Yesterday, Rob and I headed up to the Music Box which is having a silent film festival, On the second Saturday of each month, they are showing a classic silent film complete with live organ accompaniment. It’s a wonderful space and the live music pushes it into exceptional.
Now, I’ve long been a silent film fan. When I was in middle school, our library used to let us check out a projector and actual film. None of this new fangled video tape for us. It was uphill both ways to school, too. I used to show Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and of course, Mary Pickford. Mostly I watched shorts, because those were the easiest to manage on a small projector.
So, I’ve never seen a feature length Mary Pickford film projected before. I have to say, I understand why she was dubbed the Queen of the Movies. The nuance and range of emotion that she can convey through gesture alone is pretty impressive. In 1916, Photoplay said that she had a “luminous tenderness in a steel band of gutter ferocity.”
It’s easy to look at some of the gestures now, like the biting of the knuckle, as cliche, but I’m going to bet she’s the person who introduced that into the physical vocabulary of ingenues.
Here’s the film in its entirety, though without any sound whatsoever. Fire up a play list or imagine the live organ, either way, enjoy Sparrows.
I’ve never seen many silent films, honestly. I have seen some Laurel & Hardy but this post made me think of a pizza restaurant that used to be in Idaho where I am that was called Keystone Pizza. If you were eating there right when the lunch rush and dinner rush started, they would start up a film projector and show two or three Keystone Kops short films.
I also remember once when I was younger, my grandparents set up a film projector in their living room and before they showed family movies, grandpa showed a copy of “Steamboat Willy” they got somewhere. Wish I knew where that film was now.
My grandmother was an accomplished pianist. One day when she was young they asked her to fill in at the local theater. Evidently she got so nervous playing for the film she forgot all the music she’d memorized for it. She could only recall one piece of music at all. Accounts vary as to what that was, but my favorite accounting was that through the whole film, a romance, she played Funeral March of a Marionette. Needless to say, that ended her brief career in theater.
That is a brilliant story.
I once saw “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (Lon Chaney Senior!) with live organ accompaniment. In a cathedral, so there were also bells!
Behold. I am immediately envious.
It was decades ago, but I still remember it. They slung a screen above the front of the altar, had a great organist with a score that had been written for that movie at some point, and informed the neighborhood that there were going to be bells ringing on a weekday night.
It could not have been more perfect.
Glad you enjoyed the program!