Cleveland may have the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, but it also has the Case Western Reserve University Film Society.
And Rock 'n' Roll may be about rebellion, but I'm here say that this past weekend, the real rebels in Cleveland attended the CWRU Film Society's annual Science Fiction Marathon—all 30 hours of it.
It being the event's 50th year, steps were taken to commemorate this remarkable milestone. One of those steps: including a silent film with live music in the line-up.
That's where I came in: on Saturday afternoon, after the 1951 sci-fi classic 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' (with its Bernard Herrmann score), I had the privilege of doing live music for 'The Lost World' (1925).
And let me tell you—nothing
compares to the audience response of several hundred hardcore sci-fi
buffs for this kind of film. Everyone supplying dinosaur noises was just
the start. People reacted to everything and anything. Comments were
shouted at the screen throughout the movie.
To a silent film
accompanist, it's a special experience—one worth driving 700 miles
one-way for, which is what I did this weekend. (What do silent film
accompaniment and long-haul trucking have in common?)
I've scored silent films for previous editions of the marathon, so arrival and set-up followed a well-established pattern: driving onto the Case Western campus sidewalks to reach the back entrance of the Strosacker Auditorium; unloading my gear and staging it in a back hallway; waiting for the previous film to wrap, then helping attendees relocate their inflatable mattresses and whatever else might be in the way; setting up and plugging in all my stuff.
It takes about 15 minutes, and before I know it, the lights go down and off we go! First up was "Koko in 1999," an 'Out of the Inkwell' cartoon from 1927 that was a new one to me. In it, Koko the Clown gets chased by Father Time all the way to the far-off future year of 1999, where he experiences robotic barbering, a mechanized wedding, and futuristic marital strife.
I used a modest pipe organ sound for Koko, but switched to full orchestra for 'The Lost World.'
And it really was quite a ride. Right from the start, there was no shortage of marathon attendees ready to pile on with "witty" shouted commentary. And then there was the "dinosaur noises," which started with one person, but soon everyone was doing it. It never let up.
Another thing was clapping. If I played using any kind of regular rhythmic
pattern, people would start clapping. This happened during the opening
titles, and for the remainder of the film I tried to avoid triggering a
similar reaction.
It was all good-natured, of course—but
then, what effect does the clapping and shouting have on the film, which
itself is from "a lost world?"
Sometimes I say that I accompany an audience as much as the film on screen—that the audience influences how the music unfolds. But that definitely wasn't the case with 'The Lost World.' Because of the over-the-top audience reaction, I felt it was important to play the film straight, to plow through the audience reactions, to give the film a fighting chance.
I think it worked. As the film progressed, you could tell that people were following it and buying it. The noise never quite let up, but it seemed to fade over time. To the film's credit, it does a solid job storytelling in a way that causes viewers to let it in, even after all these years.
So I tried hard to accompany the film without reference to the audience, and in the end everyone got a great experience: those at the marathon got to contribute dinosaur noises, while I was created a score that supported the film and kept things together.
Next up is the great D.W. Griffith melodrama, which I'm accompanying on Sunday, Jan. 26 at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, Wilton, N.H.
Press release is pasted in below. Hope to see you at the movies!
Jeff R.
* * *
MONDAY, JAN. 6, 2025 / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Jeff Rapsis • (603) 236-9237 • jeffrapsis@gmail.com
Silent film classic 'Way Down East' at Town Hall Theatre on Sunday, Jan. 26
D.W. Griffith blockbuster starring Lillian Gish, filmed partly in New England, to be screened with live music
WILTON,
N.H. — The iconic image of actress Lillian Gish trapped on an ice floe
and headed straight for a waterfall will once again fill the big screen
when 'Way Down East' (1920) is revived on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025 at 2 p.m.
at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton, N.H.
Live musical scoring will
be provided by silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis. Admission is free;
donations are accepted, with $10 per person suggested to defray
expenses.
The
movie, a blockbuster melodrama directed by D.W. Griffith, is set in
old-time rural New England, and was partly filmed on location in New
Hampshire and Vermont. It stars Gish in an acclaimed performance as a
wronged woman trying to make her way in an unforgiving world. Can she
find love and redemption, or will she ride to her doom on the raging
river's ice floes?
In 'Way Down East,' Gish stars as a poor New England
country girl who travels to Boston to visit her rich relatives in the
hopes of getting financial help. While there, she's dazzled by upper
class society and romanced by a rich womanizer (Lowell Sherman) who
takes advantage of her innocence by tricking her into bed with a fake
marriage ceremony.
Convinced she's found the husband of her
dreams, Gish returns home to the country, only to be abandoned. She
informs her faux husband she's pregnant; he orders her to get an
abortion. Instead, Gish goes into exile to have the baby, finds herself
persecuted for giving birth out of wedlock, and flees into
the rural countryside to seek refuge. The film was noteworthy in its time for
addressing such topics as abortion and women's rights.
Modern
critics hail 'Way Down East' for Gish's performance, which continues to
mesmerize audiences nearly a century after the film's release. "Gish
provides an abject lesson in screen acting and brings home the
importance and effectiveness of seeing a film in a theater with a
crowd," wrote Paul Brenner on www.filmcritic.com
in 2007. "If you are not moved at the scene of Gish baptizing her dead
baby, then you should check the obituaries of your local paper to see if
you are listed."
The film also stars silent era heartthrob
Richard Barthelmess. In the film's climax, Barthelmess must dash to
rescue Gish from being carried away on the ice floes.
Much of the
acclaimed ice floe sequence was filmed in March 1920 on location on the
Connecticut River in New Hampshire and the White River in Vermont, as
the winter pack ice was breaking up. No process shots or post-production
special effects were available to filmmakers at the time, so Griffith
and his crew had no choice but to stage and shoot it all on a real
river, with the players out on the ice. To get the floes to break up and
float down the river, Griffith's crew dynamited pack ice upstream.
Gish
later said that she suffered frostbite by following director Griffith's
command to always keep one hand in the water during the shooting.
Despite
such hardships, 'Way Down East' cemented Gish's reputation as one of
the silent era's major stars. Gish would continue to work in films and,
later, television, until the 1980s. She died in 1993 at age 99.
Accompanist
Jeff Rapsis specializes in creating music that bridges the gap between
an older film and the expectations of today's audiences. Using a digital
synthesizer that recreates the texture of a full orchestra, he
improvises scores in real time as a movie unfolds, so that the music for
no two screenings is the same.
"It's kind of a high wire act,
but it helps create an emotional energy that's part of the silent film
experience," Rapsis said. "It's easier to follow the emotional line of
the movie and the audience's reaction when I'm able to follow what's on
screen, rather than be buried in sheet music," he said.
Because
silent films were designed to be shown to large audiences in theaters
with live music, the best way to experience them is to recreate the
conditions in which they were first shown, Rapsis said.
"Films
such as 'Way Down East' were created to be shown on the big screen to
large audiences as a communal experience," Rapsis said. "With an
audience and live music, silent films come to life in the way their
makers intended. Not only are they entertaining, but they give today's
audiences a chance to understand what caused people to first fall in
love with the movies."
'Way Down East' was based on a popular stage drama, for which director Griffith paid the then-astounding sum of $175,000 to turn into a movie. The picture proved to be a huge moneymaker, taking in $4.5 million, making it the fourth-highest grossing movie of the silent film era.
'Way Down East' would be the last
of Griffith's great blockbusters; tastes changed as the 1920s rolled on
and Griffith's Victorian style fell out of favor. Receipts from 'Way
Down East' kept Griffith's studio afloat during a subsequent series of
box office flops.
"This picture was a monster hit when it was
released," Rapsis said, "and it still holds up well today. As a
melodrama, it's a great film for an audience to cheer on the good folks
and boo and hiss the bad guys. But there's an additional level of
interest now because the film captured a way of life that's long since
disappeared."
'Way Down East' will be shown with live music on Sunday, Jan. 26
at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton, N.H.
Admission is free; donations are accepted, with $10 per person suggested
to defray expenses. For more information, call the theater at (603)
654-3456.
