Showing posts with label BBC Symphony Orchestra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC Symphony Orchestra. Show all posts

Friday, 3 March 2017

Mayhem with murderous intent, yet stately and serious of purpose : Neil Brand's orchestral score for Robin Hood (1922)

This is a review of Robin Hood (1922), with new orchestral score by Neil Brand

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


25 February



This is a review of the new orchestral score for Robin Hood (1922) by Neil Brand, as performed by The BBC Symphony Orchestra, under Timothy Brock, at Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, Essex, on Saturday 25 February 2017 at 7.00 p.m.




Playwright, composer and accompanist of silent fims, Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand) has recently come to a wider audience as a t.v. broadcaster, in and through his series The Sound of Cinema, and The Sound of Musicals

Neil¹ has regularly played silent films at Cambridge Film Festival - including, last year, Buster Keaton for Kids [of all ages] ~ Here we had Neil’s score for more than 90 musicians for Robin Hood (1922), as orchestrated by Timothy Brock (for the second part, alongside Hugo Gonzalez Pioli) : by contrast, in 2011, Neil and percussionist Jeff Davenport had played it between them at #CamFF


First part :

At the start of the film, the scene was given by a glissando, the timpani, and by setting the woodwind against the brass, and lively writing for harp. Later, as tournament was established, a quiet theme was presented, with a hint of horns, and we were already quite clear who were King Richard I (Wallace Beery) and the Earl of Huntingdon (Douglas Fairbanks) [plus the skulking, sullen Prince John], and, amidst trombones, martial sounds, and procession, the gracious sweetness of strings.

During stately declamations, Lady Marian Fitzgerald was next characterized by a delicate pizzicato, Prince John by deep cellos and basses, and sinuous oboe for Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Gisbourne tries to cheat, to get near Lady Marian (Enid Bennett), but this is the last of Huntingdon’s thoughts (soberly assuming a fair contest of skill ?), and we focus on the merriment (rather than Gisbourne (Paul Dickey) and his henchmen) - because Fairbainks is mobbed by women (in that way of ‘the flower of chivalry’), but has told his king that he is ‘afeared of women’ [which tickles us - it tickles us especially, for the combination of the shame-faced inter-title, with Huntingdon's demeanour !].

Later, in the huge hall of the castle (Fairbanks' dreamchild), as Prince John (Sam De Grasse) toys with his sinister goblet, and a desire to poison Richard, the latter has more sport at Huntingdon’s expense, by tying him to an upright stone, and at the growing mob of women around him : he breaks away to rescue, and find fascination in, Lady Marian [many of the women around and about him were more obviously alluring - but she must be his type ?], and so make himself an enemy to Gisbourne (Paul Dickey). It is only just at this point that we had become truly aware that this gathering is on the eve of setting out for the Crusades, and as he courts her (with a love theme plus flutes).


With the procession in which King Richard makes ready to go – he appointed Huntingdon to be his second in command, and also urged him to woe a maid during the night before, but, with increasing tetchiness, Wallace Beery peremptorily now calls out for Douglas Fairbanks’ appearance – we hear purposiveness in more subdivided note-values. It is from now on that we become more aware of the vibraphone (or ‘vibes’), and start to notice how it becomes significant : we think of it usually as a relaxed sound, but these are sinuous and sinister vibes, and – in conjunction with the Prince John theme – denote his dread intent, of which we already know…

The army is on the Continent when Marian is bold to pen Huntingdon an uncensored account of life in England under the rule of John, and, in this respect, Robin Hood is a political film for our day, because it shows how quickly what had been taken for granted in life can change and be changed : for John has swiftly moved to tax and otherwise penalize those who already had little to make revenue² for him and those to whom he looks to maintain power. As well as a shock, a love-note for Fairbanks, which comes with the sweetness of oboe and flute.

Fearful that Richard will abandon the Crusade, if he knows, Fairbanks feels forced to make his request, without giving reasons, to return to England, and we hear the solemnity in the trombones, and the snare-drum. Unfortunately, he then has to repeat it, because the same man who made Huntingdon his second also insisted that he needed a maid at home, for when war is over, and now cannot credit him with any better reason than she : king and knight are not talking the same language, because the former sees it as a big, if impertinent, joke.


Meanwhile, the highly symbolic play is in the sky, with Gisbourne’s falcon bringing down the dove that bears Huntingdon’s message for Lady Marian (at the tournament, Richard had enticed John to wager his falcon on Gisbourne’s tourney defeating Huntingdon). The score to this, Gisbourne’s stopping Huntingdon from deserting, and instead producing the message and other proofs of treason gives weight to the serious purpose, and sense of the stately, and then with eerie effects on vibraphone, and plangent viola and cello.

Fortunately, Gisbourne is another knight out of step with his king, because the more that he over-eggingly insists that death is the penalty for a traitor, the less Richard wants to do it. Bundling Huntingdon (still with a fresh wound from Gisbourne) and his squire into the tower till Richard’s return looks undignified and painful, but it is worth harp and soft vibes, although the latter become suspensive with the plot ‘then let them rot’, when the convoy has moved on. (Surviving is what proves to have mattered, as the squire then springs them from captivity…) With the process and intensity of the score, we had been able to feel the drama building, which is something special in music for silent film.


For the close of the first part, to which this has been prelude, messages in telegraphese about the mysterious robber-chief (with which Neil Brand made play in Blackmail (1928) [also at Saffron Hall, with this conductor and orchestra], and its computer-brain, seeking incriminatory data), and the impression of lively rebellion from the luminous violins, and their energy and pulse : stealing from the rich to give to the poor, whilst John - when not torturing and persecuting – uses outdated (and fussily tetchy) words, such as ‘meddling’ and ‘tattling’, to describe Lady Marian’s actions.

From other films (and accounts), we know the fantastical exploits in more detail, and the characters and characteristics of the woodland ‘pals’, such as Will Scarlett : after some merrie frolics and horseplay, Fairbanks’ focus remains on the story of this new life, for Huntingdon, as Robin Hood… (The original inter-title granted an interval of just six minutes, but service at the bar necessitated taking a little longer.)


Second half :

Slow to make good on ensuring that some people did not return from the Crusade, and to flute and harp, and then to the surprise of the deed with vibes, strings and tubular-bells – Gisbourne stabs the sleeping Richard. Except that, to resonant vibes, and then muted trombones and timps, when he turns over the body, Richard finds that his fool (or jester) has been killed in his stead (he tells him that has slept in his bed once too many).

Gisbourne is hardly ‘a valiant knight’, but, when Richard hears of one in England, he guesses at who it is, and his laughter, and that of Robin, link them (as against the sour John) : to an English dance, and then the tune of ‘Richard of Loxley’, we see good-hearted distribution of dole, and restorative acts, on the greensward.


It is usually said, with versions of the story of Robin Hood and Lady Marian, that she must have thought him dead, when she had no answer to the message that she sent, and she, equally, had spread around the story of her death, although she is actually at the priory of St Catharine’s : in Robin Hood, the moment when they become disabused is exactly that when what has really happened to them - and who and where they are - becomes known to Prince John, mixing Joy with Doom...

With that to work on, in terms of dramatic irony, the second part of the film is where whether escaping, or getting somewhere else to effect a rescue – in time – is in issue, and generates suspense. The first is at St Catharine’s, after Robin Hood has brought back its monstrance and other liturgical items (John’s pretence of raising funds for the Crusade – by raiding a religious order – is shown to be just that), and intercutting with, probably, the Sherriff of Nottingham's men approaching, but about John’s dire retributive work.


Here, Neil gives us :

(1) Lady Marian, by water – richness of strings and modulation, (2) another initiate identifies Robin Hood as Huntingdon – swell and woodwind, and brass undertones, (3) the plotting of John – sinister tremolo plus vibes, (4) Robin and Marian – ‘happy’ violin-tone and vibes, (5) cross-cutting, until Robin mistakenly leaves her, as if safe – triangle and soft pizzicato, (6) the militia approaches - a sinister snare-drum pattern, (7) arrival of troops - snare-drum plus triangle and xylophone, (8) when searching - over to glockenspiel, then back to xylophone.


The next long scene is with Lady Marian and the Sherriff of Nottingham (and briefly contrasted with Robin’s mood, thinking that a victory has been won, and that he can carouse – till told news otherwise), and scored with elements that begin with tremolo, with bassoons and trombones, and then enters the territory of ‘spooky’ vibes, heralding the screech of woodwinds, joined by basses, for the Prince John theme - to which are added trombones, plus tubular-bells (as at the fool’s death), and with that ambiguity, as previously, of the beats of the snare-drum.


Momentarily, these disturbing elements are mitigated by the excitement of the stranger’s lusty fight with Little John, who then (and therefore) acclaims the still-helmeted figure King Richard – to the jubilant sound of cymbals. In Nottingham, Robin is happy, joining in, and celebrating its capture - with an ale-horn³ : till he has news of Marian’s, and makes great haste for the castle, which we hear in the use of hectic xylophone. BBC Symphony boasted some half-a-dozen versatile percussionists, watching whose movements served as a guide [as at an all-Steve-Reich concert at this venue]), and clarified what sounds were reaching us at any moment (as well as hoping to keep track of the action). This player moved directly to give us a moody passage on the vibes, and into further telegraphese (with harp and strings), to signify the messages that are vitalizing the counter-assaulting forces.


Now, it is as if, for her tattling and meddling, Lady Marian is no better than some sacrificial victim. (At the time of John’s peeved comments, we had seen her lady-in-waiting or handmaiden tortured, to make her confess what her mistress had written to Huntingdon, but there was no Marian to answer the offences.) The inter-cutting is to Robin’s high daring, notably athleticism on the drawbridge, and we know that he provided Marian with a dagger, expressly in case of her virtue being assailed, so his battling against great numbers is also against the clock.

At one point, we see Marian speak from under a cross, with xylophone, timps, and string-strokes – perhaps for private devotions, long abandoned in this castle, where Marian is instead supposed to be the agreed reward for ill-doing (although twice bungled) ? Later, she is driven to the window by the menace of Gisbourne's advances, and, looking up, Robin perceives the danger, seeing her at the window : as has been the stuff of theatre since as least Sophocles, and evidently in Lear, there is a leap, but no fall.


Do not ask, as one’s attention was elsewhere, how Neil scored Robin jumping up and Marian’s being caught, but, be it here or with Neo and Trinity in The Matrix (1999), there is something so deeply and primally moving about the other being there, seconds to spare, to effect the rescue. As Huntingdon, Robin promised to crack Gisbourne’s spine, and we heard that sound ring out, after Robin has had his grip around Gisbourne’s neck, exerting force – again, immersion in the drama means that, as is a true credit to conductor’s and composer’s craft, one would have to watch again to know what the scoring did here !

So, from Marian and Robin meeting again after a year or more (though unaware of the tightening noose), and Robin spurred into energetically saving her from death (we can be glad that she did not trust to the blade that he gave her - please see above, as to when this was...), it is still Robin, alone, and unaided, despite the ‘three blasts’ horn-signal, which promised so much. Initially, the mood is summed up by anxious triangle and quiet xylophone, because Robin's charmed life only got him thus far, and not even Marian is safe again :


This still suggests that Marian may be given the dagger after the mid-air catch - an excuse to watch it all again !


Against material to match the greatest darkness that Shostakovich conjures in his symphonic works, we see Robin tied to the same post where he was mocked, by Richard’s having placed him at the mercy of the mob of women. The cross-cuts, this time, are more frequent, but, although they offer some hope and even given that the dagger that John is to dip – as a signal to the cross-bolts to fire – obligingly lingers about doing so, too little is at hand. Or so it appears… because the bows fire, and then the tail and stout shield of King Richard interposes, deflecting them from harming Hood / Huntingdon.


It is not too much to say that there is a moment of revelation. The lion-hearted king, whose people his trustworthy patriot and friend has been protecting, and protecting in Richard’s own name⁴, reasserts his regality and his reign. Pulling down the dark drapes on the throne, Richard shows that the three vivid lions are still there, underneath the appearance.

Even now, some might perhaps still think to call it a group hug, but, back to the film’s opening gesture of glissando, Richard, Marian, and Huntingdon cheerfully embrace, as we launch into strings, and the flowering of the theme, with glockenspiel. Prince John is put outside the door, and the drawbridge raised against him.

The only mutiny is in the matter of matrimony : passing over the question of droit de seigneur, has Richard’s sense of humour gone astray, or is it a test for Huntingdon ? On a wedding-night, we would – pranks apart (or those traditions that demand to see the virginal bed-sheets) – not do such a thing, but this is the third time that Richard has bellowed for his knight, and this at the door behind which he has been shut out.


Wisely, because, whether he wishes to give his personal greetings, he should really read Do not disturb !


As at the end of the first part, the approbation was warm and keen, but this time Neil could come down from his seat, and Timothy Brock and he could each urge that he owed the other more.

A thoroughly satisfying evening, and one commends which other dates this tour de force with Robin Hood screens on !


End-notes :

¹ Neil had comped Cambridge Film Festival director Tony Jones, who in turn invited Ramon Lamarca, its programmer of Camera Catalonia (as well as its Retro 3-D strand), and #UCFF. (This was a rematch, involving some story about winning a pair of tickets, through Silent London (@silentlondon), for the premiere at The Barbican in September 2016, and then Ramon not getting to see the film, because of someone at #UCFF getting the early start-time, of 7.00 p.m., wrong…)

² Forgetting that Crusades were, as all wars are, ways of occupying territory and taking what belongs to others, the usual version of the story says that John exaggerated the cost of the crusading force, and justified such cruel measures by needing to pay for it.

³ In branding terms – no pun intended ! – Huntingdon has caught this hearty, man-of-the-people look, and which has been the making of a trusty, if once unduly serious, knight – and the film thrives on the gaiety of the man who deserts his king’s service to do the proper service of saving his people, and of giving them comfort and hope.

⁴ With paper versions of Richard’s heraldic lions used to promote that allegiance, as well as prankishly belittling those who have been causing enmity and fear – there, again, is that unity in laughter). There is something proto-Aslan to Wallace Beery, though Aslan is more wise, who also enjoys good-natured fun ?




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday, 23 July 2015

Cambridge Open Studios 2015 : Images kindly supplied by Cathy Parker

More views of or before Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


23 July

In two versions, the paintings described in the companion posting Cambridge Open Studios 2015 : Sunday 12 July (Weekend 2) Happy viewing ! :



Images, speaking for themselves














And / or



Images, with intended characterization underneath


* North York Moors [CP2] oil, £290



The view is characterized by ruddy clouds, with water represented, as it recedes, by purples and violets what we feel most clearly in the landscape is the flatness, and the sense of distance



* Wicken Fen, November [CP8] watercolour, £190




The eye is drawn to cherry browns, with yellow touches in the sky, and the blue-grey rendering of the trees that skirt the scene



* North York Moors [CP7] watercolour, £190



In the heavy blackish brown of the foregorund, there is a detail of green, with, in the distance, a wash of cloud, and bluey-purple hills





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday, 22 July 2015

Cambridge Open Studios 2015 : Sunday 12 July (Weekend 2)

More views of or before Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


22 July




On 12 July, a day had been planned despite the rain, which was not light at one stage to visit the Cambridge Open Studios displays of three favourite artists...


Anna Pye






And now :





Gina Ferrari

Then (after elderflower at Anna's) a no less welcome invitation from Gina Ferrari (@FanMyFlame) :











Cathy Parker

Later, deliberately to see Cathy Parker’s work (which had been long admired, and often got one’s literal vote, at exhibitions by Cambridge Drawing Society), one ventured out to the church of St Mary the Virgin (?*) at Swaffham Prior : there turned out, still, to be relatively little of Cathy's on display (although there were some unframed works, notably a watercolour, Wicken Fen, Baker’s Fen [UF7]), but one engaged more with it than with that of her fellow exhibitors.




Here are some highlights, described :


* North York Moors [CP2] oil, £290
The view is characterized by ruddy clouds, with water represented, as it recedes, by purples and violets what we feel most clearly in the landscape is the flatness, and the sense of distance


* Wicken Fen, November [CP8] watercolour, £190
The eye is drawn to cherry browns, with yellow touches in the sky, and the blue-grey rendering of the trees that skirt the scene


* North York Moors [CP7] watercolour, £190
In the heavy blackish brown of the foregorund, there is a detail of green, with, in the distance, a wash of cloud, and bluey-purple hills


A good round of visits during Open Studios before needing to make it to Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) to review Neil Brand's (@NeilKBrand's) score for Blackmail (1929), performed by The BBC Symphony Orchestra (@BBCSO), conducted by Timothy Brock


End-notes

* None of the web-sites seemed, despite the fact that there are two churches in one churchyard, to take sufficient trouble to tell one which is which, so the venue was as Cathy Parker kindly advises** actually the Church of St Cyriac and St Julitta (dedicated, according to the detail of the Wikipedia® web-page, to Saint Quiricus and Saint Julietta)...

** She has also usefully provided images of the three paintings described : for those who like the words on their own first, they have been put in a separate posting...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Monday, 13 July 2015

Blackmail and Brand at Saffron Hall

This is a review of Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) with full orchestra at Saffron Hall

More views of or before Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


13 July

* Contains spoilers *

This is a review of a special screening, at Saffron Hall, of Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929), with a score by Neil Brand, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the conductorship of Timothy Brock




From the opening blasts on the brass in the overture to Blackmail (1929), composer Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand) establishes a contrast between a martial, accented tone, where Morse code is not out of place, and a softer one, complete with, in the ranks (no pun intended !) of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (@BBCSO), a celeste. As conductor Timothy Brock and he were to agree in the Q&A*, Saffron Hall’s (@SaffronHallSW’s) acoustic response is incredibly live, which made for a thrilling evening of silent cinema, adeptly accompanied by at least a hundred players.






Moving from a quickly rotating wheel to a police-van, crammed with listening / transmitting gear and personnel, so a tone of grandeur was established, and it was communicated in scenes that led to an arrest where violent resistance was attempted – the impression that this was a film, too, of high energy and high anxiety, with ‘swirly’, kaleidoscopic string-effects that felt as if they were in tribute to Bernard Herrmann and his score for Vertigo (1958) (also, of course, Hitchcock).




Here, as for Underground (1928), an appropriate appreciation of pace is the hallmark of Brand’s writing, and, even in the quieter moment of the identity parade, he marks the presence of time in the moment by a chime, and soon after engages us with a jazzy feeling that he gives to muted trumpets (as well as nodding towards the signature-tune of Alfred Hitchcock Presents for the usual Hitch cameo).



The boldness of Hitchcock’s direction, and his love of symbolism, is all over this film, with plonking a waitress smack in the middle of Frank and Alice, after they have fought it out with another couple to get seated at the same table (momentarily, we have till a better opportunity seems to present itself one member of each couple facing the other in a stand-off) :


We ‘hear’ their words through the inter-titles, of which there is here a plethora, but he teasingly deprives us of their faces, and so their expressions (although, from the note that we see Alice take from her handbag, we know that she is not playing Frank straight**). Hitchcock, when Alice has given Frank the slip, also has the big shadows of ‘The Artist’ and of the man whom we come to know as Tracy all over where Alice is waiting for the former outside where he lives : there, after she has ascended through more shadow (with staircases cut away so that we can see their upwards progress), she then comes to be haunted by his laughing image of a jester.

Even before we get to his atelier, which madly in keeping with having painted a jester has the look of a mediaeval castle, those shadows, and Brand’s score, have told us that no good will come of a girl accepting an invitation to a Bluebeard’s dwelling of a place like this… Alice, who is willing to conform to the idea of a girl who just wants to have fun, just cannot resist exploring, and (with her host’s help, happy to be that close) creating an androgynous painted monster. Maybe, too, that little dress, so conveniently left out, is not meant ‘to be resisted’ ? already, when she has toyed with getting into it, the commanding words Put it on have uneasy undertones in the orchestral writing, reminding us that this may not be the best fashion choice ever.

When, with what is perhaps spontaneous, but no longer a borderline playful removal of Alice’s own clothing***, the pair end up tussling, it is a struggle of shadows that we see and, of course, we are catapulted forward twenty-five years to imagery of Grace Kelly, resisting attack from Robert Cummings, in Dial M for Murder (1954) (although the hand that emerges is with the knife in 3D (yes, it was so made), it seems to come out of the screen).




Afterwards, strings and an eerie kind of playing [for those who had not seen, we were told in the Q&A that it was not a theremin, but the effect of bowing a vibraphone on full****], give the immediate psychological significance although, by contrast, Hitch and Brand make Alice seem very purposive when dressing, covering her tracks, and leaving.

However, the shadows are there, and Alice now seems to descend a toy staircase (as if she is beginning to disassociate as, later on, in Marnie (1964), which Brand acknowledged was in his mind now). Soon, then, we hear and are shown, in how she hesitates to cross the road, and in the daggers that she hallucinates in the neon of Piccadilly Circus (against which, not for the last time, she seems so small), her purpose is much less so, as she drifts all night…

At this stage in the proceedings, and by kind courtesy of Neil Brand himself, a link to his piece in BFI's (@BFI's) Sight & Sound (@SightSoundmag) :




With the police at the scene of the crime, once the alarm has been called, the military-type theme returns, in a heavy guise. Then Frank arrives, and is directed to have a look around : when he recognizes first Alice’s glove, and then that the dead man is The Artist, the moment is pure theatre, but we do not linger with him, as there is dramatic irony in Alice’s mother saying, via the inter-title when she has brought in a cup of tea, that anyone would think that Alice had not been to bed. And then, just as soon, Alice is left alone to get out from under the covers, in her clothes and even shoes, and with her thoughts. As she repairs her overnight damage in the mirror, a little touch of the sound of Vertigo, and we somehow know that life is never going to be the same :


* At the breakfast table, when asked to cut the bread, the combination of hand, shadow, and knife brings it all back

* Behind the counter, and against the towering shelves, Alice White, newsagent’s daughter, looks small again

* We have a spectral, soft-focus Alice, but we also have Frank, showing her the glove, and (ironically) saying This is the only clue that you were there

* When Tracy comes onto the premises, Hitchcock steps back with the camera, and we have space for deliberation, with these figures just standing there in the Q&A, Brand told us that, scoring this, he was challenged, and just had to strip back and think of the sub-text

* Tracy reaching towards Frank’s pocket, somehow knowing that the glove is in there and then he shows us that he has its pair


Vertigo seem to be with us again : when asked in the Q&A, Brand said that he only quoted the themes for Hitchcock Presents and, when the patrolling bobby knows nothing of what is happening high above, that of Dixon of Dock Green. However, he said that the chordal structure of the main theme from Vertigo, with its elevenths and thirteenths, is capable of being both major and minor, and Brand was glad to learn that a Bernard Herrmann sound had been heard through the use of this structure, with which he meant to evoke film noir, but without directly quoting the theme*****.

At the heart of the plot, the nub of the problem faced by Frank and Alice is in the awkward breakfast and its aftermath, with Frank at the back, on the step, and Tracy sniffing the cigar that he forced Frank to buy him. Elsewhere, though, Mrs Humphries is calling at Scotland Yard, with the note that Tracy had left for her lodger. With his score, which Brand was keen to stress to us that Timothy Brock had orchestrated and developed, we hear how paced it is, and how it is in and out of themes as emotions rise and fall.

So, when a search is under way, looking for Tracy through a montage of mugshot books and wanted bills, the martial quality in the music is there in louder form, but, very soon after, we have jazzy notes accompanied by strings : talking about Hollywood orchestras later, Brand said that that string players were always classically trained, but those on trumpets or saxes were jazzers, who were able to deliver with an immediate, full sound.


When the photo of Tracy is found, we are given harp glissandi, and then, on xylophone, dashes and dots of Morse. In Frank’s perception, Tracy becomes, as he calls him, a suspicious looking man with a criminal record, and, with a big sax swagger, he leans cockily on the mantelpiece domesticity itself, and the assertion that a man, once fingerprinted, is assumed to lose credibility. In large form, a reference to that Vertigo sound again, before we end up with ‘brassy’ negotiation, and then, with ‘pregnant’ strings Tracy trying to persuade himself as much as Frank that he has reason to be believed over and above Alice and him (my word against hers).

But his nerve does not hold, when other police arrive, and the whirl / swirl of the orchestra must reflect as much his state of mind as Alice’s confusion, having tried to tell Frank that she does not want him to do this and that she has something to say, but being silenced. Out through the window Tracy goes, and we revert to the opening image of the van-wheel in motion, as he flees, but keeps encountering police officers, to whom, rightly or wrongly, he thinks that his status must be known:


So it is that, after he has paused for a drink, we see him as the pursuers do, as a speck against the hugeness of the façade of The British Museum, between whose monumental columns he passed, and which towered above him. Inside, massive Egyptian heads also stress his insignificance, and his likely fate being in larger hands, and when he descends a chain there is another huge head behind him, with Brand giving us heavy brass, and throaty trombones. A momentary glance into the Reading Room, and then terribly small again Tracy is on the breast-like dome, and, next, has plunged through the glass, back into the famous space below.


As at the opening, when Alice is waiting for Frank (and berating him for keeping her waiting), we are at Scotland Yard. There is an open, gracious theme as she asks to speak to the inspector, and is told that she needs to fill in a form. In terms of instrumentation, we are down to her small voice, and, when she is shown in, we find that Frank is there : again, he is wishing to head her off in the light of Tracy being implicated. Just when she is about to speak, news of what happened to Tracy obliges the inspector to leave her in Frank’s charge.

As they leave the room, we can see her torment in her tortured hand on her bag, and then, now that she tells him, and when Frank finally realizes what did happen, he drops her hand (with nothing offering a way back).




At this dramatic conclusion, the applause was enthusiastic.

Brand was welcomed to the stage, where he warmly embraced Brock, and where the orchestra and both men took several curtain-calls : the film had been honoured by this playing, and this score, and this first venture by Saffrons Hall and Screen had been very well received.



But do not take one's word for it, as there is verification by Tweet here, with even a link to another review :






End-notes

* Which was hosted by Saffron Screen’s (@Saffronscreen’s) Rebecca del Tufo (@BeccadT), since this successful community cinema, also based with Saffron Hall at The County High School, was its projection partner for the evening.


Neil Brand, Timothy Brock, and Rebecca del Tufo at the Q&A (left to right)


** Seeing, further on, the portrait of Frank as a constable in Alice’s room suggests that they have been going steady for a while (he has now risen through the ranks), as does the dutifulness with which, when prompted, he gave her a peck on the cheek when she has waited for him after work. Is having him as a beau more to satisfy her parents’ needs than hers ? (My Russian friend, pragmatically, had no sympathy for Alice for putting herself in harm’s way with The Artist (and being no better than she should be), but that is just she…)

*** Contrast with the mucking around, even with a stranger, in Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) (1930), which Brand (and Jeff Davenport) played for us at Cambridge Film Festival 2014…

**** One heard / seen recently when, in chamber configuration, Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) performed Joey Roukens’ new work Lost in a surreal trip (2015) (where these ears, at least, detected North by Northwest (1959)).

***** And, on the use of the theme itself in The Artist (2011), Brock and he said that they gathered that the theme had been used as a place-holder, which, when those composing for the film did not satisfy the director with anything else, simply came to be used at that point in the film : Brand agreed that the direct use of the theme not only is a musical strength that is not ‘earnt’ by the film, but also that it inaptly connects us straight to the pair of Kim Novak and James Stewart.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Saturday, 12 January 2013

Gala with a glitch

This is a Gala review of Underground (1928), screened in NFT1 at the BFI

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


10 January

This is a Gala review of Underground (1928), screened in NFT1 at the BFI

Confession : I am not very practised (or confident) with how to view silent film :

* self-perpetuating lack of exposure to the field

* which means that my lip-reading* never gets better

* and disinclines me to make the effort to choose silent


For I find the concentration needed even greater than for a poorly subtitled film, where there is the anxious race to read and make sense of captions before the next ones come up (and, necessarily, the one in hand disappears).

None of this deterred me from this gala screening:


It had all the elements : a Q&A (and hosted by Francine Stock, to boot); the buzz of a first night at the BFI; in Underground, the restoration, by the BFI, of a film 85 years old; the involvement of silent-film musical interpreter Neil Brand, not as accompanying musician this time, but as composer of the score; and the tie-in with the 150th anniversary of the tube, with a film that almost made a character of its tunnels, staff, trains.

It brought out all sorts, from the train enthusiasts (there was one on the panel, with a looping presentation of stills) to, as it were, the silent crowd, and, of course, film buffs in general (into the latter two categories of which Brand and Stock** fitted, as did Bryony Dixon (curator at the BFI) and ?? Ben Thompson ?? (from the team of restorers)).

However, there were only two drawbacks, the minor one that, with a panel of four, each of whom had to be given a say, there was only time for five (it may have been four) audience questions, and the major hitch, which had Brand leaping from his seat and disappearing within minutes, which was that the soundtrack was no longer in synch with the projection (which, apparently, it had been earlier).

So, for example, an urchin playing on some sort of whistle was heard before he was seen. As Brand had, of course, carefully scored each moment of the 84 minutes, it was immensely distressing for him (hence his sudden exit to voice his concern), but it seemed from the apology at the end from the BFI’s director that there had been a lack of confidence that stopping the film would have allowed the problem to be remedied***.

I asked for a complementary ticket to allow me to see it as it should have been, because, although there was no doubt of the power and skill of the scoring (and of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s performance****), the concentration involved in hearing a soundtrack that did not match the visuals compounded my interpretative impairment.
That apart, it was a grand evening, and I was pleased to be able to talk briefly to Neil Brand again and offer my congratulations (and commiserations). This is why :



I had heard Brand talking to Sean Rafferty last year, on Radio 3’s late-afternoon programme In Tune (one could equally say early-evening, as I choose not to say ‘drive-time’), and was very interested both in what he had to say about the film’s dynamics, and to hear not only some of the music, but also how it had been composed. So I knew that Anthony Asquith, son of the prime minister of that name, had been the art director, I knew a skeletal amount about what the film dealt with, and I had heard Brand’s palpable enthusiasm for this commission.

I knew, therefore, that I wanted to see it, and, when I saw Brand at the Silent Film Festival (I only managed to see one film, though, where he had been playing with Mark Kermode’s band The Dodge Brothers) and then at Festival Central, I learnt that all the attention was focused on a likely release timed with the tube anniversary.

This film – including in its original sense - is terrific, and there is no doubt that the patient work of restoration, of composing the score, and of recording and tracking it has been an excellent use of resources. I want only to say enough about it that is consistent with leaving it to unfold to a new viewer, but showing what there is to be appreciated.

My Tweet will have alerted to the scheming and self-centredness of Othello, but (in no particular order) there is also, as Bryony Dixon put it, a love quadrilateral, a fight and other moments of tension, shots of trains and escalators in and around Waterloo tube-station, a magnificent chase, and a picture of the metropolis and a romantic trip to (as a member of the audience asserted, since no one knew) Hampstead Heath. What more could one want... ?


End-notes

* It is a useful adjunct to indistinct speech, as a clue (or cue) to what is being uttered, but a different proposition, I find, with no speech sounds. A film of this kind has few inter-titles (have they always been called that?), and for me, used as I am to the dialogue driving many a scene, there’s a frustration at not knowing what is said.

** Aurally, it has the ring of a partnership, warehousing, maybe, designer goods.

*** When I talked, at a later date, to Cambridge Film Festival director Tony Jones, he was confident both as to the nature of the problem, and how the technology caused would have made it not capable of easy remedy : he also seemed to know, but lost me in the detail of the technicality, how it should have been done, and so would not have been beyond repair on the spot.

**** Brand provided information about how the recording from a live performance at a screening last year, once the audience noise had been taken off, had to be intermixed with taping from that event’s rehearsal. Here, too, there had been a technical issue, because the frame-speed of the projection when the two had been recorded differed !