The River

1. "Murnau, Borzage and Fox": Last year, 20th Century Fox gave us "Ford at Fox," a 21-disc salute to America's cinema poet. "Murnau, Borzage and Fox" comes in at a smaller scale, but the 12-disc set is an equally dedicated labor of cinema love. While F.W. Murnau gets top billing... more for his two films (the masterpiece "Sunrise" and the DVD debut of "City Girl"), it's the holy trinity of romantic classics from silent movie master Frank Borzage that makes this essential. "Seventh Heaven" (pictured), "Street Angel" and "Lucky Star" are compassionate, dreamy portraits of hardscrabble lives, and Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell glow within Borzage's delicate style. They are the apex of silent movie style, and Fox debuts these masterpieces in lovely editions, along with seven other silent and sound Borzage features and a reconstruction of his incomplete "The River." The album-sized case comes with an excellent documentary and two beautifully illustrated books.

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(Fox/Everett Collection)