Back from the holidays... to a needle-drop score

[igenlode]

Having had very little Internet access at all to speak of during the holidays (this room was in use again as a guest chamber), there are a great many things I could have written of, but didn't. So the world, alas, will have to do forever without the tale of how I went to a funeral, found a headless half-inch nail embedded in my back tyre, and had to push my bicycle two miles back again and then perform an extraction with my pen-knife... or the story of how I attended a screening of the silent "Peter Pan" to the accompaniment of a "fairy harp" (very successful)... or even any account of how I spent the most abstemious Christmas ever, after contracting a gastric infection on December 24th and being quite unable to eat any Christmas dinner, or of how I cut my thumb open with a sharp knife (a Christmas present — not mine) and spent two hours waiting in the hospital to have it fixed up, and then a week or so completely unable to use the digit, and amazed by the number of everyday activities which appear to require the use of two thumbs... But like the tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, some stories are fated never to be heard...

One thing I did discover when I got 'back' was that I'd received a friend request from a lady named Nia; sadly it had already expired. So if the lovely Nia is reading this, she might like to know that her attentions did not go entirely unnoticed — just rather delayed. (And if 'she' is a gentleman, then my apologies doubly so!)

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I had an interesting experience at the National Film Theatre at the weekend. I attended the new 'Mediatheque' and selected a film for screening that had no soundtrack, being a silent transfer without score. In the old days, apparently, it was quite common to purchase an 8mm print for home viewing and supply your own music via a selection of records put on as the projector rolled — literally, a 'needle-drop' score, often composed of popular period music &mdash and I've heard this approach recommended even for new DVD releases where the score provided is one so avant-garde or simply uninspired as to detract, in the owner's opinion, from the quality of the film.

But having been spoilt by a regular supply of silents with freely-improvised musical accompaniment from the experts at the NFT, where the music is tailored more or less every second specifically to the action on-screen, I've always steered clear of silent films without a soundtrack; the music is such a very important part of the experience.

However, I was particularly curious to see this one, The Lure of Crooning Water, since it's supposedly a long-lost classic, 'the British Sunrise', and I was sufficiently excited when it showed up in the list of new titles available from the Mediatheque to bear in mind possibilities for going to see it. Ready-armed with an accompaniment, of course, since watching a feature-length drama in total silence would probably kill it stone dead.

In the event I ended up watching "The Lure of Crooning Water" to the accompaniment of the only vaguely-relevant disc I could lay my hands on in a hurry, having left rather late: an unsatisfactory Christmas present consisting of the Korngold scores for "The Sea Hawk" and "Deception" in their original state rather than as arranged to stand as music in their own right. To my amazement, it proved an uncannily successful choice.

The music which was so unsatisfying as background listening proved totally apt to the ever-shifting moods of an actual film; its lack of shape or stability was exactly (of course) what was required. But what was really uncanny was the way that film and music seemed to fit themselves together, with the interpretation coming from some kind of synthesis between the two.

If I'd known the film beforehand it might have come across, I suppose, as sacrilege. But the experience was inextricably shaped by the quite unrelated moods of the accompanying soundtrack — a composite of tracks from two different films (the second half of "The Sea Hawk" plus trailer music plus "Deception" plus cello concerto, to be precise...), neither of which had anything in common with the plot of "Crooning Water" to speak of. But it's amazing how duel music can re-interpret itself to the racing shapes of ominous clouds threatening a harvest, or to a frenetic party, or to an argument... Likewise, seemingly peaceful pastoral scenes were lent sinister undertones by the music of suspicion from "Deception" which, as it turned out, was entirely appropriate; the only cases where the accompaniment really couldn't be made to work turned out to be when the tempo of events simply didn't match the pace of the score (at which point I skipped a track or two). Otherwise, it was quite astonishing how tiny references in the score would appear to reflect events on screen for which they could not possibly have been cued in: cymbals for a flash of lightning, or a sudden swell of emotion as a character turned away or gazed up.

I have no idea whether any score could be made to fit any film, or indeed whether any piece of emotional orchestral music could be made to fit any turbulent feature, or whether Korngold's idiom happens to be the one that has founded our generic ideas of what 'movie music' ought to sound like; but it really was very odd the way that the mind would persist in reading in connections that could not possibly have been there.

As for the film itself, it's easy to see where the comparisons to "Sunrise" come in, since it deals with the corruption of a country man by a city girl, and a trip from the quiet country to the frenetic town; but it really isn't the same. (And as it's much earlier, any influence would have had to have gone the other way!)

In some ways it's actually better than "Sunrise", in that the 'city girl' is more than just an archetype; she has feelings and motives too, and she is not just a plot lever of unmitigated evil. It has a similar mix of lyricism, humour, and plain drama, and it's very well acted; for a 1920 feature it is remarkably sophisticated and subtle (far more so than the later "The Lodger", I have to add). On the other hand, it doesn't contain anything like the sheer joy in existence and imagery of "Sunrise"; it is much more interested in people and plot, and it centres around the girl rather than around the married couple. The wife, Rachel, is left as something of a cipher — she represents maternal love and married loyalty, but she doesn't get much of a character of her own.And I do wonder if the Mediatheque transfer (or source print) may be lacking a few feet at the end of the film; it appeared to end very abruptly.

The picture certainly merits Matthew Sweet's championing of it as a masterpiece of early British cinema, and it stood up very well under its somewhat unorthodox screening. I'd like to see it again with a 'proper' accompaniment — which is an accolade in itself — and see how it comes out. But I can't honestly say that it had as overwhelming an effect on me as the best of the films that I've seen; — as "Shooting Stars", for example.

Good? yes. Great? That remains to be seen under happier circumstances.