Looking back at Charlie and Buster, looking forward to 'Peter Pan' in Connecticut

A handmade sign promoting the evening's entertainment at the Tuscan Opera House in Dixfield, Maine.

Two unusual one-off screenings this past weekend as things wind down to the holiday season lull.

Last Friday night (Dec. 6), I had the pleasure of accompanying a screening of Chaplin's 'The Kid' (1921) for the Media and Design Club of Southern New Hampshire University. It was a pleasure despite lugging my gear in a light snow and the late hour: a 9:30 p.m. start!

But it was the club's sole activity this semester, and I was delighted that they'd decided a silent film with live music was the way to go. The venue: a small lecture hall with rows of bench desks, but it worked well enough.

Thanks to Bill Millios (on the SNHU faculty) for recommending me to the club, and organizer Jennifer Lampro for all her efforts. Lots of good questions afterwards, and also fun with a couple of students fascinated by my aging digital synthesizer. ("Wow, this is damaged and beat up like a road guitar.")

But real adventure was Saturday, where I put in 370 miles up and back to Dixfield, Maine, where high school students staged a silent film show at the town's opera house to benefit the town's historical society.

This part of Maine is unfamiliar to me, so I left home around noon to allow for plenty of time for some Christmas shopping on the way in Littleton, N.H. I then got on Route 2, the great east-west highway of northern New England, and even though I made good time (no lumbering lumber trucks), I just barely made it to Dixfield for the appointed 5:30 p.m. arrival.

One reason was Rumford, Maine, the town just before Dixfield. Route 2 runs right through the middle of this compact community, which is dominated by a truly enormous paper mill. The sun had gone down, and somehow I'd lost the scent of Route 2 through town, instead getting trapped in a small area of narrow one-way streets in Rumford's vintage downtown.

I finally found Route 2 after driving right through a portion of the paper mill, among piles of logs several stories high that awaited their fate. I later discovered that the Rumford Mill is the nation's largest producer of "coated paper" used in magazine publishing. So next time you pick up your copy of "Field & Stream," I may have already seen it in raw form.

The auditorium of the Tuscan Opera House, seen from the front. About a third of the floor space (at right) is taken up by a kitchen that was installed when the place functioned as a restaurant.

Dixfield's "Tuscan Opera House" turned out to be a sprawling multi-floor wood frame relic from another era. Built by the International Order of Odd Fellows in 1905 (on the foundations of a former opera house that burned to the ground), the structure hosted dances, movies, and school graduation ceremonies for generations of town residents.

In more recent years, the place has functioned as an antique shop and a restaurant, with long stretches of inactivity. Changes to the building have resulted in a really unusual layout for the auditorium, which now has about a third of its floor space taken up by a walled-off kitchen. But the stage is intact, and so it's still a good (if slightly lop-sided) place for a show.

A view of the proscenium in the opera house, with handmade movie screen front and center, restaurant kitchen to the left.

These days, building owner Nancy Carpenter is looking for ways to reconnect the Opera House to town life. So when Kurt Rowley, a teacher at the local high school, suggested that his students organize a silent film program to benefit the town's historical society, she was glad to say yes.

So I got the call a few months ago. And the next thing I knew, it was Saturday, Dec. 7, and I was face to face with a large wooden Indian of the "cigar store" type, guarding the main door of the opera house. Inside, the place is an evocative mixture of vintage bric-a-brac, including a massive mechanical cash register that students were using to ring up ticket and concession sales. (That's them "raiding the till" in the photo below.)

Although I had to concentrate on setting up my gear and preparing for the performance, I loved the quirky surroundings and wished I could have spent more time just poking around. (Mrs. Carpenter offered to give me a tour afterwards, but the three-hour drive home beckoned and I had to hit the road.)

One problem with movies at the Tuscan Opera House: it lacks any kind of screen. So, for our program, Mr. Rowley commissioned a homespun version made out of what seemed to be wide strips of cotton crafting fabric sewn together horizontally. It worked brilliantly!

The film program was preceded by music from this excellent student violinist, who made use of an incredible improvised music stand, and whose name I have misplaced. Someone help me!

The program was Buster Keaton's two "junior" films: first 'Sherlock Jr.' (1924) to warm things up, and then 'Steamboat Bill Jr.' (1928) as the main attraction. We got about 60 people and reaction was what I would call "steady." People really seemed to enjoy both films, but this just wasn't a crowd given to explosive laughter. Maybe interior Maine is just like that, I guess. Ayup. People had some very nice things to say afterwards, however, and I felt I'd hit the mark mostly.

So: a small town I'd never been to, a quirky old auditorium with good acoustics, friendly and polite high school students eager to volunteer, a live audience, and Buster Keaton. What more could a silent film accompanist want?

And that leaves just one more gig before I shut things down for the holiday season: a screening of 'Peter Pan' (1924) at the library down in Stratford, Conn. (A three-hour drive in the other direction.) The fun starts on Sunday, Dec. 15 at 2 p.m. at Stratford Library, 2203 Main St., Stratford, Conn. The screening is free and open to all! That's Betty Bronson, below, in the title role.

I'm looking forward to this, in part because I've done music for 'Peter Pan' twice in the past month, and so I feel like I'm in good shape to help the film come to life. The movie is "in my head," and I have the right musical ideas to go with it, I think. The most problematic part of the exercise will be just getting down there and setting up my gear (disc player, projector, synthesizer, speakers) prior to the show, which always has me worried until everything is hooked up and working.

So I guess that's what a silent film accompanist could want: a tech assistant!

Oh, those tubas! 'Sunrise' (1927) coming to Flying Monkey on Thursday, Aug. 22

Here's one clue that 'Sunrise' (1927) should be regarded as allegorical fantasy: tubas.

They're not visible in the above poster, but yes, there are tubas in the film—or, more precisely, sousaphones. In the idealized city, the house band in a nightspot boasts at least a half-dozen of the big-belled instruments. That's more than most marching bands have!

As a tuba/sousaphone player myself, the only time I've encountered that many instruments in one place has been at various Tuba Christmas celebrations over the years. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen.

So keep that in mind when we screen F.W. Murnau's masterpiece, which will happen on Thursday, Aug. 22 at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse and Performance Center in Plymouth, N.H. It's a fantasy, folks. It has to be because of the tubas.

But before we come together to take in 'Sunrise,' a few notes about shows from this past week.

• Peter Clayton, owner of the Leavitt Theatre in Ogunquit, Maine, did it again. Greeting patrons on Thursday, Aug. 15 was a wonderful sandwich board featuring artwork from 'Sally of the Sawdust' (1925), the evening's silent film attraction.

The show went well, despite intermittent distractions from a couple of large insects attracted to my light down below the screen. I got pretty good at swatting them away with one hand while keeping the music going with the other.

• And then on Saturday night (Aug. 17), it was up to Ludlow, Vt., where the Friends of Ludlow Auditorium were staging their now-annual silent film night. It's a great place to do these programs because the audiences are so enthusiastic, and also I get to hear another guy do accompaniment.

Glenn Brown, a local resident who donated a 1906 upright to the auditorium, handled music for the Buster Keaton short 'My Wife's Relations.' That's Glenn at the piano with Ralph Pace, who organizes all the auditorium's movie screenings.

After that, I chipped in with music for Keaton's feature 'Steamboat Bill Jr.' Things got off to a rocky start as the recorded soundtrack to the print we were using was inadvertently left on as the movie opened, and so at first I didn't know what I was hearing underneath my own playing. I thought it was my cell phone going off!

But then I realized what it was, and so had to actually stop playing and ask for the soundtrack to be turned off. It eventually was, and things went pretty smoothly from there. But sometimes that kind of thing can throw you mentally, and it can take a lot of effort to get back into the groove.

It doesn't help that the opening of 'Steamboat' is actually quite challenging to score, I think, because there needs to be a contrast between music for King's new steamboat and Canfield's old wreck. The music for King can't be too triumphant, and the audience for Canfield can't be too morose, or I think an audience new to the picture might start off rooting for the wrong characters.

And then there's 'Sunrise.' I'm looking forward to doing music for this film, one of the great romantic dramas of the silent era. For details and more info, here's the press release that went out earlier. Hope to see you there!

* * *

Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien in 'Sunrise' (1927). Gaynor won the first-ever Best Actress Oscar in part for her performance.

MONDAY, AUG. 19, 2013 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com

Classic romantic drama 'Sunrise'
to be screened Thursday, Aug. 22 at Flying Monkey

Silent film won three Oscars at first-ever Academy Awards, including 'Best Actress'; show features live musical accompaniment

PLYMOUTH, N.H.—Silent film on the big screen with live music returns to the Flying Monkey Moviehouse and Performance Center with the Academy Award-winning romantic drama 'Sunrise' (1927) on Thursday, Aug. 22 at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $10 per person.

The screening of 'Sunrise,' starring Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien, will feature music by silent film composer Jeff Rapsis, who will accompany the film live.

Gaynor, a popular female star of the silent film era, won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in 'Sunrise.' The movie took top honors in cinematography and was also recognized for "Unique and Artistic Production" at the first-ever awards.

'Sunrise' tells the story of a young country couple (played by Gaynor and O'Brien) whose marriage is threatened by the presence of a woman from the city (Margaret Livingston) who convinces the man to abandon his wife. Will the young husband go through with a plan to kill his wife? Will true love overcome the obstacles of temptation and the promise of short-term pleasure?

A visual representation of short-term pleasure: George O'Brien falls under the spell of Margaret Livingston in 'Sunrise.'

'Sunrise' was made by F. W. Murnau, a German director and one of the leading figures in German Expressionism, a style that uses distorted art design for symbolic effect. 'Sunrise' was made when Murnau was invited by studio chief William Fox to make an Expressionist film in Hollywood.

The resulting movie features enormous stylized sets that create an exaggerated, fairy-tale world. The city street set alone reportedly cost over $200,000 to build, an huge sum at the time. Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead, Calif.

Full of cinematic innovations, the groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher and Karl Struss) featured moving cameras and impressive tracking shots. Titles appear sparingly, with long sequences of pure action and the bulk of the story told in Murnau's signature style. The extensive use of forced perspective is striking, particularly in a shot of the City with normal-sized people and sets in the foreground and smaller figures in the background by much smaller sets.

The story of 'Sunrise' is told as a visual allegory with few specific details. The characters have no names, and the setting is not named in order to make the tale more universal and symbolic.

With a full title of 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,' the film is regarded as one of the high points of the silent cinema. In 1988, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The Sight and Sound poll of 2012 for the British Film Institute named 'Sunrise' the fifth-best film in the history of motion pictures by critics, and 22nd by directors.

More dramatics in F.W. Murnau's 'Sunrise.'

Critics continue to hail 'Sunrise' as one of the best films of all time.

"F.W. Murnau's 'Sunrise' conquered time and gravity with a freedom that was startling to its first audiences," wrote Roger Ebert in 2004. "To see it today is to be astonished by the boldness of its visual experimentation.

The Flying Monkey originally opened a silent film moviehouse in the 1920s, and showed first-run Hollywood films to generations of area residents until closing several years ago. The theater has since been renovated by Alex Ray, owner of the Common Man restaurants, who created a performance space that hosts a wide variety of music acts.

Movies of all types, however, are still a big part of the Flying Monkey's offerings, and the silent film series is a way for the theater to remain connected to its roots.

Rapsis, who uses original themes to improvise silent film scores, said great silent film dramas such as 'Sunrise' used their lack of dialogue to create stories that concentrated on the "big" emotions such as Love, Despair, Anger, and Joy. Because of this, audiences continue to respond to them in the 21st century, especially if they're presented as intended — with a live auience and live music.

"Dramas such as 'Sunrise' were created to be shown on the big screen as a communal experience," Rapsis said. "With an audience and live music, they still come to life as their creators intended them to. So the Flying Monkey screenings are a great chance to experience films that first caused people to fall in love with the movies," he said.

The Flying Monkey usually shows silent films on the second Thursday of each month. The screening of 'Sunrise' was shifted to Thursday, Aug. 22, because of a musical booking at the venue.

Other upcoming films in the Flying Monkey's silent series include:

• Thursday, Sept. 12, 6:30 p.m.: 'The Last Command' (1928) starring Emil Jannings, William Powell. Jannings snagged the first-ever Best Actor Academy Award for his towering portrayal of a Czarist general and patriot forced to contend with love and the Russian Revolution in this sweeping late silent drama directed by Josef von Sternberg.

• Thursday, Oct. 10, 6:30 p.m.: 'Safety Last' (1923) starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis. The iconic image of Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a downtown clock is only one small piece of a remarkable thrill comedy that has lost none of its power over audiences. See for yourself as the film celebrates its 90th anniversary.

• Thursday, Oct. 31, 6:30 p.m.: 'Nosferatu' (1922). Celebrate Halloween by experiencing the original silent film adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous 'Dracula' story. Still scary after all these years—in fact, some critics believe this version is not only the best ever done, but has actually become creepier with the passage of time. See for yourself, if you dare!

'Sunrise' will be shown on Thursday, Aug. 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse and Performance Center, 39 South Main St., Plymouth, N.H. Admission is $10 per person. For more information, visit www.flyingmonkeynh.com or call (603) 536-2551. For more information about the music, visit www.jeffrapsis.com.