The score? Live music and lots of belly laughs
The masterly silent comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton may be eminently watchable on television, but they may only reach their full potential as a communal experience in a movie theater.
“These films really gain by being seen with a live audience,” says Michael Chaplin, Charlie’s son. “It’s comedy, and laughter is contagious. They weren’t really made for the TV medium. It doesn’t have the impact [of a theater audience], and with music, it’s even better.”
The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 18th annual Silent Film Gala, on Saturday at UCLA’s Royce Hall, promises both laughter and live music with its double bill of Chaplin’s 1923 classic, “The Pilgrim,” and Keaton’s inventive 1924 vehicle, “Sherlock Jr.” Timothy Brock will be conducting Chaplin’s own score for “The Pilgrim” and premiering his original score for “Sherlock Jr.”
“The Pilgrim” finds Chaplin’s Little Tramp in top form as an escaped convict who ends up being mistaken by a small town for its new minister.
Chaplin scored the film, as well as “A Dog’s Life” and “Shoulder Arms,” in 1959 and released them theatrically under the title “The Chaplin Review.”
“He was a self-taught pianist,” Michael Chaplin says. “He couldn’t read music and certainly couldn’t write it down, but he would compose, and then [music associate] Eric James would come over and transcribe it to music sheets.”
Chaplin believes his father’s evocative scores reflect his Gypsy roots. “Both his grandmothers were Gypsy,” he says. “And you can hear that kind of emotional chord in his music. It’s very gripping.”
Brock, who has restored many of Chaplin’s scores, says “The Pilgrim” marked the first time Chaplin composed music for one of his early films. “You can see the Chaplin style, but it’s a little rougher in some ways just because it’s more traditional, in the silent-film manner. It’s not so narrative, like ‘Modern Times,’ where every elbow that moves there is a music to it. It’s more like the English music-hall setting, where you would play a bed of music underneath the action.... That’s not to say it’s not highly synchronized -- it is.”
“Sherlock Jr.,” which was one of Woody Allen’s inspirations for “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” finds Keaton playing a movie projectionist accused of stealing his girlfriend’s father’s watch. When he falls asleep on the job, he dreams he has actually joined the movie that’s on-screen.
Brock was commissioned by the chamber orchestra more than a year ago to write the new score.
Because of his experience restoring and conducting Chaplin scores, he says: “I have learned quite a bit about writing for comedy in a more subtle way than I used to. Writing for Keaton -- he has such a rhythm in his editing, like Chaplin, that the score almost writes itself in terms of rhythm and texture.”
A fast-paced 45 minutes, “Sherlock Jr.” has “one feature’s worth of action in it,” Brock says. “The changes are so quick.... Of course, once again, I have painted myself into a corner by writing very highly synchronized music. If the film runs 24 frames per second, I have to be within six frames per second accurate all the time.”
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18th annual Silent Film Gala
Where: Royce Hall, UCLA
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Price: $35, $75 and $300 (includes post-film supper)
Contact: (213) 622-7001, Ext. 215, or go to www.laco.org
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