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

What No Man Knows (1921)

This social drama features Clara Kimball Young, Lowell Sherman and Dorothy Wallace, directed by Harry Garson (Young’s husband).

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a very-good to excellent 35mm fine-grain preservation positive from the Library of Congress. Missing footage has been bridged with expository intertitles. The source print has a significant amount of dust and speckling, emulsion chipping and scrapes, fine vertical scratches, missing frames due to print tears and breaks, timing marks, and other print flaws. Intended to discourage video bootlegging, occasionally the website address for the society or “cine” will appear in the lower part of the picture. We wish that video publishers did not feel compelled to do this as it is distracting from the viewing experience for the collector of the disc. All of that said, the viewing experience is reasonably good.

The film is presented with a prequel of newsreel footage of Clara Kimball Young attending a premiere in Michigan for What No Man Knows, with Harry Garson and Dorothy Wallace (and someone who looks quite a bit like Monty Banks).

The film is accompanied by a music score performed on a Barton theatre pipe organ by Bob Vaughn recorded live at Cinesation in 1996. The presentation includes a brief video clip of Vaughn from the performance.

Even though it is out-of-print and very likely quite hard to find, we recommend this home video edition of the film over that noted below.

ENCORE ENTERTAINMENT has discontinued business and this DVD-R edition is . . .

This DVD-R edition has apparently been mastered from the 35mm preservation print held by the Library of Congress (as might be surmised from the publisher-provided still frame above).

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

This is not recommended as an acceptable home video edition of the film due to the low-quality value (no DVD case, no packaging artwork) provided for the high-cost demanded. $45.00 for this disc is criminal.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available through . . .