film, recovered in a Spanish language version by Filmoteca Española, was preserved in a 35mm safety duplicate print in 1993 for the Library of Congress film archive. The Library then undertook a photochemical reconstruction of the film that attempted to the restore English language intertitles in the best possible approximation of the originals conducted by Scott Simmon, with assistance from Alex Vargas and Kathleen Newman, utilizing a surviving Micheaux film and three of his novels, along with four surviving flash frame intertitles in the Spanish print.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky) and performed by a trio of piano, drums and acoustic guitar.

Supplemental material includes theatrical trailers for selected films, including the missing Harlem After Midnight (1934) (3 minutes) and Temptation (1936) (3 minutes); the featurettes “Breaking Ground,” with Rhea L. Combs (9 minutes), “The Silent Years,” with Rhea L. Combs (7 minutes), “The Dawn of Sound,” with Rhea L. Combs (5 minutes), “Staying Relevant,” with Rhea L. Combs (5 minutes), and “More to Come?,” with Rhea L. Combs (1 minute); and a 12-page insert booklet with film notes.

As this edition is identical to that in the Pioneers collection noted below, this presentation shares our recommendation as the best home video edition of the film. Perhaps this edition is slightly favored for its higher video rate encoding and DTS audio encoding.

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This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered in high-definition from a 35mm preservation print held in the Library of Congress sourced from a 35mm Spanish-language print, the sole surviving material on the film. English intertitles have been translated from the print, with reference to other historical materials. The source print does have its issues, including a significant amount dust, speckling, emulsion scuffing and scrapes, moderate frame jitters, and other flaws. Shadow details are reasonably defined but highlights are often on the verge of being of lost or are already blasted out. That said, the HD scan does a good job of replicating the continuous tones of the source material rather than overemphasizing film grain into contrasty pixels.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky) and performed by a trio of piano, drums and acoustic guitar.

Supplemental material includes the documentaries “We Work Again” (1937) produced by the Federal Works Project (15 minutes), and “The Tyler-Texas Black Film Collection: The Missing Link in Black Cinema” (1985), with Ossie Davis (6 minutes); theatrical trailers for Veiled Aristocrats (4 minutes) and Birthright (3 minutes); an interview with historian S. Torriano Berry on the works of James and Eloyce Gist (5 minutes); and the featurettes “Pioneers of African-American Cinema: An Introduction,” with collection curators Jacqueline Najuma Stewart and Charles Musser (8 minutes), “About the Restoration,” with edition producer Bret Wood (8 minutes), “The Color Line,” with Charles Musser (5 minutes), “Ten Nights in a Bar Room: An Introduction,” with Charles Musser (4 minutes), “Eleven P.M.: An Introduction,” with Charles Musser (3 minutes), “The Films of Oscar Micheaux,” with Charles Musser (9 minutes), “The Films of Zora Neale Hurston,” with film archivist Mike Mashon (2 minutes), “The Films of Spencer Williams,” with Jacqueline Najuma Stewart (7 minutes), “Religion in Early African-American Cinema,” with Jacqueline Najuma Stewart and Charles Musser (7 minutes), and “The End of an Era,” with Jacqueline Najuma Stewart (5 minutes); and an 80-page insert book with notes on the films and essays by Charles Musser and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, with contributions from Rhea L. Combs, Mary N. Elliott and Paul D. Miller.

As this edition is virtually identical to that in the Micheaux collection noted above, this presentation shares our recommendation as the best home video edition of the film.

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The film is accompanied by a music score by Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky).

The collection is supplemented with an insert book that includes notes on the films and essays by collection curators Charles Musser and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, with others.

Sight unseen, this is our recommended DVD home video edition of the film.

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This early edition of Within Our Gates, the first available on DVD home video, has been transferred from a 35mm reconstruction print from the Library of Congress which has a number of flaws including dust, significant speckling, scratches, schmutz, and other flaws. The picture is a bit contrasty, with closed-up shadows and highlights that barely hold their details. The disc’s perhaps overcompressed video data shows a number visible artifacts and the picture interlacing cannot be fully compensated for on HD systems capable of progressive scan interpolation as seen in rapid movements within the frame.

The film is accompanied by a fine music score composed and performed on piano by an uncredited musician.

This valuable early DVD collection is now regretably out-of-print. Thankfully, we can look to the Kino Lorber editions noted above.

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The film is likely presented with a music score of preexisting recordings.

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The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.

With other high quality editions noted above, we cannot recommend this edition.

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