Silent Film Sources - May-August 1997

News for August, 1997

Laserdiscs have been a godsend for the wide availability of silent film. While a number of silent films were briefly offered for 16mm rental in the 1970s, laserdisc titles are more likely to offer appropriate music scores and are prepared from better master material. Most classrooms long ago replaced their 16mm equipment with laserdisc and projection television.

The consumer market is not focused on quality (as shown by the success of VHS over Betamax), but nonetheless silents have thrived on laser. It is not uncommon for laser sales for a title to exceed the same version on VHS. Laserdisc has survived through the "home theater" market for large screen televisions and multi-channel surround sound. The better sound on laser doesn't mean much for most silent films, but the 40% improvement in image quality over VHS is a benefit for a medium that depends on a sharp, clear image.

The only company that retains a commitment to silent films on laserdisc is Image Entertainment which often releases several titles a month from producers MGM/UA, David Shepard and Kino International. Those films are included on our new page of recent and upcoming releases.

There have been real concerns that this success may not extend to DVD, a new format that fits an entire movie on a single five inch disc. DVD offers great promise since it has dramatically lower unit costs than laser. The production cost of a laserdisc is $10-12 in modest quantity, while DVDs are expected to eventually cost less than a dollar to manufacture. This allows even the initial DVD releases to sell for $25-30 versus $40-50 for the same film on laserdisc. The problem is that DVD mastering goes far beyond what is needed for laserdisc. DVD requires digital compression to fit the program on the disc, which adds another $25-50,000 to the release. This expense is not so significant for a title expected to sell tens of thousands of copies, but even the most sucessful laserdisc releases of silent films have sold only a few thousand. You can find more information on DVD in an article by Jeff Shannon at the Cinemania site at http://Cinemania.msn.com/PrimeCuts/Article/372.

So far, two companies have announced silent films on DVD. The most commercially successful genre of old films is horror/science fiction/fantasy, with animation coming in second, and that is reflected in the titles being offered. In all cases, these DVD titles were highly successful laserdisc releases.

Image Entertainment is leading off with three silent film  titles for DVD. Each are $30, and will be available in the fall. These titles are also available on laserdisc from Image and VHS from Kino on Video, though the tapes have fewer special features.

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A unique artistic triumph by director Robert Weine, as it melded a film narrative with expressionistic design. This restored version features a new music score by Timothy Brock, two audio essays by Mike Budd (one on the film and the other on its exhibition and reception), and an excerpt from the same director's later Genuine: A Tale Of A Vampire. It will be interesting to see how Image takes advantage of the longer program time of DVD. The Kino on Video release of this title had a 19 minute excerpt from Genuine. On laserdisc the clip was limited to 3 minutes, due to that format's time limitations.

• Nosferatu. This unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is a classic due to the multi-layered direction of F.W. Murnau. The DVD will feature audio commentary and supplemental materials. The organ score is by Timothy Howard.
 
• The Phantom of the Opera. The classic horror film starring Lon Chaney. This release of the 1929 version features the new orchestral score by Gabriel Thibaudoux, scenes from the 1925 edition which were deleted from the 1929 reissue, production stills, poster art, and the original trailer.
Lumivision has announced three titles for DVD. These are available on VHS from Milestone Film & Video. The music scores for all three titles is by R.J. Miller.
 
• The Lost World. We discussed this exciting adventure film in our May issue. ($25, available August 13)

 
• Animation Legend Winsor McCay was a successful newspaper cartoonist. His animation is remarkable in its style and fluidity from his Gertie the Dinosaur to the complex animation of The Sinking of the Lusitania. All of the films were transferred from the collection of the Cinemateque Quebecoise ($30, available August 27). There is a charming Winsor McCay site at http://www.slip.net/~thomasg/mccay.html

 
• Felix the Cat. Pat Sullivan's Felix was a popular character in the 1920s, and the subject of a long series of one-reel cartoons. This disc offers 10 of the best cartoons, and a sequence with animator Otto Messmer. ($20, available September 24)

 
Out of the limelight since Scott Eyman's 1991 biography, Mary Pickford has returned to the forefront. This Spring saw the publication of "Without Lying Down," a long-awaited biography of Pickford screenwriter Frances Marion. The author ties Frances Marion with Mary Pickford and "the powerful women of early Hollywood." And a new biography "Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood," by Canadian author Eileen Whitfield will be published in September by University Press of Kentucky.

One of the co-founders of United Artists, Pickford was a producer as well as a star, and in her will she established the Mary Pickford Foundation to administer her estate and her films. The foundation primarily supports health care, and owns the Mary Pickford Company, which administers the film library. With the retirement of longtime manager Matty Kemp, new administrator Keith Lawrence and manager Elaina Archer have revitalized the library. A two hour documentary about Pickford's career, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, was produced for American Movie Classics, and a picture book on Pickford by Kevin Brownlow will be published by Harry Abrams for AMPAS and the Pickford Foundation.

Earlier this year New York-based Milestone Film & Video licensed the Pickford library, and a touring program of her best features began in July at the Film Forum in New York City. A number of the prints were made specifically for the series, including Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley. Rosita is newly restored for the series, combining the one surviving reel of the American release, a print recovered from Russia by the Museum of Modern Art, and new English intertitles. Coquette, with Pickford's Oscar-winning performance, is the Library of Congress restoration that was released on VHS by MGM/UA Home Video.

The films available for the tour are (in order of their production): A Little Princess, The Poor Little Rich Girl, Stella Maris, Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, Daddy-Long-Legs, The Hoodlum, Suds, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Rosita, Little Annie Rooney, Sparrows, My Best Girl, and all four of Pickford's talking films: Coquette, The Taming of the Shrew (starring Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks), Kiki and Secrets. A complete schedule of playdates is available at the Live Music Cinema site at http://www.cinemaweb.com/lcc

The most familiar Pickford titles are those from the late 1920s, including Sparrows and Little Annie Rooney, because of their public domain status. A nice copy of Sparrows is available from Kino on Video, with an organ score by Ray Brubacher. Videobrary offers Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, Kiki, The Little American, Pride of the Clan, Tess of the Storm Country and Through the Back Door in their Silver Series, and Heart of the Hills as a regular release.

Pickford hired the finest technicians in the business, and her films were handsome. The films were restored in 35mm in the late 1960s with organ scores by Gaylord Carter, but the results were of indifferent quality. These prints were used for the previous video and laserdisc releases by Blackhawk Films and Image Entertainment. The titles in that series included Little Annie Rooney, My Best Girl, Pollyanna, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Sparrows, Suds, and the rescored version of The Taming of the Shrew. Because the music scores were prepared for projection at sound speed, some of the early films were definitely shown too fast. Pickford's personality and charm could come through, but the original appeal of the films sometimes was disguised.

Milestone is planning an ongoing release of Pickford's films for video, each newly mastered from the best surviving 35mm material. They are trying to avoid the familiar, featuring some of Pickford's less well known and least pretentious films. The tentative list of titles for the initial offering includes Stella Maris (1918) with Pickford in one of her best dual role performances, Amarilly of Clothesline Alley (1918), Daddy-Long-Legs (1919, a marvelously inventive adaptation), and Tess of the Storm Country (1922) a remake of her first big hit, and Pickford's last film, the 1933 version of Secrets with her starring opposite Leslie Howard, directed by Frank Borzage. Each of the silent films will feature a new orchestral score.

Milestone has a reputation for releasing fine quality editions of often obscure silent films on video. Their exploration series including Chang, Grass, Tabu, and The Silent Enemy, and the Lumivision series includes The Lost World, The Last of the Mohicans, and Winsor McCay. With their commitment to use the best surviving pre-print material, we can expect that the Pickford films will be on video with a clarity and sharpness missing before, and truly represent the actress/personality who was the most popular film player in America for at least 15 years.

It is always a delight to see an author who has enough faith in a project to self-publish the results. This writer and his wife self-published a copyright reference book in 1989-- copies still available! So it is with hopeful anticipation that we received "Silent Lasers: 1910-1930" by Joseph L. Ponessa. Subtitled "a filmography of the silent era as represented on laser videodisc," this 272 page (5 1/2 by 8 inch sized) volume aims to fill a void in the available information on the laserdisc release of silent films.

The two page introduction notes that few laserdisc releases have ample documentation, and "the purpose of this book is to provide ideal liner notes, including indexed cast lists." The 151 different films include shorts, which are seldom indexed anywhere, and releases in Japan. The information on Japanese imports provides useful information on licensed titles (Beau Geste, La Boheme, The Sheik) never offered by an American distributor, and pirated films (Safety Last) never legally released on laserdisc anywhere.

The films are presented in chronological order, and there are two types of information provided. The entry for each film includes a chronology, with dates for the birth and death for the star and director, the premiere, copyright, and laserdisc release and review by Douglas Pratt in The Laserdisc Newsletter. The dates sometimes include restoration information on the films, and cover releases of multiple versions (such as four different laserdisc releases of Buster Keaton's College). As an example, the chronology for The Saphead (1920) offers 11 items, including
 

• 1920-10-18 John L. Golden and Winchell Smith, and Metro Pictures release the five-reeler The Saphead (77min) in Los Angeles. Herbert Blache directs Buster Keaton (24) in the title role of his first full-length feature, for which he was recommended by Douglas Fairbanks.
 
• 1921-2-14 New York release at the 4624-seat Capitol Theater, along with the short subjects The Message of Flowers and The American Fleet at Panama.
The second part of each description might be useful to film students or researchers, as each actor's introduction is noted with its location on the disc by timecode or frame number. The listing for The Saphead includes 14 indicators such as
 
• 32700 Nicholas Van Alstyne--William H. CRANE
• 102601 Bertie Van Alstyne-- Buster KEATON
There are also title and director indexes. The book is available at $60 from Ponessa Productions, Box 1064, Glendive, MT 59330. The phone number is 406-365-2585, and the fax is 406-365-4033.

Film distributor Murray Glass offers a wide variety of silent films in 16mm and video from his companies Glenn Photo Supply (for 16mm sales), Em Gee Film Library (for 16mm rentals) and Glenn Video Vistas (for video cassettes). Many of the films in Murray's catalogs are not available from any other source, and cover the very beginning of cinema through the sound era. With the demise of Budget Films, Em Gee Film Library has the largest and most varied collection of silent features from the major studios to the small independents. We hope to be able to add listings of his extensive holdings to our film and video pages soon.

In the meantime, we can spotlight several new silent shorts available for 16mm rental or sale. They include A Trip Down Market Street, San Francisco (1905), a 1922 Felix the Cat cartoon Felix in Love, Through Grand Canyon by Boat (circa 1930), Zanzabelle in Paris, a 1949 film by puppet animator Ladislas Starevich (see our April issue for more details on Starevich's career). Available on video as well as 16mm rental or sale are Jean Epstein's La Glace a Trois Faces (1927, with English titles), and Roping a Bride (1915) with Tom Mix.

This year is the centenary of the birth of director Frank Capra, and one of the highlights has been the rediscovery and restoration of one of his silent films for Columbia that was previously thought lost. The restored version of The Matinee Idol has been shown theatrically, and was recently broadcast by Turner Classic Movies. Our review is linked above.
From our archives, a review of one of Buster Keaton's funniest features, College.
Remember to visit this month's edition of The Silent Bookshelf, the companion site of Silent Film Sources. This month's edition features articles on location filming in the early 1920s, including a location report by Robert Flaherty filming Moana, and James Cruze on The Covered Wagon.

For a monthly email announcing the Silent Film Sources news and updates, send an email to sunrise@dc.infi.net asking to join our mailing list. You can cancel at any time.

News for July, 1997

While silent film music has become accepted by the broader public, the contemporary literature has not kept up with the interest. There are relatively few articles (I could find none on the web), and surprisingly few books. (Part one of this article appeared last month).

Gillian Anderson's "Music for Silent Films 1894-1929: A Guide" has proven to be an invaluable resource for locating original scores and cue sheets. Two large collections of silent film music were combined when the Museum of Modern Art placed its collection on long term loan to the Library of Congress, which had its own collection, largely deposited for copyright registration. These were microfilmed, and can be examined at the Museum and the Library.

This volume, published by the Library of Congress in 1988, contains a marvelous 36 page review by Anderson of the music presentation of silent films. The remainder of the book serves as an extensive index to the microfilm collection, listing 1,047 pieces of film music from the silent era. Appendices list the titles in the Arthur Kleiner collection at the University of Minnesota, the Theodore Huff cue sheet collection at the George Eastman House and a few, but very choice, scores at the New York Public Library Music Division.

Another survey of silent film music is Martin Mark's "Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924," recently published by Oxford University Press. This book, an expansion of his dissertation, gives both an overview and a critical appraisal of the art. The first chapter is an extensive review of the literature about film music, starting in 1895 and continuing until the present. The remaining chapters focus on scores for specific films including L'Assasination du Duc de Guise (1908) by Camille Saint-Saens, The Birth of a Nation (1915) by Joseph Carl Breil, and Entracte (1924) by Erik Satie. There are also some greatly appreciated tangents including a 1912 score to a Kalem film, and a discussion of exhibitor Samuel Rothapfel, known as "Roxy."

There are a few web sites that pay attention to filmmusic. The most comprehensive is http://www.filmmusic.com which includes a page of links to composer fan pages.

The Society for the Preservation of Film Music was founded in 1974 by a group of film music scholars and enthusiasts. The event which spurred the group was the mindless destruction of the MGM music library, when "the studio discarded all of its original sketches, orchestrations, orchestral parts and a large part of its collection of acetate disc recordings." They also recognized that Columbia and Universal Studios had junked portions of their archives to free up storage space. The SPFM site at http://www.oldkingcole.com/spfm/ emphasizes their conferences, which often include the live performance of a silent film score.

A recent addition to their site is a fascinating page at http://www.oldkingcole.com/spfm/events/paramount.html on the Society's film music preservation effort at Paramount Pictures. SPFM volunteers, financed by the Packard Foundation, organized, boxed, shelved, and cataloged the film music manuscripts on the Paramount Pictures lot. The earliest music scores were from 1929. The page notes that "also found were some sixty compiled scores for early sound films which clearly demonstrate that the same technique used for silents continued to be used into the mid-1930s."

The Society has its own archives, which includes The Louis B. Schnauber Silent Film Music Collection, discussed at http://www.oldkingcole.com/spfm/spfmcol.html Schnauber was a music director for theatres in Omaha between 1910 and 1927. "The collection includes more than 2,500 complete sets of orchestral parts for silent films, all in mint condition."

There are some archival collections of film music, although they seldom include music for silent films. Several years ago, the UCLA Music Library published an 8 page booklet describing their collections. This is now on-line at http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/music/ref/film-tv.htm.

UCLA's holdings include the Capitol Theatre collection of music used at the New York showplace theatre, the P.A. Marquardt collection of music for silent film productions, the Alois Reiser collection which includes scores for silent film music cues, and the Mortimer Wilson collection of silent film music compositions and arrangements, which includes sketches and scores for silent film music, including Don Q., Son of Zorro, and The Thief of Bagdad.

The Silent Film Bookshelf has been gathering contemporary articles on silent film music in the teens and twenties. These cover exhibition in small and large theatres, and include:
 

Music in Motion Picture Theaters
An Atypical 1920s Theatre: the Eastman Theatre
Orchestral Accompaniment in the 1920s
 
From the teens through the thirties, Frances Marion was one of the most successful and highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood. She began in the movies as an actress, quickly began writing scenarios and even went to the front in World War I. Marion was a close friend and frequent collaborator with Mary Pickford, even directing Pickford in The Love Light with her discovery (and later husband) Fred Thomson. While she also worked occasionally as a director and producer, Marion was a freelance screenwriter until 1926, when she signed with MGM. She won Oscars for her original screenplays for The Big House in 1930 and in 1932 for The Champ.

 Frances Marion's best remembered screenplays in the silent era are adaptations of popular novels or plays including The Winning of Barbara Worth, Son of the Sheik, Secrets, Stella Dallas, Lazybones. The critical reputation of Frances Marion's contribution to these films may not have demanded such a thorough review, but she could not have received a more detailed and loving biography than Cari Beauchamp's "Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood." The title comes from Marion's comment that she spent her life searching for a man to look up to- without lying down. Beauchamp's research is impeccable. The author has interviewed many who remember Frances Marion, viewed every extant film, combed library collections, periodicals, and obscure court cases. With the cooperation of Marion's family, she has laid out the screenwriter's life in great detail. The result is certainly the finest biography to date of a screenwriter of the silent era.

Beauchamp is fascinated by Frances Marion, and presents her as a modern woman, whose strength, independence and flexibility epitomize early Hollywood. Surprisingly, while she documents her subject's every move, Beauchamp never draws any conclusions. Was Marion truly so admirable, even though her judgment seems frequently faulty? How good were her films when she lacked strong collaborators? As one example, while Beauchamp admires her independence, Marion reworked her life completely when she married Fred Thomson. They bought a huge house and were frequent partygivers, neither of which interested Marion at all before or after her marriage to Thomson.

As this is a biography, the emphasis is properly on Frances Marion, not her films. Still, it is surprising that Beauchamp shows absolutely no interest in Marion's writing, the skill that made her reputation and her fortune. Marion wrote perhaps 200 screenplays, and several novels. There are no quotes from the novels (could they be that bad?), and the only screenplay to receive any significant attention for story structure or writing style is Marion's adaptation of The Scarlet Letter for Lillian Gish. The result is similar to reading an overly detailed biography of a deservedly forgotten minor novelist or poet. Marion is known in this account, not for her writing or her films, but for who she knew.

The narrative interweaves Marion's life with her friendships with the small number of women who had successful careers in Hollywood. Beauchamp interweaves Marion's story with her contemporaries Anita Loos, Lois Weber, Hedda Hopper, June Mathis, Bess Meredyth, and others. This is occasionally a stretch, but helps give needed context to the biography.

Beauchamp is neither a historian of the period nor a "movie person" and it shows throughout the book. She really doesn't understand the difference between the semi-independent filmmaking environment where Marion flourished versus the studio filmmaking which she found stifling. As a freelancer during the 1920s, Marion worked for Mary Pickford, Joseph Schenck, Samuel Goldwyn, and William Randolph Hearst. These producers crafted their films individually. This allowed her far greater freedom than her contemporaries (named above) who were working within a near-factory environment. However, when there was a business downturn, or increased scrutiny by Wall Street lenders, the industry turned inward, frequently leaving talented women on the outside as eventually happened to Marion. Surprisingly, the book only comes to life in the 1930s as Marion worked within-the highly structured Thalberg unit at MGM. When Thalberg died, Marion's career was effectively over, though she continued on and off at MGM in a lesser capacity until 1946.

The TVGuide website has a one paragraph biography of Frances Marion and a filmography from Katz' Film Encyclopedia at http://www.tvguide.com/movies/katz/4328.sml You can find producer Lynda Obst's review of the Beauchamp biography at http://www.nytimes.com/books (search on "Beauchamp") The site is free, but you may have to register. The invaluable website run by The Silents Majority has a page devoted to Frances Marion at http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/BTC/write2.htm which provides a nice overview of her career. An excerpt from Ally Acker's "Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present" on Frances Marion and Mary Pickford appears at
http://www.reelwomen.com/pick&mar.html.

When it was originally released in 1915, Cecil B. DeMille's Carmen starring Geraldine Farrar had to face a competing version starring Theda Bara. Now 1997 sees another two Carmens face off. This time they are two excellent versions of DeMille's Carmen. Both Kino on Video and Video Artists International have released Carmen on VHS.

Both use 35mm material from the George Eastman House film archive, the tinting records from the DeMille archive at Brigham Young University, and new recordings of the Hugo Reisenfeld orchestral score (based on the Bizet opera) from the Library of Congress Music Division. The score on the Kino version is performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra conducted by Timothy Brock. The Video Artists version features Gillian Anderson conducting the London Philharmonic.

Kino on Video has released six films from the silent film career of Cecil B. DeMille. These films show that DeMille was one of the finest filmmakers in the silent era. The films in this series include examples of DeMille's work for Paramount and two of his later independent productions. All of the videos are transferred from 35mm prints or negatives, with tints based on the original instructions. The music scores are appropriate, ranging from small orchestra to organ and piano.

While The King of Kings was previously available from a small video label, the remaining five titles appear for the first time on video. These five titles will be included in a laserdisc box set just announced by Image Entertainment. These editions are presented in cooperation with DeMille's estate and the George Eastman House film archive. DeMille had retained 35mm prints of most of his films and after his death, many of them were donated to Eastman House, where they were preserved.
 

• Carmen is a fast-paced adaptation of the Prosper Merimee story that was also the basis of the opera. Geraldine Farrar gives a gutsy performance as the gypsy who uses her charm and beauty to entrap her lovers. For once it is easy to see the appeal of Wallace Reid- sexy, earthy and romantic. The tape has the original 1915 score (discussed above). The image quality is outstanding.
 
• Joan the Woman was one of the most elaborate films of the teens, and producer Jesse L. Lasky set up a special company, Cardinal Film Corporation, just for its release. The film recreates the life of Joan of Arc with battle scenes and spectacle and the intimate story of Joen (Geraldine Farrar) and the soldier who loves her and betrays her. This print features handcoloring by the Handscheigel process for the burning of Joan at the stake. This release has the original score by William Furst performed on organ by Christian Elliott. The Silent Film Bookshelf has posted several contemporary articles on Geraldine Farrar's work with DeMille at http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/index.htm#May
 
• The Whispering Chorus. In DeMille's autobiography he recalled a critic who called the film "the quintessence of morbidness." The film was a commercial success, but it represented a path that DeMille chose not to revisit. His intention was to create a film where "the conflict in it is in the souls of the characters rather than in forces external to them." This was brilliantly realized with DeMille's usual sensitive direction balancing some of the obvious aspects of Jeanie Macpherson's scenario of a man who is eventually destroyed by the results of one mistake in judgement. DeMille balances the narrative by the use of quietly effective double exposures to demonstrate the man's interior conflicts. The tape quality is excellent, as is the score compiled by Rodney Sauer and performed by the Mont Alto Theater Orchestra.
 
• Male and Female is a comedy of manners, based on a play by James M. Barrie. The tables are turned when an upperclass British family is lost on a desert island. The butler takes the dominant role as breeding and money gives way to ingenuity. A beautiful transfer of excellent quality, and the music score is composed and performed by Sydney Jill Lehman.
 
• The Volga Boatman was produced for DeMille's own company, and is a gorgeous transfer of an enjoyable, if unlikely, story. The music score is performed on piano by Philip Carli based on the cue sheets from the original release.
 
• A review of The King of Kings.

Remember to visit this month's edition of The Silent Bookshelf, the companion site of Silent Film Sources. This month's edition has three articles on Cecil B. DeMille. These include a contemporary account of DeMille as a director and two more recent analyses of DeMille's popularity by Robert S. Birchard and David Pierce.

For a monthly email announcing the Silent Film Sources news and updates, send an email to sunrise@dc.infi.net asking to join our mailing list. You can cancel at any time.

News for June, 1997

It is well known that silent movies were never silent, and as director King Vidor noted, music provided 50% of the emotion of a silent film. Music in live performance adds significantly to an audience's response to a film. The current interest in silent films with live orchestral accompaniment can be traced to the wildly successful presentation of Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927) in 1981 at Radio City Music Hall. Many symphony orchestras throughout the world include the presentation of a silent film in their concert seasons.

There are basically three approaches to a modern presentation of an orchestral score with a silent film. Sometimes it is possible to locate the original score composed for a film's original release. These may have been commissioned by the producer (as with Mortimer Wilson's scores for The Thief of Bagdad and The Black Pirate) or by a theatre (as with Hugo Reisenfeld's score for The Covered Wagon). An alternative is a cue sheet score, which offered theatres suggestions for pre-existing music to accompany each scene. Since many original scores no longer exist or their use is limited by copyright restrictions, often the easiest approach is to commission a new score. This also allows the music to match the available players, since original scores were often written to specific orchestrations.

Among the maestros of the art of live orchestral accompaniment are Gillian Anderson, Carl Davis and Donald Hunsberger.

• Gillian Anderson discovered many original scores during her tenure at the Music Division of the Library of Congress, and has toured widely conducting the original scores for Intolerance, Old Ironsides, Way Down East, The Black Pirate, The Thief of Bagdad, The Circus, The Birth of a Nation, Wings and The Passion of Joan of Arc. She argues convincingly that the original film experience is the combination of mechanical moving image with live music. As a result, a film is only truly restored when shown to an audience with a live performance of the original score.
• Carl Davis is a well respected composer and conductor who has often worked in conjunction with producers Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Their collaborations include the MGM features Ben-Hur, Greed, Show People, The Student Prince, A Woman of Affairs, and several Harold Lloyd features. In 1996, Davis toured the U.S. with Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, featuring a new orchestration of Chaplin's original score.
• Donald Hunsberger is a instructor and conductor with the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Hunsberger focuses on the role of music to support the film, rather than focusing on the authenticity of the specific score. When the music suggested by a cue sheet is not available, he substitutes another piece that predates the release of the film and would have been available to a theatre of the time. Hunsberger has prepared scores for films including The Last Command, The Mark of Zorro, Our Hospitality, Peter Pan, The Phantom of the Opera. His biography is posted at http://www.cc.rochester.edu/Eastman/hunsberg.html
Silent films did not have a single unique score. The original scores for the first run theatres were often too complicated for musicians in smaller theatres who had to prepare for a new film twice a week or even daily. Three scores survive for the 1927 version of Uncle Tom's Cabin: a full orchestral score compiled by Hugo Reisenfeld for the premiere engagement in New York, a cue sheet score compiled by James C. Bradford, and an orchestral score by Erno Rapee recorded for the general release in 1928.

While thousands of silent films survive, it may seem amazing that there are multiple scores currently performed for the most popular films. Both Anderson and Davis have prepared scores for Ben-Hur, The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and The Thief of Bagdad. In each case, Anderson uses the score from the original release, while Davis either composed a new score, adapted the original score (Birth) or arranged pre-existing music into a score (Thief). With The Phantom of the Opera, Davis composed a new score, while Donald Hunsberger compiled a score based on the original cue sheets.

Since these concerts are infrequent, it is often difficult to find out about films being shown in your area. Many live performances are listed in an invaluable publication, Tom Murray's "Live Cinema Calendar." The LCC includes showings of films with live music throughout the world, carefully noting details on the presentation, accompanists, and the theatre. This broad definition allows for the inclusion of the Prokofiev score for Alexander Nevsky, although the focus is on films of the silent era.

"Live Cinema Calendar" is published bimonthly, and mailed subscriptions are available only to those who contribute listings! The on-line version at http://www.cinemaweb.com/lcc matches the printed version, and is updated when a new issue is mailed. The calendar is listed chronologically, rather than by venue, and includes showings at theatres, archives, film festivals, cinemateques, churches, etc. It also includes thorough listings of schedules for the regional film conventions. I am continually amazed at the showings that Tom finds in my own area that I would not have otherwise known about.

The "Live Cinema Calendar" also includes essays on silent film music and the specific music scores that accompanied films at their premiere engagements at http://www.cinemaweb.com/lcc/highlights.html The current notes include a discussion of the Frank Capra centenary, and an upsurge in showings of Sunrise.

The current issue of "Live Cinema Calendar" contains a charming article by George Wead (at http://www.cinemaweb.com/lcc/discovering.html) which is a loving tribute to Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, probably better known as the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, held each fall in Italy. The author also works in the rediscovery of the importance of music to silent film, with quotes from Paolo Cherchi Usai of George Eastman House.

A perhaps competing listing, the Southern California Silent Calendar, is maintained by the Silents Majority, with a focus on individual theatres in the region and their schedules. The initial emphasis is on the Southern California area, and we can expect the listings to increase in scope in the future. The calendar is at http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/SCSC/

We'll post part two of our review of silent film music next month.

For years, one of the most elusive surviving silent films has been the 1910 one-reel version of Frankenstein, produced by the Edison company. The original negative was probably destroyed in the Edison vault fire in 1914. Frankenstein appeared on the American Film Institute's 1980 list of the "Ten Most Wanted" films, as the AFI knew that the film existed in the hands of a private collector. Its inclusion was designed to flush out the print, although it seemed to have the opposite effect.

This Frankenstein apparently had no little influence upon other films, and did not lead to any films with similar themes, as did the 1931 version. Edison's output was far behind that of its competitors in terms of star power, filmmaking style or subject matter. Still, there is a strong interest in the horror/science fiction/fantasy genre, and the surviving stills from Frankenstein hint that the film is of some interest.

A film that resides in a niche like this needs a champion, and Frankenstein has Frederick C. Wiebel, Jr. He has researched the background and production of Frankenstein through the surviving materials at the Museum of Modem Art, Library of Congress, and especially, the Edison National Historic Site. This material has been compiled into the newly published "Edison's Frankenstein: Review of an Unseen Classic," 154 pages including an overview of the Edison studios, Mary Shelley's original novel, the other Frankenstein films, Charles Ogle and the Edison stock company and the critical response to the film, with over 50 pages of photos, clippings and illustrations.

Probably the most valuable section recreates the production of Frankenstein as it progressed through the Edison factory in 1910, with the plan for the film compared to the outcome. The book is enhanced by copies of numerous photographs of the Edison plant and trade advertisements and flyers. The appendices include interviews with Daniel Woodruff of the film archive at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Douglas Tarr of the Edison National Historic Site and the owner of the print. My description of the book makes it sound like a pamphlet, but it is at the high end of self-published books, and is a good value, as it provides original research material not readily available, and the author's conclusions based on that research..

The autographed book (with the video discussed below) is $25 postpaid from Frederick C. Wiebel, Jr., Fine Arts Studio, 136 E. Irvin Avenue, Hagerstown, MD 21742-3420. You can reach the author by email at firezine@intrepid.net. A signed, limited edition 11 x 17 inch full color poster of the cover is also available for $10.

The June issue of "The Silents Majority- The On-line Journal of Silent Film" (http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/) has posted an excerpt from the book (a profile of actor Charles Ogle), four images from the film and other useful information at: http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/LostFilms/PreservationCorner/frankstn.htm

A private collector owning a print of Frankenstein (or any other film of the era) is in somewhat of a quandary. The commercial value of the film is limited, due to the small audience for silent films- especially for 15 minute silent films. Since the film is in the public domain, if the owner makes it widely available, other distributors can simply work from the copies. Of course, the owner of the print has no more rights than anyone else- that's the whole point of the public domain. Therefore, concerned with "piracy," they can sit on their find so that the film remains effectively lost, or make the film available in a substandard version.

In support of the book, Mr. Weibel is also offering a reference quality video copy of the film. This is a bonus for the book, and is unfortunately not worthwhile on its own. The film is tinted, and shown as the proper speed. Judging from the flicker on the video it may have been videotaped with a camcorder off a Steenbeck or a theater screen. Superimposed over the image is a rolling title: "property of Al Detlaff, Cudaly, Wisconsin, USA" with a television logo in the lower right corner. This presentation is to protect the film from piracy, but it serves to protect the film from those relatively few in the world who care the most.

For more information on all of the cinema's Frankenstein monsters, including the Edison one, see http://www.scottiedog.co.uk/cinema.html

The archives of the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey, contain detailed records of the activities of Edison's many companies. The holdings include material on the Motion Picture Patents Company and Edison's many film and phonograph manufacturing and producing companies. There is an excellent essay on these records- illustrated with many photographs- at http://www.eh.net/~bhc/Exchange/edhome.html

This fall, Kino on Video will release a video series titled The Soviet Avant Garde, which will include familiar classroom classics By the Law (1925) and Chess Fever (1923), Man With a Movie Camera (1929) with a score by the Alloy Orchestra, Storm Over Asia (1928) with a new score by Timothy Brock, and the excellent, but much less well known Turksib (1929) and Salt for Svanetia (1930).

Kino's first series of Soviet titles was released in 1991, and to prepare for the fall series, they are having a limited time sale on ten titles from the series The Red Silents: Visions of a Workers' State. Originally priced at $29.95, these titles will be on sale through June 15 at $14.95 each. By special arrangement, this sale is extended through June 30 if you mention Silent Film Sources (this web site) when ordering. The titles are: Aelita Queen of Mars (1924), The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom (1924), Earth (1930), The End of St. Petersburg (1927), The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), The Girl With the Hatbox (1927), Happiness (1934), Strike (1925), and Three Songs of Lenin (1934).

The same editions of Earth, The End of St. Petersburg, The Man With the Movie Camera (with the Alloy Orchestra score) and Strike appeared on the Image Entertainment laserdisc set Classics of the Soviet Cinema.

Remember to visit The Silent Bookshelf, the companion site of Silent Film Sources (also available from this site's main menu). This month's edition reviews the Federal Trade Commission's examination of the monopolistic practices of Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount). We have several newspaper articles and the lengthy FTC report. Also this month is chapter seven from the autobiography of screenwriter/actress Gene Gauntier.

News for May, 1997

Grapevine Video offers an enormous selection of public domain silent features with an emphasis on independent productions. Features are transferred from a variety of sources, and Grapevine has been able to gain access to 35 mm prints on a number of rare films including Is Life Worth Living? (1921), directed by Alan Crosland, Bare Knees (1928), directed by Erle C. Kenton with Virginia Lee Corbin, and westerns Fighting Stallion (1926) with Yakima Canutt and Desert Of the Lost (1927) with Wally Wales.

Grapevine Video has announced the potential availability of two special releases. Owner Jack Hardy has access to 35mm prints of two especially rare films.

• Nurse Majorie (1920) with Mary Miles Minter under the direction of William Desmond Taylor. Minter was developed by Paramount as a rival to Mary Pickford, but few of her films survive and those that are in existence (The Eyes of Julia Deep, A Cumberland Romance, Little Miss Hoover) are seldom shown. This film would be made from a 35mm safety print in the collection of the Library of Congress, and transferred at silent speed, with a score of stock orchestral music.
• Lightning Hutch (1926) a ten chapter serial produced by Hurricane Films starring Charles Hutchinson, with a score of stock orchestral music.
Because of the expense in gaining access to these films for release on video, Grapevine Video will only make them available if there are sufficient pre-orders by June, 1997. You can help make these films available by placing an order. Nurse Majorie is $28.45 postpaid, and Lightning Hutch is $38.95 postpaid.

Film Archives have a Jekyll and Hyde reputation among silent film fans. Sometimes they are seen as the saviors and guardians of our silent film heritage, while at other times they are accused of hoarding the films they preserve from the people who most want to see them. The truth, of course, is somewhere in between, with individual archives falling at one end or another of that continuum. I have listed the web addresses for the United States film archives with significant holdings of silent films at the Silent Film Sources archives page.

The archives are a clubby group, and their particular club is called FIAF, the French acronym for the International Federation of Film Archives. Founded in 1938 with four members, for many years FIAF was hobbled by internal politics, as state funded film archives were extensions of the foreign policy of their countries. Now with the widespread acceptance that films are worth preserving, FIAF has evolved into a high level organization supporting coordination and collaboration among the national institutions dedicated to the collecting and preservation of film.

Many archives were historically very concerned about owners appearing to claim their films, and became very circumspect about their holdings. Information is power, and if people knew which titles an archive held, that would only lead to requests for screenings or loans to fellow archives. The once tightly held catalog of silent films held by each member archive has been published (albeit on a $450 CD-ROM). "Treasures From the Past," a listing of silent short films held by archives complied by Ron Magliozzi, was published in 1988 by Scarecrow Press. An expanded version of "Treasures" is included on the same CD-ROM.

Representative of this shift was the 1993 renaming of the organization's magazine from "FIAF Bulletin" to the "Journal of Film Preservation." FIAF member UCLA Film and Television Archive has brought this to a much wider audience by hosting the FIAF website at http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF. (Note: this site seems to be down frequently, so if these pages are unavailable, try again later) It includes the expected list of members and contact information, along with the complete contents of the last eight issues of the "Journal of Film Preservation" at http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF/Journal. The significance of making this available widely cannot be overstated as representative of giving outsiders visibility into the club. Subscribing to the printed edition was not for dilettantes, as the subscription price for non-members is $50 for four issues.

"Journal of Film Preservation" is edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai, the curator of the film collections at George Eastman House. The issues that are available on-line are comparable to any journal where the contributors are writing for the record, and trying to impress their peers, rather than to communicate any inside information to a wider audience. They are missing the illustrations from the printed version, but the loss is seldom significant. The articles of potential interest to a general readership include:

• A frank and honest history of FIAF (and a call to action for the future direction of the organization) by Jan-Christopher Horak (formerly of George Eastman House) http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF/Journal/html51/jan.html
• A debate on the use of 16mm versus video in classrooms. While reprinted in toto from "Cinema Journal," and the points occasionally obscured by academic phrases like "filmic texts" and "successful pedagogical tools" this is a down to earth discussion of the choice between the many limitations of l6mm (mono sound, pan and scan prints, faded color) and video (which for all its virtues is not film). http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF/Journal/html46/debate.html
• An alternative method of tinting and toning silent films. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia wanted to tint and tone The Sentimental Bloke (1919). Rather than use the original chemical methods, they used water-based food coloring, which after some experimentation apparently worked extremely well. http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF/Journal/html48/recreat.html
• Brian Taves reported on the Library of Congress restoration of With Williamson Beneath the Sea. http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF/Journal/html52/withwill.html
• The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918) was produced, but never released, so its rediscovery was a special triumph for the Wales Film Archive. http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/FIAF/Journal/html50/thelife.html
Lumivision has announced the first silent film available on DVD. Lumivision actually beat Warner Bros. to the market with the first DVD release, and they have announced a DVD version of their 1991 laserdisc release The Lost World (1925), available May 21. The VHS version is distributed by Milestone Film & Video, and includes all of the laserdisc extra features, including trailers, and a presentation of missing scenes through stills.

The Lost World was originally released to theatres in ten reels, but for many years it was only available in a five reel 16mm edition prepared by the Kodascope Libraries for release to homes and schools. The laserdisc release was produced by Scott MacQueen for the George Eastman House archive, and used their 35mm copy of the Kodascope version. Since then, additional footage has been found. An account of the restoration in progress (and a plea for contributions) is on-line at: http://www.users.interport.net/~dinosaur/lostworld.htm

Milestone Film & Video has announced a special laserdisc-only sale on seven titles in their "The Age of Exploration" series. These films focus on the men and women who risked their lives to explore exotic cultures and unknown lands during the early days of the cinema. The series was selected by Video Magazine as winner of the Gold Viva Award as one of the Top Ten Video Programs of 1992. These restored films, featuring the original soundtracks or newly commissioned scores, are now on sale at 50% off. The seven titles are now $20 each or all seven for $120. The video versions are still available for $40 each.

The laserdiscs are:

• Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's Chang (1927). Cooper and Schoedsack were the models for the characters of Denham and Driscoll in their later film, King Kong and that classic script was greatly influenced by their experiences on Chang. Despite the many classics he created, Cooper always called Chang "the best picture I ever made."

Filmed in Siam, with an all-native cast and a spectacular elephant stampede, Chang features an acclaimed new score by composer Bruce Gaston and performed by Fong Naam, Thailand's world-renowned traditional music ensemble.
• Cooper and Schoedsack risked their lives to film the amazing Persian adventure classic Grass (1925). With a native score composed by Gholam Hosain Janati-Ataie, the film remains one of the greatest of all documentaries and still one of the most exciting films ever made.
• Famed African explorers Martin and Osa Johnson's greatest film, Simba (1928). The disc features many previously unseen and now rare images of African cultures and wildlife, as well a wonderful new Kenyan score by African composer James Makubuya.
• W. Douglas Burden and H. P. Carver's drama of the Ojibway Indians, The Silent Enemy (1930) restored from an original tinted nitrate print. One of the best depictions of Native American life from the silent era.
• One of the New York Times Ten Best Films of the Year, With Byrd at the South Pole (1930), featuring Admiral Byrd's historic first flight over the South Pole. Academy Award Winner for Best Cinematography, featuring the original orchestral score.
• 90^o South (1913, restored especially for the series by Britain's National Film & Television Archive) documents Captain Robert Scott's tragic race to the South Pole. Herbert Ponting's gorgeous images are still astonishing.
• Edward S. Curtis, the world-famous photographer of American Indians directed a film from 1912-1914 in the village of a Kwakiutl tribe in western Canada. Rescued by George Quimby and William Holm in the early seventies, In the Land of the War Canoes has become a landmark of documentary films and is now considered one of the main influences on Robert Flaherty when he made Nanook of the North. Restored with an authentic Kwakiutl score, the film has amazing images. In fact, many of the totem poles and war canoes made by the Kwakiutls for the film are in museums today as the most authentic and beautiful examples of their work.

For more information on Edward S. Curtis as a still photographer, the Library of Congress has a page at http://lcweb.loc.gov/spcoll/055.html There is a commercial site offering reprints (and examples) of his work at: http://www.curtis-collection.com/
• Still available, but not discounted: Legendary directors F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise) and Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North) joined forces in Tahiti to make the Academy Award winner, Tabu (1931). A brilliant, moving story of two ill-fated lovers, the film has become of the classics of silent cinema and tragically the last film of the legendary German director. Tabu is not included in the sale since there are now only 30 copies left on laserdisc. They are now $75 each or $60 if bought with the other seven titles.
Our video page contains the address and 800 number for Milestone Film & Video.

Remember to visit The Silent Bookshelf, the companion site of Silent Film Sources (also available from this site's main menu). This month's additions are four articles on silent film star Geraldine Farrar, and her work with director Cecil B. DeMille. We have the announcement of preparations for her arrival in Hollywood, her manager's account of how he convinced her to work in silent films, a wonderful on-the-set story of her work on Joan the Woman (1917) and how she gained the love of all of her co-workers, and the "movie" chapter from her autobiography. Also this month is chapter six from the autobiography of early woman screenwriter/actress Gene Gauntier.

Send additions, suggestions, comments or questions to David Pierce, prizma@onetel.com

© 1996, 1997 David Pierce