The Scarlet Letter is a 1934 drama on a topic that was highly sensitive at the time, adultery. The story involves a married woman who has an affair, and a child out of wedlock and is publicly condemned and humiliated shortly thereafter. During this time in our history, adultery was extremely taboo and highly deviant behavior, of course now it tends to be somewhat more prevalent, and people today aren’t as condemned by society as they were up to the early nineteen hundreds. The film is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel from 1850 and there is also a silent feature made in 1926, but the 1934 film is the one most talked about.

The film takes place in the seventeenth century, in a Puritan community where Hester Prynne (Colleen Moore, The Huntress, Broken Chains) has a baby girl out of wedlock and refuses to name the father (Arthur Dimmesdale, Hardie Albright, Angel on My Shoulder, The Jade Mask), as he is thought of as a decent citizen in the community and the scandal would be most harmful. As her punishment, Hester must wear the scarlet letter A (for adulterer) on all her clothing.  Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth (Henry Walthall, The Cabin in the Cotton, Hold Your Man) an older gentleman, who was believed to be deceased has returned looking for his wife has learned that she had a baby girl with a younger man. He remains in town to put his wife and the man she had an affair with through misery.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching The Scarlet Letter, with silent screen legend Colleen Moore saving the film with her great performance. This was her last film and was a great swan song to her career.  Henry Walthall also gives a somewhat creepy performance as her husband, and Hardie Albright is great playing the troubled other man and secret father as Dimmesdale. He wants to admit he is the father of Hester’s child but remains silent because of his position in the town! There are some unforgettable moments with the child when she is 5 years of age and tries to fit in with kids her age, which fails. And of course, there is the distain that the women have toward Hester for having an affair and a child with Dimmesdale. The citizens, apparently a bunch of busybodies with no life of their own in the community, constantly nag and chastise Hester and her daughter quite heavily for sinning. They do everything they can to make her feel sorry for herself. Screen legend Alan Hale (Fog Over Frisco, Manpower) has a small role that was intended to be comedic, but it wasn’t. It felt out of place in this movie.

Film Masters has given The Scarlet Letter a Region Free Blu-ray release. The movie, as advertised, has been scanned in 4K from a new 35mm preservation print, from the original camera negative with assistance from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The video quality is excellent overall and a bit of a revelation for this obscure movie. Outside of a few vertical lines that appear at the beginning of the movie, the presentation is nothing short of remarkable with a clean black and white image. Black levels look nice and dark, while the whites look crisp, and the grey scale is balanced which assists in the image quality looking as sharp as it does throughout. The video shows a lot of detail to the scenery with some solid texturing to the picture. There is much grain during the entire presentation, thus giving the movie an organic film-like appearance. No DNR appears to have been applied on this Blu-ray. This is a most impressive transfer and a superb restoration.

On their Blu-ray, Film Masters has opted to use both English DTS HD-Master Audio is 2.0 and a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The audio quality for both options is excellent with clear and clean dialogue. The differences between the two audio options to me were minimal and the sounds were perfectly balanced on both tracks. Other noises such as the musical score by Abe Meyer came in clearly. No hissing, drop-offs or other age-old anomalies were detected. English SDH subtitles are offered.

Film Masters has included several supplements for their Blu-ray package.

We get treated commentary track by Professor and Author Jason A. Ney and Cora Sue Collins. They give a brilliant compelling commentary discussing this movie in great lengths.

Ballyhoo Motion Pictures presents, “A Sin of Passion: Hawthorne on Film,” featuring a new interview with author, Justin Humphreys. He discusses Hawthorne and his novels, specifically The Scarlet Letter which was an immensely popular book compared to his other writings.  

“Salem and the Scarlet Letter.” is an interesting behind the scenes featurette that is written and directed by Sam Sherman of Salem, MA. He provides a lot of archival footage. This feature is narrated by screen icon John Carradine who talks about Hawthorne and Salem for about ten minutes.

Another sold featurette is with producer, Sam Sherman, “Revealing the Scarlet Letter.” Here, he discusses his involvement and experiences with the 1934 version of The Scarlet Letter. He originally wasn’t interested in reading the book or watching the film, but after being somewhat forced to watch the movie, he did enjoy it and decided to read the book.

A restored trailer for The Scarlet Letter and a booklet with an essay by Jason A. Ney rounds out the extras.

I can easily highly recommend this release for not just the superb quality in the audio, video, and extras, but for this amazing film itself. Fans can now rejoice that this controversial picture has finally made its way to home video courtesy of Film Masters! Pay no mind to critical reviews! It is an entertaining, enjoyable classic! Pick this one up and add it to your Film Masters collection!

The Scarlet Letter (1934)

Director- Robert G Vignola

Cast- Colleen Moore, Hardie Albright, Henry Walthall

Country of Origin-USA

Distributor – Film Masters  

Number of Discs – 1

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date – 11/6/23