A Night at the Movies, old-school style
In his book A Year at the Movies, Kevin Murphy (also known as Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000 waxes poetic on the dying art of silent film. Friday evening Carla and I experienced this art first hand at Merrill Auditorium during a special Valentine’s Day silent movie, accompanied by the the Kotzschmar Organ. This was the first time either of us had ever seen one in its entirety.
The feature was Rudolph Valentino’s final film, The Son of the Sheik, a little piece of Arabian Nights-style swashbuckling-and-romancing, which was preceded by a Laurel and Hardy short. I don’t get out to the movies often - the last movie I saw in a theater was Intolerable Cruelty last November - but I can’t recall the last time I was so thoroughly entertained by a movie. We snickered at the hammy overacting and strange title cards (”Not east of Suez but south of Algiers…”), but everyone applauded when Valentino got the girl in the end (uhh…spoiler alert??) and the cliche major chord rang out as they rode off into the sunset.
Which reminds me - the music! The Kotzschmar is a huge instrument - one of the few in the U.S. for which its hometown actually has a municipal organist. At times, the organ was indistinguishable from a recorded orchestral soundtrack. Apparently, Carla’s great-grandfather used to play the organ at the movies, so it was also a neat way to see experience something like what he might have done.
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April 21st, 2004 at 10:02 pm
Concert Season
Something about the warming of the weather makes it seem like a great time for live music.
I’m getting excited because not only are Carla, our friend Paul, and I going to see Derek Webb in a few weeks, but a few weeks after that, we’re plannin…