Saturday, October 31, 2009

Phantom of the Opera (1925) with the Alloy Orchestra

It seems like everyone on the blogosphere was doing some Halloween-type post or series on their blog. And I had absolutely nada, zilch, zip, nothing. It was a veritable Halloween FAIL. Then at the 11th hour came an opportunity so amazing that I just couldn't turn it down.

Yesterday afternoon I found out that Somerville's Arts at the Armory (MA) program was having a special event featuring the silent film Phantom of the Opera (1925) that very night. The film would be shown with live musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra. I couldn't believe my eyes. This was my chance to watch a silent film on the big screen with live music! I called Carlos and being the amazing boyfriend he is, he encouraged me to go ahead and buy the tickets so we could go (any other boyfriend would have shirked and mumbled some excuse about watching a sporting event on TV instead).



The even was held at this very cool building. It was an armory built in 1903 to house the Somerville Light Infrantry of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. Over the past century it's been used for many things and now the space is used for community arts programs.

The space was very open and they used really cool lighting. Red light pillars running alongside the wall, spotlights, and lots of blue and green lighting. It's hard to explain but you can get a feel for it from the picture. It was a very open space and quite suitable for a big production.



Carlos and I really just came for the screening of Phantom of the Opera (1925) with live music. However, if you go to a concert oftentimes you'll have to sit through the opening act. R/A and DJ Dzinga showed 3 short films with live techno-music accompaniment. This part of the event was really trippy. The first short we saw was the experiment German film The Fall of the House of Usher (1928). Woah. It was Art Deco & German Expressionism in a very hypnotic way. I didn't quite get it. Carlos was amused. The next two short films were very strange. Some trippy '60s/70's horror sequences that made me go all cross-eyed. The last short film has techno-music so loud that I thought I was going to go deaf. So when it was time for Phantom, I was more than ready.

The film was shown on a big elevated screen and the Alloy Orchestra played below. I was very impressed by their music and how they closely watched the movie to make sure their music suited what was going on in screen. It really enhanced the movie-watching experience. They used a wide variety of instruments including: drums, chimes, bells, horseshoes, cymbals, an accordion, a saw and some other metal with a violin bow (for the creepy sounds) and a multi-functional keyboard that happened to play organ music. Sometimes I would take my eyes off the screen just to see what instrument the orchestra would use next.

The film itself was spectacular. I had never seen it before so it was a real treat to watch it both on the big screen and with live music. The film we was an amalgamation of the 1925 and 1929 versions. Most notably, the 1929 version has a talking scene in which Carlotta sings a song in the opera. We didn't hear the sound but it was notably different visually than the others since it spent so much time focusing on her face and her mouth. In reading the Trivia section of this film's entry in IMDB, there are lots of differences between the two versions so it's interesting that what we saw was a fusion of the two.

The version we saw had what I consider extraordinary use of color. Many duo-tone scenes of green, blue, orange and red were found throughout the film. My favorite was with Lon Chaney as Erik the Phantom when he is perched on the statue at the top of the Paris Opera House. He's wearing a red suite with a red cape when he crashes theBal Masque as the red death. It's at night and the rest of the elements are blue. So it's great to see the contrast between the black and the blue of the night with the Phantom's bright red!

The sets in the film were so elaborate and beautiful. It seemed like a costly film to make. I think Phantom of the Opera (1925) is a great example of how sophisticated and beautiful silent films can be. Of course, the story looks at Erik the Phantom as a horrible monster who must be destroyed whereas notable late versions like Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, take a more sympathetic view of that character.

Interesting to note, Carla Laemmle, the niece of Phantom's producer Carl Laemmle, is in the film as one of the ballerinas. She was 15 when it was shot and she is the only surviving cast member of Phantom. And on that very same night, October 30th, 2009, Carla Laemmle was on the other side of the country celebrating her centennial birthday and signing books at the Larry Edmunds Bookshop in Los Angeles. Isn't that neat?

It was a really great night and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to see this and that Carlos was willing and excited to come with me. Now I leave you with some fun shots we took at the Armory. Perfect pictures for Halloween.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday!




Sunday, October 25, 2009

Bonjour Tristesse

Bonjour Tristesse
by Francoise Sagan
9780061440793
Harper Modern Perennial Classics
Paperback
$12.99 US
Buy at Powells.com


I had watched the Otto Preminger film Bonjour Tristesse (1958) a while back for my You Otto See It series, and was very impressed by it. (See my post about it here) The film stars Jean Seberg, David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Seberg plays Cecile, a 17-year old who is living it up on the French Riviera with her bachelor father Raymond (David Niven). When an old family friend, Anne (Deborah Kerr), threatens their bohemian lifestyle by bringing structure and morality to their lives, Cecile becomes desperate to hold on to her free lifestyle at all costs. Even if it means breaking up Raymond and Anne's engagement.

The film is based on the Francoise Sagan novel published in 1954. Sagan is from France and wrote the novel in French at the age of 17. It was an instant hit and it only took a couple of years for the film rights to be snagged up and for the movie to be created. Many folks think that the novel is autobiographical considering the fact that both Sagan and her character Cecile are 17 years old and living in France. The novel is written in first-person narrative in Cecile's perspective and at times it did feel that I was reading a short memoir.

The book can be classified as a novella as it's only about 130 pages long. It's separated into two sections. The first part is when Anne comes into the lives of Raymond and Cecile. The second part is when Cecile puts into place her elaborate scheme to separate Raymond and Anne. It's a light, melancholy story and although it feels subdued it really makes you think about the consequences of people's actions. This story is very much about manipulation, aversion to change and the numbness and boredom experienced by the rich. Our present society is very fascinated by this, as you can see by the plethora of reality shows that follow rich people around. I think a story like Bonjour Tristesse is more eye-opening and intellectually stimulating.

Reading this book make realize not only how much I love this story but how excellent a job Otto Preminger did in adapting this novella for the screen. The 1958 film version is visually stunning bringing the characters and the setting alive before our eyes. Preminger stayed very true to the story and did little to change it. In fact, the film added to the story in a way that enhanced it. The novella is very linear chronologically. Preminger's film shifts from present day to past back to present day and did this by representing present day as black & white (the sad aftermath) and past day as color (the carefree happy days before the incident). There are a lot of little subtleties in the text that Preminger kept and showed on screen. For example, one of my favorite scenes involved Cecile being caught in the arms of her lover by Anne. Her lover kisses her shoulder and Cecile kisses the same spot. This very subtle and short moment, the shoulder-kissing, is in the novella! Preminger had picked up on a lot of the nuances of the novella and weaved them into the film. While Preminger stayed very close to the original book, I feel like he improved upon it by adding a few extra scenes and by adding a layer of social commentary. The novella is written in the perspective of Cecile so she is not capable the level of social awareness that Preminger added to the movie. I think this just enhances the story. For example, there is a scene when one of the two interchangeable maids gulps down champagne why the rich folk go about their amusement. This really shows the differences between the two classes, especially the obliviousness of the upperclass. This isn't in the book. Also, the novella was famous for being blunt sexually, with an outright reference to abortion. Preminger didn't include the abortion reference but he kept the language in the film sexy in an indirect way.

I think Bonjour Tristesse the novella and the film could be used as an example of a book-to-movie adaptation that went really well. Because an adaptation should do two things: it should stay true to the original story and improve upon it. What we get today is film directors trying change too much of the story or they are pressured by film studios to make the film in a way that makes it generate the big bucks. What ends up happening is they bastardize the story and lots of folks who loved the original book are outright disgusted by the movie adaptation (::cough ~Talented Mr. Ripley ~ cough::). I think classic film book adaptations worked a lot better even though they had the same pressures: money, pleasing film studios, time, etc.

I highly recommend you read the Sagan novella then watch the Otto Preminger film, and in that order.

Full Disclosure: A friend lent me her copy of this book.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

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