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The Girl with
the Hatbox
(1927)

Boris Barnet’s comedy, starring the attractive Anna Sten, is the story of a hat shop worker who shares her apartment with a poor student. A lottery ticket becomes the objective of a mad chase.

Film Preservation Associates
2004 DVD edition

Outskirts (1933), black & white, 96 minutes, not rated, with The Girl with the Hatbox (1927), black & white, 68 minutes, not rated.

Film Preservation Associates, distributed by Image Entertainment, ID5955DSDVD, UPC 0-14381-59552-9.
One single-sided, dual-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at ? Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 mono sound encoded at 224 Kbps audio bit rate; Russian language intertitles, permanent English language subtitles; 11 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $24.99.
Release date: 27 July 2004.
Country of origin: USA •

Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 3 / additional content: 5 / overall: 5.

This DVD edition of The Girl with the Hatbox shows a full-frame video transfer of a very-good print that has been transferred at faster-than-natural speed. At least one video master glitch is seen in the final DVD. Crude video-based English subtitles are permanently a part of the picture.

The film is accompanied by a noisy, low-fidelity soundtrack of small ensemble and electronic keyboard music transferred from the optical soundtrack of the source print. Not great.

Not truly recommended but this is the only American home video edition of the film we are aware of. The film certainly deserves better treatment than this.

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