See a silent movie on a big screen with live music

I saw Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) which was shown at The Triple Door along with original music performed live by The Album Leaf. It was fabulous. The movie itself is worth seeing, although it expresses a rather different dramatic sensibility than we are used to in this day and age. Most people are used to seeing silent comedies, but I have enjoyed the serious and/or melodramatic silent films I have seen lately. I flatter myself that I have some affinities and understanding of the 19th-century melodramatic imagination and can make that aesthetic leap.

I was worried that the music would detract rather than add to the experience, but I was wrong. I’m a fan of The Album Leaf, but I thought that the music would be a distraction. Occasionally it was, but mainly not. In the main it resisted mimetic touches, but the few that were in it (stylized evocations of a character whistling, a gypsy band, and a violent storm) were haunting.

Next up: the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

I grew up in a town with a large historic theater (now entirely renovated) and, more importantly, an enormously souped up Wurlitzer theater organ, complete with light show. I’ve seen several movies there, some with live music on the theater organ.

A couple of years ago I saw a screening of Harold Lloyd’s Speedy with a new score by The Alloy Orchestra at the North Carolina Museum of Art. At the National Gallery I saw several silent films shown in conjunction with the Dada exhibit, which was there at the time. They weren’t all Dada films, but were all contemporaneous. They included the original 1919 Abel Gance’s J’accuse (he did a remake in, I believe, 1937) which was powerful, melodramatic and strange. I also saw a triple bill that had René Clair’s first film Paris qui dort, the classic René Clair/Man Ray/Jean Cocteau collaboration Entr’acte and a strange American film called There it is. The first was accompanied by the solo pianist, Martin Marks, playing from a reconstructed score used at the film’s premiére by an anonymous pianist. The second had a score by Milhaud performed by piano four hands and the third had an original score by the Aardet, a subset of the Boston-based Aardvark Orchestra.

Good stuff.

Tomorrow I am seeing The General with live music. I’ve actually seen this movie with live music before, but it is worth doing again.