Tonight: 'Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' (1927) at Aeronaut Brewing Co. in Somerville, Mass.

A scene from the climax of 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower.

Happy Eiffel Tower Day!

Yes, on this day in 1889, Gustav Eiffel's eponymous tower was declared open to the public!

And what better way to celebrate the 130th birthday of this iconic landmark than with a movie that features it in a starring role?

"Mr. Eiffel, I'm ready for my close-up!"

So that's what we'll do tonight at 7:30 p.m., when we'll screen 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' (1927) at the Aeronaut Brewing Co., 14 Tyler St. in Somerville, Mass.

Admission to this event, the first "volume" of the Aeronaut's new Silent Film Club, is $10 per person.

More info about this remarkable early thriller is in the press release tacked onto the end of this post. Hope to see you there!

For now, let me share a few pictures of Friday's night's excursion to Winchester, N.H., where I accompanied a screening of Harold Lloyd's 'Safety Last' (1923) sponsored by the local Grange chapter and the historical society.

The venue was Winchester Town Hall, which is a surprisingly imposing structure built in the style of a Gothic fortress.

Welcome to my castle!

Set-up was fairly straightforward, with the local folks providing a snazzy movie screen cleverly engineered out of a Queen-sized sheet from Wal-Mart.

.Ready for the show.

I think the key to the screen was the use of sturdy plastic zip ties to keep the sheet stretched out tight as a drum:

I improvise the music, so why not improvise the screen?

Alas, turnout was a bit light. But that might be due to how much else seems to be going on in town lately. In the picture below, try to find our poster:

But the good news was that even with just a handful of people, Harold's work produced a good amount of strong laughter. That's quite an achievement for a film made nearly a century ago!

And I had to be careful with the music, because the Winchester Town Hall is one of those venues with extremely lively acoustics. It would be really easy for music to overwhelm the comedy, which in turn would prevent people from hearing each other laughing.

But a good time was had by all, and I hope that will be the case with 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' down at the Aeronaut Brewing Co. this evening.

Here's the press release. Hope to see you there!

* * *
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2019 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com

Celebrate 'Eiffel Tower Day' on Sunday, March 31 at Aeronaut Brewing Co.

Vintage silent thriller 'Mystery of the Eiffel Tower’ to be screened with live music on iconic structure's 130th birthday

SOMERVILLE, Mass.—When you turn 130, it's time to party.

That's the thinking behind 'Eiffel Tower Day,' celebrated every year on March 31 in honor of the iconic Paris structure, which was completed on March 31, 1889.

The Aeronaut Brewing Co. will celebrate this year's 'Eiffel Tower Day' on Sunday, March 31 with the screening of a rare silent adventure movie with a thrilling climax actually filmed on the tower.

'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' (1927), directed by Julien Duvivier, will be screened on Sunday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aeronaut Brewing Co., 14 Tyler St. (near Union Square), Somerville, Mass.

Admission is $10 per person and seating is limited; for tickets and information, visit www.aeronautbrewing.com, or www.eventbrite.com at this address:

www.eventbrite.com/e/aeronaut-silent-film-club-vol-1-well-always-have-paris-tickets-58304749074

The event is also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/619207078520181/

The screening will feature live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, a New Hampshire-based silent film musician.

Duvivier’s late-silent adventure served as an inspiration for the original Tintin comics, and delivers much of the same charm, inventiveness, and visual delight.

Set in France of the 1920s, 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' follows a carnival performer who is half of The Mironton Brothers, a supposed Siamese twin act.

The performer sees a chance to claim a massive inheritance by pretending to be a missing heir.

The scheme makes him fabulously wealthy. He leaves the circus, but also crosses a secretive cabal which has its own plans for the fortune.

Harried by mysterious threats, the imposter uses his identical partner from the old carnival act to suffer in his place.

Lots of laughs and exciting close calls follow as the unsuspecting double is drawn into a struggle with the secret organization.

The climax is a death-defying chase up through the skeleton of the Eiffel Tower that anticipates the later work of director Alfred Hitchcock.

"This is an astounding film with sequences shot high up on the Eiffel Tower and without trick photography," said Rapsis, a silent film accompanist who will improvise a musical score for the movie.

"This vintage film, like a fine champagne, is a great way to celebrate the 130th birthday of this landmark, one of the world's most recognizable structures," Rapsis said.

The Eiffel Tower was constructed in 1889 for the International Exhibition of Paris, during the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, and was named after the principal engineer, Gustave Eiffel.

‘The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower’ (1927) will be shown on Sunday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aeronaut Brewing Co., 14 Tyler St. (near Union Square), Somerville, Mass. Admission is $10 per person and seating is limited; for tickets and information, visit www.aeronautbrewing.com or www.eventbrite.com at this address:

www.eventbrite.com/e/aeronaut-silent-film-club-vol-1-well-always-have-paris-tickets-58304749074

The event is also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/619207078520181/

Accompaniment from small town to big city: it's a 'Safety Last' kind of silent film weekend

In Harold Lloyd's thrill comedy 'Safety Last' (1923), the story follows our hero from small town to big city as he pursues success and fulfillment.

This weekend, I'll follow a similar path.

On Friday, March 29, I'll accompany a silent film (in this case, 'Safety Last') in the town hall of Winchester, N.H.

The screening is at 7 p.m. and sponsored by the Arlington Grange No. 139, and you don't get much more small town than that.

Then, on Sunday, March 31, it's down to the big city (in this case Boston, or actually Somerville, Mass.) for a screening at the Aeronaut Brewing Co.

The film is 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' (1927), which we're showing in honor of the 130th birthday of the iconic Parisian landmark.

And in the spirit of Harold Lloyd's high altitude stunting, the film climaxes with a chase among the tower's upper beams and girders.

Thus my journey from small town to big city, all in service of silent cinema.

Will I find film scoring success in my own journey this weekend?

Come and find out. Below is a press release about Friday night's screening of 'Safety Last' in Winchester. Hope to see you there.

And I'll be back with info about 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' in a soon-to-follow post.

* * *

TImeless comedy: Lloyd in 'Safety Last.'

TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2019 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com

Silent film classic 'Safety Last' on Friday, March 29 in Winchester, N.H.

Thrill comedy climaxed by Harold Lloyd's iconic building climb; with live music at Town Hall

WINCHESTER, N.H.—It's an image that's so powerful, people who've never seen the movie it came from still instantly recognize it.

The vision of Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above downtown Los Angeles, from the climax of his silent comedy 'Safety Last,' (1923), has emerged as a symbol of the "anything goes" spirit of early Hollywood and the magic of the movies.

See how Harold gets into his high-altitude predicament in a screening of 'Safety Last,' one of Lloyd's most popular films, on Friday, March 29 at 7 p.m. at Winchester Town Hall, 1 Richmond Road, Winchester, N.H.

The program, sponsored by Arlington Grange #139 of Winchester, will be accompanied live by silent film musician Jeff Rapsis. The show is open to the public, with $7 per person donation requested to help defray costs.

The program aims to recreate the experience of movie-going when motion pictures were a brand new art form.

"Put the whole experience back together, and you can see why people first fell in love with the movies," said Rapsis, one of the nation's leading silent film accompanists. Rapsis performs on a digital synthesizer that reproduces the texture of the full orchestra, creating a traditional "movie score" sound.

Lloyd and feathered friend.

The story of 'Safety Last' follows young go-getter Lloyd to the big city, where he hopes to make his mark in business and send for his smalltown sweetheart. His career at a downtown department store stalls, however, until he gets a chance to pitch a surefire publicity idea—hire a human fly to climb the building's exterior.

However, when the human fly has a last-minute run-in with the law, Harold is forced to make the climb himself, floor by floor, with his sweetheart looking on. The result is an extended sequence blending comedy and terror designed to hold viewers spellbound.

"Seeing 'Safety Last' with an audience is one of the great thrill rides of the cinema of any era, silent or sound," Rapsis said. "Harold's iconic building climb, filmed without trick photography, continues to provoke audience responses nearly 100 years after film was first released."

Tributes to the clock-hanging scene have appeared in several contemporary films, most recently in Martin Scorsese's 'Hugo' (2011), which includes clips from 'Safety Last.'

Lloyd, along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, is regarded as one of the silent screen's three great clowns. Lloyd's character, a young go-getter ready to struggle to win the day, proved hugely popular in the 1920s. While Chaplin and Keaton were always favored by the critics, Lloyd's films reigned as the top-grossing comedies throughout the period.

However, Lloyd's public image faded after his retirement in the 1930s, as Lloyd turned his energies to charitable causes such as the Shriners. He retained control over his films, refusing to release them for television and only rarely allowing them to be screened at revivals, fearing modern audiences wouldn't know how to respond to his work or to silent films in general. Lloyd died in 1971.

In recent years, Lloyd's family has taken steps to restore Harold's reputation and public image. They've released his work on DVD, and arranged for more frequent screenings of his films in the environment for which they were made: in theaters with live music and a large audience.

Despite Lloyd's fears, audiences continue to respond just as strongly to his work as when the films were new, with features such as 'Safety Last' embraced as timeless achievements from the golden era of silent film comedy.

Critics review 'Safety Last':

"Impossible to watch without undergoing visitations of vertigo, Safety Last's climactic sequence is all it's reputed to be.”
—TV Guide

"Harold Lloyd manages to make the characters sympathetic enough to carry the audience's concern on his journey of crazy stunts and mishaps. One of the best of this era."
—David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

"The climb has both comic and dramatic weight because it is both a thrilling exercise in physical humor and a thematically rich evocation of the pressures men feel to succeed, lest they be viewed as less than a man."
—James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk

See Harold Lloyd's iconic thrill comedy 'Safety Last' (1923), to be shown on Friday, March 29 at 7 p.m. at the Winchester Town Hall, 1 Richmond Road, Winchester, N.H. Sponsored by Arlington Grange #139, the program is open to the public; a donation of $7 per person is requested to defray expenses.

Dashing across the pond tonight to accompany 'Cat and the Canary' in London tomorrow

What? I have to travel basic economy?!

Tonight I head off to London, where I'll accompany a screening of the great Paul Leni thriller 'The Cat and the Canary' (1927) tomorrow night at the Kennington Bioscope.

It's one of the most visually spectacular silent features ever made, I think. And I hope the music I have in mind will be worthy of what Leni put on screen.

I'll also do some business in London and Amsterdam before heading back to Boston on Thursday afternoon, arriving less than 48 hours after I left. Quick trip!

And I have to think: what an age we live in when it's possible to transfer yourself across the North Atlantic in less time than it takes for me to get through an issue of the Economist.

(That's how I get to sleep by the way. No drugs for me! Just buy the current issue of the Economist, open up any page, and in 10 minutes I'm dozing off. Works every time!)

What a difference from, say, when John Adams set out to win support from France for the then-new United States, and it took weeks, and then they were chased by actual pirates, and wound up landing in Spain, and then had to ride donkeys over the Pyrenees.

What would Adams make of us jetting at high speed seven miles above the ocean, making a journey so quick that there's not enough time for a decent night's sleep? (Unless you buy the Economist.)

Speaking of which: I've done this before, and I now know that the evening after an overnight trans-Atlantic flight is not the best time to be in top form when creating live music for a demanding feature film.

So I've built in a little down time on Wednesday afternoon to help things come together later that evening. Jeffie needs his nap time!

After all, don't want to disappoint those in the audience, which will include film historian Kevin Brownlow, who's scheduled to introduce the picture. (And they're running his 35mm print of the film, which I can't wait to see.)

When I get back, mud season in New Hampshire can only mean comedy!

And so the film calendar heads into a patch of hilarity in small towns throughout the Granite State.

Buster and friend in 'Our Hospitality' (1923).

On deck: Buster Keaton's 'Our Hospitality' (1923) on Saturday, March 23 in Danbury, N.H., and then 'Seven Chances' (1925) on Sunday, March 24 in Wilton, N.H. And then Harold Lloyd in 'Safety Last' (1923) on Friday, March 29 in Richmond, N.H.

And I'm especially excited about an unusual program coming up Sunday, March 31 at the Aeronaut Brewing Co. in Somerville, Mass.

For this one, we're celebrating the 130th birthday of the Eiffel Tower (really!) with a screening of 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' (1927), a comedy/thriller with a climax filmed high up among the struts and girders of the iconic structure.

The Aeronaut has done a splendid job promoting this event, so I'm pasting in the press release below in an attempt to encourage you to attend.

Unless you'd rather spend time with the Economist!

* * *

In Paris, high above it all.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2019 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com

Celebrate 'Eiffel Tower Day' on Sunday, March 31 at Aeronaut Brewing Co.

Vintage silent thriller 'Mystery of the Eiffel Tower’ to be screened with live music on iconic structure's 130th birthday

SOMERVILLE, Mass.—When you turn 130, it's time to party.

That's the thinking behind 'Eiffel Tower Day,' celebrated every year on March 31 in honor of the iconic Paris structure, which was completed on March 31, 1889.

The Aeronaut Brewing Co. will celebrate this year's 'Eiffel Tower Day' on Sunday, March 31 with the screening of a rare silent adventure movie with a thrilling climax actually filmed on the tower.

'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' (1927), directed by Julien Duvivier, will be screened on Sunday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aeronaut Brewing Co., 14 Tyler St. (near Union Square), Somerville, Mass.

Admission is $10 per person and seating is limited; for tickets and information, visit www.aeronautbrewing.com, or www.eventbrite.com at this address:

www.eventbrite.com/e/aeronaut-silent-film-club-vol-1-well-always-have-paris-tickets-58304749074

The event is also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/619207078520181/

The screening will feature live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, a New Hampshire-based silent film musician.

Duvivier’s late-silent adventure served as an inspiration for the original Tintin comics, and delivers much of the same charm, inventiveness, and visual delight.

Set in France of the 1920s, 'The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower' follows a carnival performer who is half of The Mironton Brothers, a supposed Siamese twin act.

The performer sees a chance to claim a massive inheritance by pretending to be a missing heir.

The scheme makes him fabulously wealthy. He leaves the circus, but also crosses a secretive cabal which has its own plans for the fortune.

Harried by mysterious threats, the imposter uses his identical partner from the old carnival act to suffer in his place.

Lots of laughs and exciting close calls follow as the unsuspecting double is drawn into a struggle with the secret organization.

The climax is a death-defying chase up through the skeleton of the Eiffel Tower that anticipates the later work of director Alfred Hitchcock.

"This is an astounding film with sequences shot high up on the Eiffel Tower and without trick photography," said Rapsis, a silent film accompanist who will improvise a musical score for the movie.

"This vintage film, like a fine champagne, is a great way to celebrate the 130th birthday of this landmark, one of the world's most recognizable structures," Rapsis said.

The Eiffel Tower was constructed in 1889 for the International Exhibition of Paris, during the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, and was named after the principal engineer, Gustave Eiffel.

‘The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower’ (1927) will be shown on Sunday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aeronaut Brewing Co., 14 Tyler St. (near Union Square), Somerville, Mass. Admission is $10 per person and seating is limited; for tickets and information, visit www.aeronautbrewing.com or www.eventbrite.com at this address:

www.eventbrite.com/e/aeronaut-silent-film-club-vol-1-well-always-have-paris-tickets-58304749074

The event is also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/619207078520181/

What if Disney's songwriting duo the Sherman brothers had been born in Beijing, not NYC?

I've been remiss in updating my silent film adventures due to a big grant-writing deadline.

But now, before heading off to London to accompany a screening of 'The Cat and the Canary' at the Kennington Bioscope next week, it's time to catch up.

Since returning from the Kansas Silent Film Festival, I've had the pleasure of doing live music for two very different motion pictures: one a familiar warhorse, and the other completely unknown to me.

The former: 'Wings' (1927), the grand epic of the skies that won Best Picture at the very first Academy Awards.

The latter: 'The Stormy Night' (1925), a Chinese silent comedy/drama that was considered lost until just recently.

With 'Wings,' I was on familiar ground. (Har!)

Booked by the Center for the Arts in Natick, Mass. for an afternoon screening on Sunday, Feb. 24, it was intended as a warm-up for that evening's Oscars ceremony.

For me, the circumstances were hard to beat. That morning, I had flown from Kansas City through Detroit and then into Manchester, N.H., arriving in plenty of time to swing down to Natick and load in my gear for the 4 p.m. show.

So what better prep for 'Wings' than flying not one but two commercial flights right before the screening?

We enjoyed a healthy turnout, and a pre-show poll found most people new not only to 'Wings' but also the silent film experience. (And the theater, managed by Josh Valentine and Nicola Anderson, always does such a great job promoting the screenings, putting up vintage posters to build excitement.)

Located in a beautifully refurbished firehouse, the Center for the Arts boasts a gleaming Yamaha grand piano in its upstairs performance space, where movies are shown.

It's been beckoning me since I started performing in Natick. One of these days I'll use it, but so far all the films in Natick have been better served by digital synthesizer, I think.

This time around I found the piano up on the risers that constitute the "stage." And even though I wasn't going to use it, I couldn't resist opening the lid and playing a bit...and then realized that it was at the perfect height for me to use while standing up!

Now there's an idea! It's sitting down at a desk bad for you? Isn't the human body designed to function most efficiently in a standing position?

So why do people sit at a piano to play it? Wouldn't it make more sense for the player to stand?

We have stand-up comedians. Why not stand-up pianists?

Quick, get me a patent lawyer so I can protect my innovative new "pedal extendeder," which allows you to easily convert an old-fashioned sit-down piano into a modern, up-to-date, ergonomically superior STAND UP PIANO!

Order before midnight tonight and we'll throw in a VHS bootleg tape of Buster Keaton's 'The General'!

And then...

Last Saturday I had the privilege (and the challenge) of creating music for a newly rediscovered Chinese silent film that's been making the rounds of elite film venues.

In this case, it was for a screening of 'The Stormy Night' (1925) at the Harvard Film Archive.

The film, a light-hearted comedy/drama about the upper classes in pre-Maoist China, had been missing since its release.

This was par for the course. As the Harvard Film Archive notes tell us:

More than 650 films were reportedly made in China between 1921 and 1931, yet no more than twenty have survived the wars that followed. The serendipitous rediscovery of Zhu Shouju’s 1925 film 'The Stormy Night' gives us a rare opportunity to learn about this significant yet forgotten era of Chinese silent cinema.

That's a pretty rotten record, even for silent film!

But yes, a nearly complete print of 'The Stormy Night' was discovered some years back in a Japanese archive. After repatriation to China, it was restored by Shi Chuan, a Shanghai-based film scholar. It's now available for screening for the first time in nearly a century.

A special treat for this screening was an introduction by Shi Chuan himself, with translation by Jie Li of Harvard's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

A scene from 'The Stormy Night' (1925).

Unsurprisingly, the audience was packed with Chinese students. Surprisingly, the accompanist was an occidental of Irish-Lithuanian-French-Canadian extraction with no cultural connection to the film's milieu short of an appetite for General Tso's chicken.

But I looked at it as a challenge: how could I create appropriate music for a film made in a completely different cultural context compared to my own?

This, after all, was not the Chinatown riot sequence from Buster Keaton's 'The Cameraman' (1928). Nor was it the seedy faux Chinese opium den depicted in Raymond Griffith's 'Paths to Paradise' (1925).

With cultural references like those in his head, what's an accompanist to do?

My approach was to back off and keep it light. It was a comedy, after all. And it seems to me no matter what the cultural context, with comedy, less is more.

Also, I tried to use a musical language that was separate from the familiar Western/classical harmonies and chord progressions.

Melody, yes. But not the way you'd encounter it in Mozart or Beethoven. More like a modal sound,

My overriding attitude was this question: "What would it sound like if Disney songwriters Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman had been born in Beijing instead of New York?" That's what I was going for.

Songwriting brothers Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman with their patron, Walt Disney.

(I think the Sherman brothers were among the best songwriters of all time, and I'll fight anyone who disagrees.)

But back to pre-Maoist China. To help get my mind in the right place for this, I opted for a synthesizer texture that was light and airy and heavy on the strings and harp.

Just by hitting a single note, you could hear we were in a different place. But it wasn't the plinkety-plink of xylophones or the tired and not-very-exotic crash of a gong. It was more of clean sweep, giving me implicit license to work in a fresh style.

That's what I was going for. And from the reaction to the film, I think I wasn't too far off.

I mean, people actually laughed at this formerly lost comedy from a lost world. It engaged them, drew them in, and they enjoyed it.

Thus I'm really glad I didn't go with my original plan, which was to play variations on 'Chopsticks' for 90 minutes.

Thanks to Haden Guest and Karin Kolb of the Harvard Film Archive for continuing to program a wide variety of silents with live music.

And special thanks to Shi Chuan for rescuing this rare film from oblivion, and for coming all the way to Boston to share it with us!