Posted on Sun, May. 09, 2004

Film nights won't be silent

Two showings of early movies will include live music, just as in the old days.
By Cynthia J. McGroarty
Inquirer Suburban Staff

Silent movies were not altogether silent. When they flickered across the screen at the local movie house, they were accompanied by live music. Movie fans will get a chance to have that experience firsthand this week at two local silent-film events. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, the Ambler Theater will present the 1919 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with live accompaniment by Devil Music Ensemble, a Boston-based trio.

At 8 p.m. Friday, Montgomery County Community College will host the Betzwood Silent Film Festival, a screening of three films made by the old Betzwood Motion Picture Studio in West Norriton, with accompaniment by Lancaster organist Don Kinnier.

The events will give viewers a sense of the somewhat short-lived tradition of live music at movie screenings, said Joseph Eckhardt, a professor of history at Montgomery County Community College and director of the Betzwood Film Archive at the school.

"The movies were supported by the music," Eckhardt said. Not only did the accompaniment provide dramatic atmosphere, it could be fun and witty, he said, "throwing in musical jokes" at selected moments.

The music that will accompany The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will be much like the film, "dark, a little creepy, and mysterious," said Jonah Rapino, a member of Devil Music Ensemble.

While observing traditional silent-movie techniques, the band will give the music a modern spin.

"We wanted to come at it from a fresh angle," Rapino said. That means employing nontraditional instruments such as a lap steel guitar to produce the intended effects.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmed in Germany, was among the first films of the expressionist movement and was an early silent horror movie, Eckhardt said. Disturbing and paranoid, with odd, asymmetrical sets, it illustrated the troubled mood of a country recently wrenched by World War I, he said.

"It's directly linked to what the German people were thinking and feeling at the time."

Devil Music Ensemble has been traveling with the film to screenings around the country. Another film, a Western called Big Stakes, also is on the tour.

"We've found great success doing it. We get really diverse audiences, from grandmoms to little kids," Rapino, a classically trained violinist, said.

The band started playing movie music about a year ago when the members took a one-time job as accompanists to a Jean Cocteau film.

"We played to a packed theater, and from then on, we decided we should do this more seriously," Rapino said. Devil Music Ensemble - the other members are guitarist Brendon Wood and drummer Tim Nylander - is now scoring music to a variety of classic silent films.

At the community college, Kinnier, back for his 14th silent-film festival there, will provide organ accompaniment for three films: Where the Road Divided, a 1915 melodrama; High Pockets, a 1919 Western; and The Skipper's Narrow Escape, a 1920 comedy based on the Toonerville Trolley cartoons.

All of the films were made at the Betzwood studio in Montgomery County. High Pockets, once in disrepair, was restored under a project of the Betzwood Film Archive. Westerns were a favorite of the studio and the most popular of the silent-era movies, Eckhardt said.

Kinnier is more in the tradition of the old-time accompanists, Eckhardt said. "He can produce an amazing array of sounds, but he doesn't allow the music to intrude into the film."