silent movies


May 1 silent film show: Short comedies

Because of other stuff I have scheduled in May, my next silent film show will be on the first Wednesday of the month instead of the second. That’s May 1, 8 PM EDT. The show, with my live accompaniment as usual, will consist of three short comedy films starring famous actors:

Scene from silent film Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde. Pryde (Stan Laurel) is menacingly approaching a boy with an ice cream cone.

  • The Goat (1921) with Buster Keaton. A case of mistaken identity leads to Keaton’s character being chased by everyone.
  • Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (1925) with Stan Laurel. This spoof is based chiefly on John Barrymore’s 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Laurel was a noteworthy comedian by himself before teaming up with Oliver Hardy.
  • His Royal Slyness (1920) with Harold Lloyd. A prince asks an American who looks exactly like him to impersonate him, so the prince can stay with his girlfriend. Lloyd’s brother Gaylord, who looked a lot liked him, plays the prince.

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Tomorrow as I post this (April 10, 2024) at 8 PM Eastern Time I’ll accompany Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film, Metropolis, on Twitch. It’s one of my favorites, with a futuristic city, an evil robot, and probably the first full-blown mad scientist’s lab in a movie. Twitch left my last two shows up for on-demand playing for about a week, and I assume they’ll do the same with this one, so you can catch it even if the show time is inconvenient. This is the restored 2 ½ hour version, and there will be a 10-minute intermission to give my arms a rest.

If you’re near Plaistow, NH, you can catch me accompanying it in person at the Plaistow Library at 1 PM on Friday, April 12.

A preview scene with my accompaniment is up on YouTube.


The Lost World and Gertie the Dinosaur

My next silent movie night will be on Wednesday, March 13, at 8:00 PM Eastern US time. Once again, I’ll provide live, improvised keyboard accompaniment. Live accompaniment is what makes silent movies special to me. You can react in real time in chat and even (gently!) criticize my playing.

The main feature will be the 1925 The Lost World. It’s based on the Conan Doyle novel of the same title, and he makes a brief appearance at the start, effectively putting his stamp of approval on the movie. The main character, Professor Challenger, is as smart as Sherlock Holmes but his opposite in temperament. Holmes is always calm and analytical, but Challenger has an explosive temper, especially when anyone doubts his claims. His present claim is hard to believe; he says he’s discovered a land in the upper Amazon basin with living dinosaurs. He organizes an expedition to go back there with two aims: to bring back proof and to find the missing member of the earlier party.
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Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. 4

This post is my contribution to the Buster Keaton Blogathon on Silent-ology. I like the idea of collaborative blogging, and I’m glad to have a chance to participate. (Updated to link to the new Blogathon post.)

(This post will hopefully attract a lot of silent film fans who aren’t among my regular readers, so I’d like to mention that I regularly present silent films on Twitch with my own real-time accompaniment. The next one will be on March 13 at 8 PM Eastern US time. The movie will be the 1925 The Lost World, preceded by Winsor McCay’s animated Gertie the Dinosaur. I hope you’ll be able to drop in!)

Poster for Buster Keaton and Ernest Torrence in Steamboat Bill, Jr.The Keaton movie I know best is Steamboat Bill, Jr., having accompanied it at the Plaistow, NH library on July 28, 2023. The previous silent I’d accompanied there was Chaplin’s City Lights, and the differences between Chaplin’s and Keaton’s approaches stood out. City Lights tells a story, but it feels like a series of skits put together to comprise a story. The club scene, the robbery scene, and the boxing scene almost stand on their own. Chaplin’s Tramp is pretty much the same from beginning to end. Steamboat Bill, Jr. is more of a continuous story, and Keaton’s character grows a lot during its course. At first he feels out of place, having come from a Boston-area college to a run-down steamboat in the South. By the end, he’s become highly competent and saves four lives. The gags are as important as in a Chaplin film, but they’re more integrated into the plot.
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Frankenstein (1910) with fresh accompaniment

This week I added an ART USBMIX mixer to the audio gear I use to accompany silent movies on Twitch. The 1910 Frankenstein from Edison Studios was one of the movies I showed in January; I redid it with the mixer, hoping to improve the sound quality by eliminating the microphone and the keyboard and room noise along with it. I’m happy with the result and plan to use this setup in my February 14 movie. The proof of concept is now up on YouTube.
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Accompanying Son of the Sheik

The next silent movie which I’ll accompany on Twitch will be the 1926 Son of the Sheik on February 14, “Valentino’s Day,” at 8 PM Eastern US time. Following an old tradition, I’ll precede it with a short, Young Mr. Jazz, starring Harold Lloyd. If all goes well, I’ll have some new equipment to improve the sound.

Son of the Sheik was Rudolf Valentino’s last movie. He died shortly after its first, limited public showings. It was based on a novel that had no connection to his earlier movie, The Sheik, but was retrofitted to be a sequel. Valentino plays two title roles. He’s the Sheik as well as his son Ahmed. They sometimes appear in the same shot thanks to double photography.

Spoilers ahead.

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Accompanying Phantom of the Opera

Today I accompanied the 1925 Phantom of the Opera at the Plaistow Public Library. It got a good audience for a small-town library, and I got a lot of compliments. I really want to write down some of the musical tricks I used to improvise the music. It may lose everyone reading this; if you’re confused, just skip it and go on to the next post. I’m going to dive into technical musical language, because it’s the only way to explain some of the points.

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Coming January 10: Silent movie night on Zoom — make that Twitch

On Wednesday, January 10, I’m going to try something new: presenting two short silent movies on Zoom with live keyboard accompaniment. This will be at 8 PM Eastern US time. It’s going to be an experiment; Zoom has all the components necessary, and I’ve tried them out, but performing for a live (well, real-time) audience always brings surprises. I’ll post the link here a couple of days before the event. User capabilities will be locked down so that Zoom bombers shouldn’t be able to do anything more than be annoying in chat, so sharing the link will be OK. (But I’ll still ask not to share it on Facebook or Xitter; no sense pushing my luck.)

For this one I’ll use my free Zoom account, which limits the event to 40 minutes. If it goes well, I may revive my paid account to allow more time. Or maybe I’ll learn how to use Twitch. The movies will start about 5 minutes after the event opens, since the time will be tight.

Update: After some experimenting, I’ve decided Twitch is a better platform for the purpose. The audience can’t do more than type into chat, so I don’t have to worry as much about who shows up. The presentation will be on www.twitch.tv/madfilkentist, and you can follow me on Twitch if you’re so inclined.

The program will be two short movies of the early silent era: Edison Studios’ Frankenstein and George Méliès’s The Impossible Voyage.
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