Silent Film Sources - May-Aug 1998

News for August, 1998

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Slapstick From A-Z

Is there more to silent comedy than Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd? A list of the great silent comedy features would be dominated by their films-- but what about the best short comedies? There is a natural skepticism against silent short comedies unless they star one of that trio. It is easy, if mistaken, to believe that if a comedian was any good in silent short comedies, he or she would have graduated to features, and not continued to produce shorts. Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd may have made exceptional shorts, but after all, they are remembered most for their starring features. Other very popular comedians such as Raymond Griffith moved from supporting roles in features to star status. Laurel and Hardy made their first feature soon after the transition to sound. Nonetheless, even though these stars and others were seduced by the larger budgets (and higher salaries) offered by features, there were many excellent short comedies produced during the silent era.

The major comedians were hesitant in the transition to features. Charlie Chaplin's contract with First National called for short films only, but he made The Kid (1921) anyway, then went back to making shorts. Buster Keaton said that his first feature The Three Ages (1923) was constructed so that if theatres didn't want to book it as a feature, the film could be released as three two-reelers. Harold Lloyd's first feature release, A Sailor-Made Man (1921) began as a short, but expanded into a short feature. But when these comedians started making features intentionally, their entire approach to story development and pacing had to change because a feature has to be more than an extended two reeler.

Shorts have less character development, faster pacing and just enough plot to set up gags, while building to a big finish. Our Hospitality (1923), Keaton's second feature, is an excellent film, but if you take out the relatively few gags, the well-constructed story is a drama. Chaplin's second feature, A Woman of Paris (1923) was a drama, and Harold Lloyd's third feature (his first planned for that length), Grandma's Boy (1922), previewed as a drama before he and producer Hal Roach decided to pepper it with gags. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's comedies were more along the lines of drawing room comedies than gag comedies.

It would be easy, but erroneous, to dismiss short comedies as the minor league equivalent of their longer cousins. Short comedies existed at their own level. As historian Joe Adamson discussed in a recent interview, exhibitors considered their short subjects just as important as the feature. This can be seen in photographs of theatre marquees of the time.

It is also a mistake to assume that these films were made cheaply. Certainly independent producers would spend as little as possible, and there were dozens of small producers, often releasing their films on a states rights basis. But the main comedy studios specialized in short comedies, and that was the foundation of their success, not features. Sennett stopped making features in the early twenties when he lost Mabel Normand. After Hal Roach lost Harold Lloyd, the producer began a series of westerns starring Rex the Wonder Horse. Al Christie's Metropolitan Pictures in the late 1920s made mostly dramas.

The first recognition of the importance of silent film comedy was "Comedy's Greatest Era," a length article by James Agee in the September 5, 1949 issue of Life magazine (reprinted in "Agee on Film"). Agee saw one great producer- Mack Sennett- and "four master clowns." His chosen comedians were Chaplin (of course), Harry Langdon (with his greatness attributed to Frank Capra), Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd (barely mentioned). As Agee ties silent film comedy to Sennett, he concludes his introduction:
 

Had he done nothing else, Sennett would be remembered for giving a start to three of the four comedians who now began to apply their sharp individual talents to this newborn language. The one whom he did not train (he was on the lot briefly but Sennett barely remembers seeing him around) wore glasses, smiled a great deal and looked like the sort of eager young man who might have quit divinity school to hustle brushes. That was Harold Lloyd. The others were grotesque and poetic in their screen characters in degrees which appear to be impossible when the magic of silence is broken. one, who never smiled, carried a face as still and sad as a daguerreotype through some of the most preposterouly ingenious and visually satisfying physical comedy ever invented. That was Buster Keaton. One looked like an elderly baby and, at times, a baby dope fiend; he could do more with less than any other comedian. That was Harry Langdon. One looked like Charlie Chaplin, and he was the first man to give the silent language a soul.
 

In retrospect, it seems amazing that Agee completely missed the Hal Roach studio, where Lloyd got his training and became a star. Roach's comedies are beloved today because his comedy is based on characters, not situations. This was clear from Robert Youngson's compilation features, and Charlie Chase, and Laurel and Hardy continue to find new, appreciative audiences.

The Chaplin shorts were constantly reissued because Chaplin didn't own them, but his later films were unavailable. Harold Lloyd bought his shorts back from Roach and Pathe in 1939, only to keep them out of distribution. Starting in the 1950s, Raymond Rohauer began to acquire rights to the films of Buster Keaton and Mack Sennett, resulting in only limited availability.

Most people were introduced to short comedies when the shorts appeared on television in new versions. In 1960 the silent Our Gang comedies were reedited with narration and released as Mischief Makers. The next year other Hal Roach and Mack Sennett shorts were turned into Comedy Capers. The two reel Christie comedies were chopped up into 108 twelve minute television episodes. Weiss Bros. comedy shorts emerged in 1963 as The Chuckle Heads. In each case the surviving negatives or prints of the original films were destroyed in the process and the unused sections discarded.

Jay Ward's Fractured Flickers used silent footage to lampoon the original films, while Charlie Chaplin Comedy Theatre in the mid-sixties presented a variety of Chaplin's comedies more or less intact. The exception was the lovingly produced Laurel and Hardy Lafftoons (1978). Despite their shortcomings, all of these series and the Robert Youngson features introduced a new generation to silent short comedies.

Short comedies were available in film formats for purchase from Blackhawk Films. Kent Eastin of Blackhawk noted that while most people had a favorite genre, everybody likes comedies, and Blackhawk released dozens of them. While the company annoyed collectors by its habit of removing the original main and end titles and substituting its own, but image quality of their 16mm, Super8 and 8mm releases was usually excellent.

The critical opinion of the original films has shifted in the last decade due to the efforts of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (http://www.struinfo.it/fierapn/cimuto.htm), and its associated journal Griffithiana (http://jhupress.jhu.edu/journals/griffithiana/index.html). The 1994 festival was devoted to short comedies and resulted in several scholarly articles that placed the comedians and their accomplishments in historical context.

The Slapstick Encyclopedia

A variety of the best and most representative silent short comedies has been released as The Slapstick Encyclopedia. All eight video programs are now available from Kino on Video at $25, or two sets of four tapes each for $90. They have been compiled into two laserdisc sets by Image Entertainment, of which the first is already available at $125. A complete list of the titles of the shorts is posted on our page of New and Upcoming Releases.

The programs includes short text introductions by Joe Adamson, and each film has one or more historical text titles. The shorts are grouped by theme (early comedies, comediennes, chases), star (Chaplin, Keaton, Arbuckle, Al St. John), or producer (Hal Roach, Mack Sennett). Each tape runs at least two hours, so the laserdisc sets clock in at eight hours.

In support of the series, Kino has posted a very nice overview article by series co-producer Joe Adamson at http://www.kino.com/slap1.html

City Lights

Another in the excellent laserdisc series "Chaplin: A Legacy in Laughter," City Lights is both Charlie Chaplin's finest achievement and one of the best produced laserdiscs of a silent film. Now that CBS/Fox laserdiscs are distributed by Image Entertainment, the price is reduced from $70 to a more affordable $50. The image quality of the program is excellent, and it is a welcome reminder of what a well crafted film Chaplin created with his nearly improvisational filmmaking style.

The laserdisc presents the film on three CAV sides with a few special features. The most controversial is a 1989 recording of the original score, conducted by Carl Davis. The 1931 score was conducted by Alfred Newman, based on themes composed by Chaplin.

The proponents of this new performance point out that the original recording was low fidelity and that the new recording more accurately presents what Chaplin would have done had modern technology been available at the time. The original recording of the score for City Lights has about the same frequency response as AM radio. Even with today's technology, little could be done to improve it, beyond the removal of background noise, clicks and pops. Since Chaplin modified his other silent films decades after their initial release, they conclude that the new version would likely meet with Chaplin approval if he were still alive.

The opponents argue that to modify the film is to tamper with an original artwork, and that it is presumptuous to assume that Chaplin would have wanted his film changed in any way.

Regardless of which side of the argument you choose, this brings up many interesting issues of the integrity of creative works. Scores are usually rerecorded because the technical limitations of the original recording limited the film's commercial value. However, the new recordings have seldom permanently displaced the original.

For one reissue of Fantasia, Disney replaced the Leopold Stokowsky-conducted score with the same music conducted by Irwin Kostal. Subsequent reissues reverted to the original soundtrack. Orson Welles' Othello suffered from poor sound recording during the original post-production, so the original score was newly recorded and paired with the original dialogue. The reviews were scathing. Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky toured with a live performance of its original score by Sergei Prokofiev, and was very well received.

Like Nevsky, the new score for City Lights was really created for live performances. There has to be a reason to attract an audience for a beloved, yet familiar film, and live performances of film music have proven successful.

Chaplin's films before City Lights were shown with a variety of music scores. When Chaplin recorded scores for his silent films, he chose to compose new music rather than use the period scores. And Chaplin never hesitated to "improve" the original films by cutting scenes or selecting alternate takes. So, who is to say what Chaplin would have chosen?

Fortunately, the laserdisc format supports two different soundtracks, so it provides the original 1930 performance on the analog tracks and the new Carl Davis recording on the digital tracks. A 13 minute filmed interview with Davis gives more information on the production of the new score including changes from the printed score made in the original recording sessions. Some of Chaplin's original story notes are reproduced. While a few of the originals are shown, mostly they have been retyped for legibility. Chaplin began City Lights with an outline of the story, filling in details during filming. There is a lengthy "story sequence" dated September 10, 1928 which shows the basic elements of the blind flower seller and the millionaire already in place, though Chaplin's character is "The Duke." Later story notes detail gag sequences, and they go into 1930, as Chaplin was still making up his mind until the end of filming in September 1930.

There are also selected pages from the pressbooks from the original release and the 1950 reissue. A section on financial information details the production cost of $1,568,353.86 as audited by Price Waterhouse, and the final production record (179 days worked over a period of 683 days). The last element is some theatre receipts for the opening engagements. These materials add significantly to our understanding of Chaplin's approach to filmmaking.

A Definitive Look at a Film Pioneer

For many silent movie pioneers the history of their careers- like most of their films- is nearly lost to the ages. George Kleine, Siegmund Lubin, Herbert Horkheimer, Edwin Thanhouser- each began in the nacient film industry before the turn of the century, and flourished for a while. These men adapted better than most to a rapidly evolving industry, and were successful as long as they anticipated the next change in the market. Each proved unable to either adapt to market consolidation or the evolution of the audience taste and retired from the industry- either rich, or bankrupt. Sustained success in this very tough business required remarkable tenacity, often less than a full complement of ethics, and a sense of showmanship. Many of these men were active in several areas of the industry, so that an downturn in production would be offset by their ownership of theatres or exchanges. These four were also regionally based- Kleine in Chicago, Lubin in Philadelphia, Horkheimer in Long Beach, and Thanhouser in New Rochelle.

Siegmund Lubin is an interesting subject for a biographer. He was a Jewish immigrant entrepreneur located in Philadelphia, rather than the main production centers of New York or Hollywood. Lubin was an outsider, but was canny enough to partner with the establishment when he would benefit. And most significantly, his rise and fall closely tracks the film industry from the very beginning to the rise of the feature film. Lubin's life and career is documented with great skill in the new biography "The King of the Movies: Film Pioneer Siegmund Lubin" by Joseph P. Eckhardt, published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, $55.

While Lubin was an early entrant in the motion picture industry, he was seldom a trailblazer. His projectors built on the work of others, and while he collected patents, they seldom proved valuable. Lubin was part philanthropist and part con man. He looked after his employees and was devoted to his family. At the same time, he flaunted outside authority and was notorious for selling unauthorized copies of other company's films. His own productions were always several years behind the times, losing ground even further as the industry shifted to narrative films. The stories were usually derivative and Lubin's empire did not survive the transition to features.

Born in Germany, on his second trip to the United States Lubin settled in Philadelphia. He was an optician, but he made his mark by selling eyeglasses in volume, expanding into the production of lantern slides. He bet his future on the movies. He wisely put the optical shop in his wife's name, while investing all of his time and resources in "Life Motion Pictures." Building on the work of C. Francis Jenkins, Lubin constructed his own combined camera/projector. He improved his Cinegraph, while reducing the price so by 1898, you could buy a machine with four films for $75.

Lubin's customer was the itinerant showman, ignored by many of his competitors who sold to storefront theatres. Lubin’s background was selling optical materials at fairs and expositions. Selling wholesale to potential exhibitors, he set up demonstration theatres at the 1899 National Export Exposition in Philadelphia, and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.

Lubin was first sued by Edison in 1898, and a total of six lawsuits over nine years cost Lubin all of the profits he had accumulated from the film business. Lubin delighted in going up against the great Edison, and was brazen. In 1902 he duped an Edison film, Launching the Kaiser's Yacht- an event that was filmed only by Edison cameras. The inventor sued over this piracy and lost on a technicality. A triumphant Lubin ran an advertisement trumpeting "Lubin is Again Victorious" and offering duped copies of another Edison film- at a discount price! When Edison won his patent suit against the Biograph camera, Lubin defiantly moved his camera manufacturing to Germany. After Biograph won on appeal, he restarted production in Philadelphia.

Lubin's initial releases were actualities, or films of actual events. The near amateurishness of Lubin's filmmaking technique has a certain charm. Lubin used his backyard of his home for filming, and in 1898 the Jewish producer filmed the Passion Play there, casting family, friends, and neighbors with Lubin himself playing several roles.

In 1899 Lubin moved his production to a roof in a low rent business district. He ventured into narrative films with a scene by scene remake of Edison's The Great Train Robbery. Lubin’s first original narrative film wasn't produced until 1904, which left him significantly behind his competitors. Lubin moved into exhibition for a time, and by 1908 claimed 100 houses in six states (the actual number was closer to 17).

Eckhardt develops an effective argument that one of the reasons that Lubin focused so much attention on duping the films of other producers was that his own films were so incompetently made. Lubin better marketer than filmmaker, and his weekly trade advertisements were audacious and always entertaining. Given that there was widespread recognition of the lamentable quality of his productions, Eckhardt notes that "no other pioneer film-maker institutionalized the production of poor-quality films the way that Lubin did."

To expand production beyond Lubinville in Philadelphia, Lubin set up other studios in Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Florida, a traveling company in the Southwest and the Philadelphia suburb of Betzwood. Eckhardt gives each good coverage, with special attention to director and star Romaine Fielding. If the headquarters had been as successful as those spinoffs, the company might have had a better chance of survival.

With the industry consolidating, Lubin chose to join the forces he had spent years fighting, and joined the Patents trust. As part of the Motion Picture Patents Company, Lubin abandoned manufacturing, his distribution exchanges and expanding his network of theatres and put all of his efforts into filmmaking. This was arguably the area of the industry where he was weakest, but the trust had a monopoly on production and distribution. Since the Patents Company's distributor, General Film, paid for films by the foot, the trust would make money for its members, regardless of the quality of their productions.

While the Patents Trust had financed Lubin's continued success, it became the anchor that would drag him down. The industry was shifting to longer films by 1912, and the bottom dropped out of the market for short films. Lubin features were weak, and General Film was ineffective at selling features. Lubin faced a huge increase in production costs while his income from the trust dried up, and his efforts to increase the efficiency of his operations were too late. This problem was exacerbated by a disastrous vault fire which cost him several films not yet released and his opportunity to get revenue from rereleasing older films.

One area that the author does not explore is comparing Lubin's success with that of fellow German immigrant Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal. Lubin lacked Laemmle's foresight, and was also less ambitious. Laemmle was more focused and beat the Patents Company as an outsider.

As a researcher, I am often more impressed by sources than results, but this is an interesting, often completely fresh story, well told. You do not have to be interested in early motion pictures to find this a fascinating story. Eckhardt has synthesized his research so we don’t get hung up on mini-biographies of long-forgotten players, extended plot synopses, or what "Moving Picture World" said about some long-forgotten film. The only element missing from this book is a filmography, but that would rightly be a volume of its own.

Lubin's biographer managed to interview two dozen people who knew Lubin or worked on his films. The book has many illustrations, most credited to the Theater Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia. While the Lubin Collection there contains the company's scrapbooks from 1912-1916, Lubin's biographer also reviewed every imaginable journal and newspaper for references to the studio, and trial transcripts of the many lawsuits involving Lubin. As the author noted, "They were the next best thing to interviews with those long-vanished folks." The website for the book is located at http://www.mc3.edu/gen/faculty/jeckhard/lubin.htm
 
This issue's reviews include the recent releases Cobra and Atlantis.
 Remember to visit this month's edition of The Silent Bookshelf, the companion site of Silent Film Sources. This month profiles the career of Robert Flaherty and his groundbreaking documentary features Nanook of the North and Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

News for July, 1998

End of One Era, Beginning of the Next

Twenty years ago, the availability of silent films on Super 8 had boomed beyond most film collector's wildest dreams. Designed as a relatively low-cost home movie format, millions of Super 8 cameras were sold after their introduction in 1965. Super 8 featured a noticeably larger image size than the regular 8 format it replaced, along with an optional magnetic sound track. The wide acceptance of Super 8 meant that projectors were in many homes. Since there was a limit on how many times you could show your friends home movies of your trip to the beach, many owners looking for other films to show were introduced to silent films.

At the height of the format's popularity in the late 1970s, the Charlie Chaplin features and shorts were released in licensed versions that included Chaplin's orchestral scores. Blackhawk Films offered Super 8 collectors the Time-Life versions of Harold Lloyd's features such as Grandma's Boy, Fox features including What Price Glory, Riders of the Purple Sage, The Iron Horse, Sunrise and Seventh Heaven, and was soon to add the films of Mary Pickford. These Super 8 prints were not inexpensive, but these long desired titles were finally available to collectors. The quality of the Blackhawk releases was uniformly disappointing, and they truly suffered in comparison to the outstanding quality of the Chaplin releases.

The market for these films on Super 8 soon imploded in the face of home video. Video's wider availability and more popular titles were fatal to a competitive film format that required the user to thread a projector, set up a screen and darken the room. Also an ill-timed dramatic increase in the cost of silver, a key ingredient in film stock, made Super 8 even less appealing to price sensitive consumers. Even the best video presents a lower quality image than Super 8 (in terms of resolution and contrast), yet there is no arguing against the greater convenience and much lower price of video. The October-November 1977 Blackhawk catalog offered a special deal on the Sony Betamax Videocassette Recorder: "There's no need for a projector or screen!" This early VCR was $1199.95, with 60-minute blank tapes for $14.88.

Blackhawk Films was the leading distributor to the Super 8 and 16mm market, selling prints to schools, libraries and collectors. The Laurel and Hardy comedies from Hal Roach Studios were their most popular offerings, and many other, often obscure films from the silent era were also available. But to a large extent, the appeal of these titles was a result of the lack of competition from more popular titles. Before video, if you were interested in classic Hollywood films, little was available beyond Laurel and Hardy (and two reel shorts are more affordable than features when you are buying film). With thousands of titles soon available on video, many one-time Laurel and Hardy fans turned to more desirable titles- whether Patton or bootleg copies of Star Wars and Superman. Also at its height in the 1970s, many of Blackhawk's faithful customers had memories of the silent era. This audience was aging as video superseded film, and had yet to be replaced by a new generation of enthusiasts.

While there are several individuals who collect silent films on 16mm in the United States, most of us are forced by cost, accessibility (or sheer lack of storage space) to choose from the titles available on video or laserdisc. The 12 inch laserdisc most closely parallels the old market for Super 8. Each were designed for presentation in the home, and now it is laser's turn to be supplanted by a new, cheaper and more mainstream technology. Laser's killer is DVD, which promises (and delivers) the same or better quality at a cheaper price. Just as Super 8 was snuffed out at its height in the midst of the release of many never before available titles, the waning days of laserdisc have seen a stream- a near flood- of releases remarkable for their quality, presentation and (until now) rarity.

Who would have anticipated laserdisc releases of boxed sets of Soviet and German silent classics, the films of Harry Langdon, Cecil B. DeMille, or short films of D.W. Griffith? Individual titles once only seen in adequate 16mm prints are mastered for laser from 35mm, including Cobra, with Rudolph Valentino and Henry King's Tol'able David. The Blackhawk Films Super 8 Orphans of the Storm (running 120 minutes at sound speed) was supplanted by the Image Entertainment release at 150 minutes with historically accurate tints and a rendering of the score that accompanied the original release. Many of these titles are released on video first, but the projects depend on the income from laser to make the project feasible.

We are listening to the death rattle of the beloved laserdisc. Sales of laser players were 275,000 annually only a few years ago. Now player sales are so few they are no longer even tracked by industry analysts. Even at their height, laserdisc sales of silent titles averaged under 1,000 units (and have rarely exceeded 2,500 units). However, sales of silent films have not fallen to the same degree as the rest of the laser market. The largest laser distributor, Image Entertainment, told Video Business that laser remains 80% of their disc sales, though they expect that to drop to 70% by the end of the year. DVD is gaining fast and is benefiting from owners of newly purchased DVD players snatching up everything in sight. I was able to see sales figures on one classic sound title released on laser and DVD. The laserdisc sold just over 1400 copies since its release in 1995, while the DVD had sold slightly more copies after only two months in release. The $25 list price of that DVD makes it an impulse purchase, rather than an investment, and increases the likelihood that the new format will achieve the wide acceptance that escaped its larger cousin.

Many of the Super 8 titles took many years to reach laserdisc if they made the trip at all. While the Chaplin titles were the subject of an exceptional laserdisc series (discussed below), the Harold Lloyd titles never made the journey, and the Fox Video Sunrise was as late and unexpected on laserdisc as it had been on Super 8. All of the silent films released on DVD to date were originally prepared for video or laser, and are in the genre of horror, science fiction or fantasy, with the happy exception of the Chaplin Mutuals. If there are any lessons here, it may be that if you are tempted by a current or past laserdisc release you should snatch it up now, and not assume you will see it on DVD.

More Laser Titles to DVD

The finest laserdisc releases with the widest appeal are continuing to arrive on laserdisc. It is amazing to me how a film can go from rare to common overnight, but that is what happened.

The Cat and the Canary has never been a lost film, but it has never been readily available. This was especially disappointing as it was the best of the silent era "old dark house" genre, and was directed by Paul Leni at the height of Universal's German expressionist period.

This shortfall has been remedied by the Image Entertainment DVD release ($30), which follows their laserdisc release ($40) and the VHS edition from Kino on Video ($25). With the addition of Harold Lloyd's Haunted Spooks to round out the program, this is a very enjoyable program. We posted a full review of The Cat and the Canary when it was released on laserdisc.

Vampyr was a popular "art house" film back in the days when it was difficult to see the classic Universal horror films. It is an art film because it was made by Carl-Theodor Dreyer, the great Danish director of The Passion of Joan of Arc. It is an early sound film, not a silent, but Dreyer was far more interested in images than dialogue, so it plays like a silent film. We have posted a full review later in this issue.

Chaplin Films Come Down to Earth

Among the very finest laserdiscs ever prepared were the Chaplin: A Legacy of Laughter series released by Fox Video. The videocassette release were the same as the theatrical versions. These represented Chaplin's final word on his silent films, with some editing and music scores prepared for reissue. David Shepard, producer of the laserdiscs, chose to restore the films back to their original release versions, with restored scenes, the proper projection speeds, with extensive supplementary material, and windowboxed to the original aspect ratio.

The laserdiscs were timed to the release of Richard Attenborough's Chaplin film biography, but did not meet Fox Video's expectations, and were a commercial failure. There were too many releases in a short period of time, and at $70 each, they were too expensive. Many of the films, such as City Lights, were presented in the CAV format, and presenting 90 minute films on two discs added to the price.

Fortunately, the discs are still in print, and Image Entertainment has been selectively lowering the list prices to $50, as part of their "Lasers for Less" program. These titles are now more affordable, and are a reasonable price for such elaborate productions. The first two titles with the lower prices were City Lights and The Circus. Image has also announced the upcoming repricing of Modern Times and Monsieur Verdoux.

These titles can be recommended without reservation. Rather than discuss the content of the films, I will discuss the supplementary material provided with The Circus and cover City Lights next month.

The Circus

The Circus is one of Chaplin's least pretentious films, and one of his funniest. The humor is closer to slapstick than many of his others, with less of a requirement that the viewers accept Chaplin's sentiment for the film to be effective. The production was one of his most troubled, as a divorce action with Lita Grey caused the production to be suspended for eight months, and he lost a lot of time when all of the circus sets burned to the ground.

To keep busy while the sets were being rebuilt, Chaplin filmed a sequence in a café which expanded the competition between the tramp and his romantic rival. Seemingly Chaplin never cut the scene together, and it was edited from the various takes for the 1980 documentary, The Unknown Chaplin. For the laserdisc release of The Circus, series producer David Shepard uses a selection from the first 200 takes from the sequences to show in detail how the Chaplin built the scene through rehearsals. Shepard narrates, and there is no music.

This is similar to master class with a director. Shepard does not present every take, and at one point the narration says '48 slates later' and not a whole lot has changed. (It must have been agonizing to be an actor on a Chaplin film). Chaplin liked long takes with the fixed camera set back far enough to keep his entire image on screen. That gave him room to move spontaneously throughout the frame, and stage the scene so that the audience would see and appreciate the gags. Chaplin is meticulous in his staging, and experimentation with different reactions. Various takes show him experimenting with the placement of a menu on table, and how to place a chair so it can be pulled out from under him.

The laserdisc also includes excerpts from the daily production reports for The Circus. The production began on November 2, 1925, and the first sequence filmed was Chaplin's tightrope act being disrupted by escaped monkeys. Discovery that the negative was scratched required the first 20 days of work to be reshot (and the lab technicians to be replaced). The café sequence was begun on day 120, and required only eight shooting days. The final production report shows that the film concluded production on November 19, 1927 after 633 days, of which 176 were working, and 467 were idle. A total of 211,104 feet of film were shot, with 6,500 used in the final cut. The supplement also includes eight set drawings by Charles "Danny" Hall.

A New and Important Book on Charlie Chaplin

A reference book you're likely to actually use, "The Chaplin Encyclopedia" is a cornucopia of interesting facts, trivia and analysis of Charlie Chaplin and his films. There have been many, many books on Chaplin, and the last few biographies have been unsatisfying. A biography should focus on the subject's life; since all the evidence shows that Chaplin was not a nice person, these books have emphasized his peccadilloes, rather than what interests most of us- his creative process and the films that resulted.

"The Chaplin Encyclopedia" discusses Chaplin's films and his co-workers, with a special emphasis on how the films were influenced by his upbringing and music hall career. In what would normally be a very restricting format, author Glenn Mitchell has produced a literate and extremely well researched volume that is part biography and part "Films of" book. Unlike the chronological arrangement of a biography, Mitchell's research is presented in alphabetical order.

Since the book is a British publication from Batsford (http://www.batsford.com/Film), the British perspective and magazine references are initially a jolt as the discussion of Chaplin's Keystone films covers their reception in Britain, not the U.S. However, there is plenty to compensate, as when Mitchell notes that "Chaplin's early years were spent mostly within a comparatively small radius, encompassing Kennington, Brixton and the area leading up to Westminster." These were home "to a large number of theatrical types, for whom the attraction at that time was an excellent late-night tramcar service from the West End [theatrical district]." This book does an excellent job of adding this native perspective to Chaplin's background.

Each released Chaplin film has its own entry with production credits, alternate and reissue titles, a listing of the cast, followed by extended synopses. Each film also receives a lengthy discussion. The Adventurer (1917) is the starting point for a discussion of Chaplin's directorial technique with the Mutual films including quotes from a contemporary article in "Pictures and Picturegoer." Mitchell has tried to identify all of the players in each film, especially useful since early films had little or no cast credits. For example, we learn that Cecile Arnold played the seductive waitress in Dough and Dynamite.

The subjects include Chaplin's birth, childhood and early stage appearances. For example, the lengthy entry on "The Karno Company" follows Chaplin's early career with the troupe, referring to transcripts of the sketches preserved in the Lord Chamberlain's Theatre Collection at the British Library, noting when routines later appeared in Chaplin's early films. Mitchell also points out that Karno's troupe (including Chaplin) actually made two American tours, and it was the second one in 1913 where Chaplin was signed by Keystone. In fact, Mitchell builds his case so convincingly that it makes perfect sense when he notes that "in later interviews, Hal Roach, who worked alongside Chaplin in 1915, expressed the controversial opinion that Chaplin's pictures started to 'go down' once he had exhausted the Karno backlog" of skits and situations.

Mitchell devotes a lot of effort to comparing some of the different editions of Chaplin's silent films. Chaplin usually used multiple cameras and prepared several negatives for each film. These versions differ by camera angle, or sometimes feature different takes with slightly different performances or bits of business. As one example, Mitchell writes that "it is known that the original negative of A Dog's Life had deteriorated considerably by the 1940s, for which reason [Chaplin cameraman] Rollie Totheroh, whose photographic duties extended to archival maintenance, was obliged to compile a new master incorporating alternate takes of at least some shots." Mitchell continues with an elaborate comparison of a British print and the version contained within The Chaplin Revue. He notes "the justly famous and much-imitated- scene where Charlie's hands substitute for those of the unconscious Albert Austin offers similar variations, both in Charlie's mime (each print has business absent from the other) and in terms of editing." The original includes an insert shot, while the revised sequence included in The Chaplin Revue is uninterrupted.

Mitchell wryly notes that while the original advertising for The Kid promised 'six reels of joy,' Chaplin so heavily cut the reissue version that the film became five reels of fun. There is also a long discussion comparing the original and 1942 release versions of The Gold Rush. I find this minutia fascinating, and it serves to show that with Chaplin's films there is no single definitive version and there is always more to learn.

In adding this volume to my shelf, I counted that I have 32 other books by or about Charles Chaplin. Second only to David Robinson's "Chaplin: His Life and Art," "The Chaplin Encyclopedia" is clearly my favorite for sharing the enjoyment of Chaplin's films.

Classics of Early Soviet Cinema II

While Soviet cinema is remembered for several key directors, including Sergei Eisenstein, hundreds of films were produced by the Soviet Union during the silent era. The new Image Entertainment release Classics of Early Soviet Cinema II presents a representative sample of the finest films to emerge under the Soviet system. While the films represent different genres and directors and filmmaking styles, the common element is their high quality. Arsenal (1928), By the Law (1926) and Storm Over Asia (1928) are mentioned in most surveys of classic cinema, while Salt for Svenetia (1930) and Turksib (1929) are undeservedly forgotten and hold their own in comparison. Behzin Meadow (1937) is a 1967 reconstruction of Eisenstein's banned drama that was destroyed during World War II. The sole sound film of the set is The Deserter (1933).

While any film produced during the Soviet era must have some political content, it is blessedly subdued in these films. It is certainly the case that on their original U.S. release, these films were as over-praised by left-wing film critics, as they were condemned as Communist propaganda by mainstream and right-wing critics. By the Law, set in Alaska, could pass as a melodrama from any country. All of the transfers are from restored 35mm materials, and Turksib is edited from the best of two 35mm prints. The music scores for the films are uniformly excellent. The Cyrillic intertitles are part of the visual fabric of the films. So in most cases, they are translated by subtitles (similar to a foreign language film).

We have discussed these films several times in previous issues, including a review of Turksib.

Origins of Film

The newly released laserdisc set Origins of Film (1900-1926) from Image Entertainment ($150) represents a remarkable assemblage of nearly forgotten films from the silent era. These six features and 20 shorts may not force a complete rewriting of film history, but they do require the viewer to reconsider the standard history of film. None of the films in the series are recognized classics of the medium, yet these titles demonstrate that in the pre-1920 period a wider range of filmmakers were able to address a wider range of subjects than was possible later.

If you ever attended a film convention (such as the annual Cinecon in Los Angeles or Cinefest in Syracuse), you would recognize the programming of good, but obscure independent features- entertaining, and seldom pretentious. The films are all of interest, either as enjoyable entertainment or for their subject matter or method of production. Though this set includes films from the early years of cinema, it makes no claim to be representative. The real purpose here is to fill gaps in our knowledge of film history- gaps that were never so evident before viewing this 570 minute, five disc/ten side laserdisc set.

Origins of Film (1900-1926) presents many films rescued during the early years of the American Film Institute and some important recent Library of Congress restorations. These films were all preserved by the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center or its predecessor, and offer unexpected pleasures. It is amazing that the private sector has not been able to make these films available to the public that financed their preservation, but we can be grateful that they are finally in release.

The films originated in 1994 as a series of six videocassettes- the Library of Congress Video Collection, released by Smithsonian Video. The themes that drove the selection for the series are not coincidentally the subject of much current academic research: race, gender and genre. The race films are Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1919), Scar of Shame (1926) produced by the white-financed Colored Players Film Corp., and a three minute 1923 DeForest Phonofilm with Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. Fascinating for its subject matter, Within Our Gates does little to establish Micheaux as an influential cinema stylist; his accomplishment was directing some 45 features against great odds. In the accompanying descriptive insert, series producer Scott Simmon notes, "as in Micheaux's novels, the film is structured through now-disconcerting flashbacks, digressions, and cutaways to distant stories, but the film is completely coherent on its own distinctive terms." The original film element is in rough shape with a fair amount of distracting damage that could have been removed digitally. Scar of Shame is a very good low-budget feature, typical of hundreds of others from the twenties except for the subject matter and black cast.

Films more interesting for their ambitions than their achievements are from women directors Alice Guy-Blache and Lois Weber. Guy-Blache began as secretary to Leon Gaumont, and directed films in France and the United States. She is represented by three films from 1913. Lois Weber was a director at Universal before striking out on her own on independent production, which resulted in an interesting feature, Too Wise Wives (1921).

The genres are animation (with 23 cartoons from 1900-21), the fantasy film (from 1914, The Patchwork Girl of Oz and A Florida Enchantment), and the gangster film, with The Narrow Road (1912), a Griffith Biograph, and Maurice Tourneur's 1915 Alias Jimmy Valentine, easily the best and most important film in the series.

Each film image is slightly overscanned, so that the original aspect ratios are compromised to fit the television ratio. The transfers are not very sharp, and are usually too bright, with a resulting loss of detail. Oddly, the video image is never sharp even when the image has detail. There is a haze over the video image, as if the analog tape master had been copied too many times. In general, the images are flat and contrasty, and there is far more video noise than film imperfections. Some of this may be the remarkable improvement in digital technology in the five years since these films were mastered. Nonetheless, on balance, Origins of Film (1900-1926) is highly satisfying.

The series was produced by Scott Simmon, curator of The Mary Pickford Theater in the Library of Congress from 1983 to 1988. Currently, he's Visiting Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and writing a book on Westerns for Cambridge University Press. Scott is author of "The Films of D.W. Griffith" (1993) and "King Vidor, American" (1988, co-authored with Raymond Durgnat). For the Library of Congress, he co-wrote (with Annette Melville) "Film Preservation 1993: A Study of the Current State of American Film Preservation" and "Redefining Film Preservation: A National Plan" (1994).

Silent Film Sources was fortunate to be able to interview Scott Simmon about this important release.

David Pierce: Were there any lessons you learned from curating the Library of Congress' Mary Pickford Theater which you were able to apply in this project?

 

Scott Simmon: Well, I did learn that there's a built-in frustration programming for a theater with only 64 seats. One of the impulses for this Library of Congress Video Collection is to make more widely available some relatively little-known silents that we showed to the Pickford's tiny audiences. The difference in programming for that theater from almost any other is that the film prints are already held physically in the Library's collection, so that curating for the Pickford also involved the secret fun of prowling film shelves, wandering in the maze of film-fan's heaven. Over the five years that I curated the theater in the 1980s, I probably watched "Reel 1" of more dreadful, forgettable films that anyone ever should, but I also came across films that, to me at least, were complete surprises, not yet part of official film history, and some of these have finally made their way into this collection.
David Pierce: How were the themes for each program determined? Are these films representative of the production of their respective periods, or did you try to identify films that were atypical in content, theme or production?
 
Scott Simmon: David Francis, Chief of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, was keen to begin experimenting with releasing on video some of the early holdings in the division that weren't restricted by copyright or other entanglements, and he talked with scholars and Library researchers about the film types they'd like to see available on video, especially for use in teaching. It's been particularly difficult to find early work by women and African American directors. Silent animation is a strength in the Library's collection so that was another obvious choice.
 
"Origins of the Gangster Film" and "Origins of the Fantasy Feature" were volume titles intended to give some sense of what people would be getting on videos with films that are quite unknown, such as Alias Jimmy Valentine (artistically the greatest film in the collection, I think) or A Florida Enchantment (a title that I had programmed into the Lesbian and Gay festival here in San Francisco—so it certainly can be seen in contexts other than fantasy). Although the six volumes have been bundled together on the videodisc set under that new (and presumptuous) title Origins of Film, they are really separate and more limited ideas.
David Pierce: The programs include many independent productions along with a number of studio films. Do you see the independents (Lois Weber, etc.) as more conservative or more adventurous in their content than the studios of the time?
 
Scott Simmon: Most of the films on these videos are relatively early silents, all before 1921 except for The Scar of Shame from 1926 and the sound experiment with Sissle and Blake from 1923, so there's less distinction between independents and studio films than there would be later. But it's true even then that independence allowed filmmakers to take on social topics that studios were already beginning to shy from. The two women directors here, Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber, owned their own studios or production companies, and one of the things that seems to have happened pretty rapidly within the studio system is a sort of sexual division of labor, so that women could be found as scenarists and editors, but seldom as directors—with the exception for a time of Universal studios, which employed Weber and several other women directors in the 1910s.
 
Among those represented on these videos, nobody was more adventurous than the African American director Oscar Micheaux, who had the freedom that comes from the lowest budget self-financing. The lynching scenes in Within Our Gates are like nothing that any studio ever came close to attempting and, when I've shown the film in festivals or to students, people still find it shocking. From his later sound films—after he'd gone bankrupt and found financiers who apparently allowed him to say most anything so long as he included song and dance—Micheaux has a reputation as something of primitive or simply a "bad" filmmaker, but his silents are less debatably astonishing. Sadly, of his twenty-seven or so silent features, only three are known to survive. Body and Soul (1925, which, as you know, Kino on Video put out recently on video) is interesting for Paul Robeson's dual role, but The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920, which survives slightly incomplete and with Belgian intertitles at the Museum of Modern Art) includes even more amazing scenes of the Ku Klux Klan running off black homesteaders. Studios, so far as I know, never remotely approached anything like that. (Editor's note: Within Our Gates and a restored version of The Symbol of the Unconquered will be broadcast on Turner Classic Movies in July).
David Pierce: Can you comment on creating new intertitles for Within Our Gates, and did you try to match Micheaux's style or the intertitles of the time?
 
Scott Simmon: Yes, it was a bit of a challenge to get this film to point where it was ready for public video. It survived only through a single print found in Spain's national film archive. That print had been distributed in Spain in the early 1920s and so had only Spanish intertitles. There doesn't seem to be any record of Micheaux's original titles, although in three cases the Spanish distributor was sloppy in cutting in his new titles and left brief frames of Micheaux's originals. Finding those frames was both heartening and disheartening—heartening because it was great to have samples of Micheaux's style and language but disheartening because it became clear that the Spanish distributor hadn't just translated Micheaux but had felt the need to explain contexts to Spanish audiences.
 
The new English titles are a retranslation back into English, which Alex Vargas, a bilingual San Francisco filmmaker, helped me with. For the new titles, it was also a great help that Micheaux had been a novelist before he was a filmmaker and had published—with the same independent self-financing—three novels between 1913 and 1917, so that I could draw on his diction and phrasing. Of course, silent film intertitles are a different, compressed form, so it helped too that one of his silents, Body and Soul, has survived with its original titles.
 
The Library of Congress is the only U.S. archive to run its own preservation lab, in Dayton, Ohio, and the new English-title print was created there. The Spanish intertitle print from which we worked is available at the Library of Congress in Washington for anyone who needs to see that original.
David Pierce: Are the visual qualities of the video presentation sufficient to capture the visual richness of the 35mm prints, or do the films have additional impact when seen projected?
 
Scott Simmon: Well, film archivists often tend to hate video, for the very reason your question suggests, and the current U.S. video standard is about as bad as any in the world. But if one thinks of video as an access medium, it's really effective for getting these films seen outside of archives.

The Library of Congress made a point in putting together this video series to also simultaneously make sure that that distribution copies in 35mm are available for all the titles that originated in 35mm. The Museum of Modern Art financed the cost of striking these prints and they are all currently available for rental in 35mm through the Museum of Modern Art's Circulating Film Library. (Of course, because they need to be screened at less then sound speed, these film prints do not include Phil Carli's fine piano scores that are on the videos)

My own sense is that video and 35mm are the two paths that distribution of silents will go for a time. There's little denying that 16mm distribution is dying.

David Pierce: The program notes indicate that some of the films are from 16mm source material. Was there a significant difference in the quality?
 
Scott Simmon: Yes, unless I'm misremembering now, I think that the only titles that were transferred to video from 16mm were in "The Origins of American Animation" volume. Generally, we tried to use only films that had been preserved in their original format because, as you're right to hint, even on video the quality in 16mm reduction prints is usually pretty noticeable. Animation line drawings don't use the tonal range of live action, so they hold up tolerably well in transfers from 16mm, I think.
David Pierce: How did you select the transfer speed for each film, and were you aiming for a natural, lifelike speed or were there contemporary records of the original projection speed?
 
Scott Simmon: Well, for better or worse, these are my subjective judgments for the frames-per-second speeds. If there were contemporary records I didn't find them. Essentially, I tried to rely on the conclusions that Kevin Brownlow came to about the subject of silent projection speeds in a wonderful article a few years back. Although there are qualifiers, his basic conclusion was that silent films seemed to have been shown originally just slightly faster than they were shot. That is, ever so slightly faster than "lifelike." One of the things you discover in trying to set the transfer speeds is that, although it's generally true that projection speeds increase over the years of the silent era, there are all sorts of variations. Nobody else's films seem to have quite as slow a frames-per-second speed as D.W. Griffith's, whose one reel The Narrow Road in this collection runs 17 minutes. Winsor McCay's films, on the other hand, have a very fast frames-per-second speed, as if he was trying to make his animation as smooth as possible. In any case, the variations of projection speeds is one of the great advantages of silents on video.
David Pierce: Have you received any feedback about the use of the programs in classrooms or on the choice of titles?
 
Scott Simmon: Well, I was told in what I hope was not an entirely unfriendly spirit that the choices were "affirmative action for film history"—because of the women and African American volumes. I wouldn't have put it quite that way, but it's true that early film history as it has been traditionally available could use some other voices.

If anyone has comments, I'd certainly love to hear them— at sasimmon@ucdavis.edu— especially as the Library of Congress wants to be able to continue this series if there is enough of an interest for it.

David Pierce: Why haven't other archives embraced this model of releasing films of historical value?
 
Scott Simmon: It's a good question, and I can't speak for them. Of course, a few other archives have done just that, among them the George Eastman House and Northeast Historic Film. UCLA, I understand, has collaborated with the Japanese American National Museum on a new CD-ROM. In my hats as a film fan and a teacher of film history, I wish more would follow. For a time in the past, I think there were philosophical objections for the reason that you suggested earlier, because of the ways that video is such a diminution of the theatrical experience and film's visual quality, which archives are devoted to trying to preserve. More practically than that, there's a substantial cost, initially at least, to putting films out on video and archives have had a hard time justifying that cost if it takes money from preservation copying, storage and on-site service.

My sense, however, is that all this is changing and that a number of archives will be releasing titles on video over the next couple of years. Ideally, archives will work together on this. This current series draws only from the Library of Congress holdings but, for instance, an "Origins of Animation" volume that drew more widely from American archives could be much more definitive.

David Pierce: Any hints on future releases from the Library?
 
Scott Simmon: The Library of Congress is talking with distributors about the possibility of another six volume series that we have tentatively put together. Personally, I'm most enthusiastic about an "Origins of the Western" volume that would include twelve films from before 1913, another volume on early Civil War films, which was quite an active genre even before The Birth of a Nation, and one on actualities and silent fiction films about American immigrants. To me, the most fascinating single film that would be released—in a second volume of early women directors—is Lois Weber's five-reel Where Are My Children? (1916), an astonishing drama about abortion. (The title comes from the line a husband shouts at his wife and her women friends, who have been secretly visiting an abortionist, a certain "Dr. Malfit.") The film had previously been missing a reel, but the Library is currently restoring it to full length. I do hope that we'll be able to continue this video series and get these films out into the world before too long.
 
Following are reviews of  Salt for Svenetia from the Classics of Early Soviet Cinema II laserdisc set, and Vampyr.

News for June, 1998

There was no news this month. It was a tough month with a lot of ill-timed business travel, and I just couldn't pull it off.

News for May, 1998

Les Vampires Comes to Video

The classic, but rarely seen, 1915 seven hour, ten-part serial by Louis Fueillade, Les Vampires has been announced for release on video by Water Bearer Films, http://www.waterbearer.com, a small New York video distributor. The release will be from 35mm elements, which are claimed will be superior to the 1995 French home video release.

In addition, the new video will be transferred at the appropriate speed, and tinted to match the original release, with night exteriors in blue, night interiors in amber, and day exteriors in green. The title cards are newly translated from the original French, and are created with the same font used by the French production. The music score is prepared by Robert Israel and performed by chamber orchestra using silent film compositions of the period. The entire release is produced by David Shepard.

The release date for this restoration is Halloween, 1998. It is clear that Water Bearer Films is doing their best to not discourage the impression that the film has something to do with the Dracula type of vampire, instead of the feminine vamp. I can do no better than Water Bearer's synopsis: "Les Vampires is an arch-criminal gang of brilliant but bloodthirsty thieves led by the indomitable and electrifying Irma Vep. The gang's exploits including the use of kidnapping, poison gas, heavy artillery, sexual domination, and murder to gain physical and psychological power over Paris' elite."

Water Bearer Films' other releases are a nice selection of mostly French foreign classics from the 1930s to the present, along with the notorious Russian film, Little Vera. Their other line is a series of films on gay and lesbian themes.

It is nice to see that with Kino on Video reducing the number of their video releases of silent films, that other distributors are filling the gap. Les Vampires is one of the most sought after films by collectors, and we can hope that this will lead to more releases of rare silents by Water Bearer Films.

"Silent Cinema" is World Cinema

Does the world need another picture book on silent films? I had my doubts until I picked up Joel E. Finler's new book "Silent Cinema: World Cinema Before the Coming of Sound" (Batsford, http://www.batsford.com/Film). The book does fill a need, as it ties European and American silent cinema into a cohesive whole. The narrative is intelligent and the pictures are well chosen. This is one of the finest introductory books on the silent era, and has something to offer both neophytes and those who have been watching silent films for years.

There is virtually a genre of picture books that try to give an overview of the silent era- usually the American silent film. Daniel Blum's 1953 "A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen" began its coverage in 1908, covering the era by year. William K. Everson's 1959 "Classics of the Silent Screen" reviewed 50 films and 75 stars. More recently, Ivan Butler's "Silent Magic" covers "The Early Years" in 12 pages, followed by a year-by-year review of 1920-29.

Joel Finler knows his films, and his film history. His earlier "The Hollywood Story" in the series of studio books ("The MGM Story" etc.), was a surprisingly intelligent attempt to place mainstream filmmaking in historical context. It is clear from "Silent Cinema" that Finler has actually seen the films he is writing about (which is regrettably not always a requirement for film scholarship). While he covers the classroom classics, the author includes intriguing discussions of recently discovered films such as Robert Weine's Furcht (Fear) (1917), with a supporting performance by Conrad Veidt.

Despite the cover photos of Rudolph Valentino and Lon Chaney, with "Silent Cinema" Finler is truly interested in giving equal emphasis to Europe and European filmmakers. Japanese silent cinema is dispensed with in two paragraphs at the very end, and there is no mention of Chinese or Indian production at all.

English pioneer Cecil Hepworth (Rescued by Rover) receives appropriate coverage, but since this is a book from a British publisher, I was relieved to see that British twenties cinema did not receive disproportionate attention. Unlike the Blum or Butler volumes, Finler's information is not presented with a year-by-year approach, and the depth of the coverage depends on the interest in the films. The first ten years, to 1905, discuss American and European accomplishments together, with more emphasis on Europe in the early years where they led world production. The subsequent chapters address each country, with equal space set aside for Europe (primarily Sweden, Germany, France, England and Russia) and the U.S.

"Silent Cinema" makes a concerted effort to broaden its view of historically or artistically important films beyond the recognized classics and best known filmmakers. While Chaplin and Griffith get their due, Finler also discusses Rex Ingram and Michael Curtiz. He also manages to discuss American films by studio and genre. There is also good coverage of the beginning of exhibition. The equal emphasis on Europe pays off as Finler shows how Hollywood recruited the best from each international cinema, strengthening the American films, while weakening their foreign competitors. While the text is illustrated with photographs, at the end of each chapter there are pictorial sections with full page photos. These are scene stills and a number of interesting behind the scenes photos. Regardless of the reader's current knowledge, "Silent Cinema" is a fine introduction and review of the European and American silent film era.

William Perry and Music from "The Silent Years"

Everyone has their own first vivid memory of seeing a silent film. For me, the beginning of this life-long interest was a presentation of The Beloved Rogue on public television in North Carolina. The film was a large budget John Barrymore vehicle, and it impressed me for its seamless narrative storytelling, the tints that highlighted the excellent quality print, and the well-executed piano score.

I subsequently learned that the only surviving print of the film had been rescued from John Barrymore's former mansion by its then current occupant, Edgar Bergan, and donated to the American Film Institute, and preserved by the Library of Congress. The film was part of the Emmy Award-winning PBS series "The Silent Years," produced by Paul Killiam, an unsung hero of the survival of silent films. The music score which stayed with me was by William Perry.

The initial series hosted by Orson Welles was followed by a second series hosted by Lillian Gish. Altogether, twenty-four films were presented- restored, tinted and scored- including The Gold Rush, The General, College,The Black Pirate, Orphans of the Storm, What Price Glory?, The Iron Horse, Sparrows, Blood and Sand, Tempest, It, and Down to the Sea in Ships. Many of these films are still in circulation, either on laserdisc from Voyager Press, Landmark Laservision or on video from Critics' Choice.

My view of several of these heroes has evolved over the years- the Killiam material on The Beloved Rogue is only 16mm, and none of the dozens of video distributors of the film have been able to access the 35mm material held by the Library of Congress. The tints were not those of the original release, and were stronger than silent films originally featured. And silent features were originally released with orchestral scores, not piano. Yet nearly 30 years later, this presentation of The Beloved Rogue has never been bettered.

I have heard hundreds of piano scores by numerous accompanyists, but the scores by William Perry have remained with me. They are as part of my life as other film music by Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. And if I had to choose between an antiseptic score of pre-existing classical music or a tailored piano score for a silent film, the piano would win out. Just as in the 1920s, there were afficiandos who insisted that films were best when projected by a handcranked system, I would vote for a pianist who can read a film and its audience.

A compact disc of William Perry's piano performances is now available, titled "The Beloved Rogue and Other Scores from The Silent Years" on the Premier Recordings label. It includes 50 minutes of cues from The General, The Mark of Zorro, The Beloved Rogue, The Gold Rush, Orphans of the Storm (one of my favorites), and Blood and Sand. Interested buffs can obtain the CD directly by sending a check for $17.00 (which includes shipping and handling) to Trobriand Music Company, Spencer Road, Austerlitz, NY 12017.

Before his recordings for "The Silent Years," William Perry was for many years the accompanist for silent film showings at New York's Museum of Modern Art. His musical background was more formal, with degrees in music from both Harvard and New York University, and having been a student of Paul Hindemith, Randall Thompson and Walter Piston. Following "The Silent Years," Perry became a producer, and I remember seeing his credit for producing and composing the music for several Mark Twain adaptations broadcast on PBS.

An Interview With William Perry

I am very pleased to be able to publish a recent interview with the composer/performer.

David Pierce: Your scores for "The Silent Years" generally feature one main theme which is used throughout the film. Would you watch the film and develop musical ideas, or did you have a library of compositions to draw from?

 

William Perry: In writing and preparing scores for any film, silent or sound, I have never drawn on a library of compositions -- mine or anyone else's. I have always viewed the films and composed my musical ideas on the basis of the film material on the screen. I have made it a rule to approach each silent film as if it has just been shot and never before seen by the public. I would then do my very best to compose a score that I think the director would have asked for had he been there to discuss it with me, and to my great pleasure, I did in fact have a chance to talk with such directors as King Vidor and Raoul Walsh while they were alive and thus involve their ideas in my compositions. Alas, I wish I could have done the same with D.W.Griffith, John Ford and others.

As to the use of a main theme, yes, I have always found it an important unifying factor in scoring a film to have an appropriate main theme that I can vary in presentation and that the audience will recognize as it returns. I think it was David Raksin who was advised when composing "Laura" that if he had a great melody, he should bring it back as often as possible -- and he had a great melody!

It seems simplistic, but the return of title music at the end of a film -- often starting slowly or "sneaking in" and then building to a grand climax -- provides a satisfying sense of completion for the audience and not incidentally helps the director by reinforcing the design and completing the arc of his film. Even a weak film gains if the music suggests that the director had carefully structured his piece and led us inexorably to a well-planned conclusion.
 

David Pierce: Did you address the scores for "The Silent Years" differently than you would treat a live performance at MoMA?

 

William Perry: Let me say first that the classic silent films -- such as the ones on the recording -- were assiduously studied and composed with care and devotion. Films like The Crowd, What Price Glory?, Broken Blossoms, Battleship Potemkin -- virtually everything of Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd -- demand the finest music that one can create, and I prepared them for live performance or recording with equal measures of devotion. Incidentally, I think I probably recorded in entirety -- primarily for television and video release -- at least 60 films, and in live performance I probably played at least 500 different films.

I should point out that quite often I did not have the opportunity to screen a film in advance of playing it, and that is when the art of "instant composition" came to the fore: improvising musical material as the scenes unfolded on the screen. I learned to read the intertitles about twice as fast as any of the audience so that I could reflect the mood of the dialogue while the title was still on the screen. If there was a laugh to be had, I was usually delivering appropriate music before the audience reached the end of the title. This business of playing at sight is particularly tricky because the pianist is providing not only music to support the dialogue and mood but also must reinforce every sound effect: closing doors, train whistles, gunfire, etc.

I remember once playing at sight a lesser Rudolph Valentino film about the merchant marine [Moran of the Lady Letty, 1922]. A ship was sailing serenely across the screen when one of my piano pedals got stuck. I continued to play in the style of "Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage" while glancing down briefly to free the pedal. When I looked at the screen again, no more than nine or ten seconds later, the ship was gone and there was only empty ocean. After the film was over, my projectionist asked me why I had so totally underplayed that exciting moment when the ship exploded! Rule One: never take your eyes off the screen!
 

David Pierce: Were the scores for "The Silent Years" written out, or did you work from a general plan of what you wanted to play in each sequence?

 

William Perry: The main themes were all written out and I had typed pages that listed all of the action and events of the film, with particular attention to the visuals that needed sound reinforcement. I recorded one double reel at a time (about 18 to 20 minutes).
 
David Pierce: Which films, and which scores, are your favorites?

 

William Perry: Well, I love all six of the films on the CD not only for their quality and entertainment value, but also because they provide such an interesting array of historical periods and places: the French Revolution, the Klondike, the Civil War, Spanish bull-fighting, France at the time of Louis XI, Old Mexico -- and each film demands a specific musical style, no two of them alike.  I think my years of classical training in various musical styles and periods helped me immeasurably, and I hope I captured the spirit of each piece.

Overall, the films I have most enjoyed playing over the years would include The Gold Rush, The General (has there every been a more perfect film?), The Beloved Rogue (a secondary film, but such fun to play because Barrymore is given every possible acting challenge and the love scenes are so juicy!), The Crowd, Intolerance (the Beethoven's 9th of silent films), all of the Chaplin Mutual shorts, The Wind (what a workout!) and some of the extraordinary foreign films like Storm Over Asia.
 

David Pierce: Can you comment on the difference in effect on the audience viewing a film between a newly composed score like yours, and the original twenties period scores? (I am thinking of the difference between compiling existing music versus original themes.)

 

William Perry: I could comment at length about the differences between the film scores used in the Twenties and the ones that are newly composed, but let me just make a few points. First, there were some interesting scores from the period, including the Wilson scores for Doug Fairbanks and the Satie music for Entr-Acte, etc. But on the whole, the compilations of folk music and classical tunes were pretty primitive and simply sound dated and deficient to today's ears (taking nothing away from the fun of hearing a college orchestra pounding out the Breil compilation for The Birth of a Nation, etc.)

I've always felt that my job was to make each silent film as effective and vital as I could for the audiences of today.  This means that if I'm playing for a John Ford western or historical epic -- The Iron Horse perhaps -- it just won't work to put together a bunch of "So Long, Old Paint" tunes and expect a post-Shane and High Noon audience to be as excited and moved as Ford would want them to be.  Like it or not, we have grown up in a world of wonderful film music from the likes of Steiner and Tiomkin, Korngold, John Williams -- and while the musical vocabulary must always be one that was available to the silent period, the themes themselves should reflect what we have come to think of as Western or swashbuckling or whatever if we want maximum response from our audience of today.

You will have noticed, I'm sure, that I have been very influenced by Korngold (as John Williams has been by Elgar), and such moments as the Love Music in The Beloved Rogue are very much in the Korngold tradition. So is almost all of the score I did in the second "Silent Years" series for Tempest, another minor but enjoyable Barrymore film.

I don't doubt that some purists would like to present the silent film canon exactly as seen and heard in the Teens and Twenties. I think this is fine for historical purposes and it actually works pretty well for jazz-age comedies, but for maximum effectiveness in the presentation today of a great silent film, I support the concept of a well-written original score that makes that film come alive as a living, breathing  piece of art and not just a curiosity piece.
 

David Pierce: Any final words?

 

William Perry: My last comment on silent film piano accompanying concerns something that is often overlooked. The pianist who plays non-stop for a two or three hour film must have a considerable reservoir of pure stamina -- more than the concert pianist who takes breaks between pieces and movements. I once played for an Abel Gance film (La Roue) that ran from 8:00 in the evening until 2:00 in the morning. At the end there were exactly three people left in the audience -- one genuine film buff and two who were asleep.
 

Three Garbo Features- One Happy Ending

The long-awaited laserdisc box set The Garbo Silents is now available from Image Entertainment. As discussed in previous issues of Silent Film Sources news, this set was long in preparation and includes three Garbo features previously unavailable on laserdisc. Torrent (1926) was Garbo's first American feature, Love (1927), an adaptation of Anna Karenina, was another teaming with John Gilbert, and Wild Orchids (1929) was an exotic story set in colonial Java. A special feature is the surviving nine minute excerpt from The Divine Woman (1928), presented with the original Russian titles, and subtitles in English. The print was pretty beat up, but the excerpt is a complete sequence with Garbo and Lars Hanson. Torrent has a nicely executed electronic score by Arthur Barrow; Love has an orchestral score composed and conducted by Arnold Brostoff, recorded at a live performance at Royce Hall, UCLA; Wild Orchids offers the original Movietone score; and The Divine Woman has an orchestral score by Carl Davis.

This issue's reviews include the new deluxe laserdisc release of Sunrise, and two of the films in The Garbo Silents: Torrent and Wild Orchids.

The links for past issues of Silent Film Sources News are:

1996: November - December 1997: January - April | May - August | September - December 1998: January - April
 

Your input is invited. Send your comments on silent films, or notes on upcoming releases to David Pierce, sunrise@dc.infi.net

© 1998 David Pierce