New Scores Bring Sound to the Silents

In the 1920s, when silent movies were at their zenith and the decade was roaring, snobbish intellectuals liked to claim that they went to cinema to hear the orchestra. Sometimes they actually did.

The fancier movie palaces used their impressive orchestras as a draw. The more important films often had specially composed music. And moviegoing in such places could, in fact, exhibit the demeanor and character of a modern classical concert. The silents were, above all, live performances.

And now that film viewing has become a casual entertainment at the local mall and with home video, it has become a rare treat to go to the movies to hear the orchestra. The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra likes to offer just such a treat every year, and it did so once again over the weekend when it played Carl Davis’ modern scores along with screenings of two wonderful silent comedies “Show People” and “It.”

The orchestra seemed to have two agendas on mind. One was to raise money, and for that it used King Vidor’s 1928 “Show People” at a special high-priced gala at the Alex Theatre in Glendale Saturday night (Tom Hanks was the honorary chairman, but he didn’t show--Rob Reiner took his place).

The other was to raise consciousness for silent film and for the symphony orchestra, and for that it turned to the screwball comedy, “It,” a 1927 vehicle for the sexy Clara Bow, which was shown at “popular prizes” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center Sunday afternoon.

Davis is an amiable composer of new scores for old silents. He has a knack for getting the right big tune for the big moment, for milking a sentimental scene without too much excess musical goo, and for cheerful music that captures the spirit of chase scenes. He does this so well that his music has been a valuable help in returning many classic films to circulation. He also does it so well that that he is overbooked these days; he did not appear to conduct, as originally advertised, but was replaced by the very capable young conductor, Jung-Ho Pak.

In both cases, Davis’ music enhanced the films. “Show People,” Vidor’s wry insider parody of the movie business, got the more obvious score. Davis offered kooky sound effects with typewriter and whistle that might have been more in keeping with British music hall than the Hollywood lot. (Davis is an American, but his career has been in Great Britain.) But they worked well enough, as did his Richard Straussian theme for Marion Davies, who plays an aspiring actress trying to make it in Hollywood as she moves up the ladder from slapstick two-reelers to stardom and a lavish lifestyle (not unlike the one she had in real life as William Randolph Hearst’s mistress).

For “It”--the title refers to the era’s slang for sexual attraction--Davis adopted a more subtle technique, not paralleling the action but using music to help evoke mood and underscore character as it follows Bow, the department store sales girl determined to snag the boss.

Still, there is something just a little bit unsettling about Davis’ “silent” scores. This is music that has neither the real authority of authentic music of period, nor does it make an interesting comment on films, as some more adventurous composers have been doing lately with modern scores for silents.

That was brought home particularly Sunday afternoon, when Charles Chaplin’s 1917 masterpiece, “The Immigrant,” was used as a short before “It.” Here, Davis’ score proved a missed opportunity, since the film is not only a dazzling performance from Chaplin but also a vivid and sympathetic look at the kind of experiences still facing immigrants today. A modern score that reflects modern musical experiences (or a score reconstructed from interesting music of the film’s day--the Expressionism of Schoenberg, the folk-inspired music of Bartok) could have added much to the film’s relevance. Davis offered agreeable blandness.

When the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra first began investigating silent film scores, it did in fact seem to have a more musical mission, such as reviving Shostakovich’s score to the striking 1927 Soviet film, “The New Babylon,” in 1990. But somewhere along the line it has fallen into Hollywood conventionality. It is a good orchestra, and Pak did an expert job as accompanist. But I’m sorry that it doesn’t believe more in the power of its own art to meet film on equal terms.