Blood simple… Mogul Mowgli (2020)

 

Half moghul half mowgli

Raised like a concrete jungli

And a junglist and a Londonist

But my DNA wonder where my home should be

Brown steps under the black panthers

Like Bagheera on Mowgli?

My only heroes were black rappers

So to me 2Pac was a true Paki

 

At one point in this film Riz Ahmed’s character, talks about the conflicts of blood; his heritage and his passions seemingly irreconcilable at a time when his own blood is threatening his health and career. This is a film that gets under your skin, and the mixture of performance and cinematic dexterity makes for the most intimate of connections between the watcher in the stalls – oh yes! – and the screen.

This, courtesy of the BFI, was my first trip to the cinema since early March and I gave it the big build up by walking across London streets from St Pancras through a subdued Soho and strangely sad West End to the South Bank where I noticed the old National Film Theatre signage for the first time… maybe because I didn’t have crowds of people to steer through? A sign of the times.

Riz Ahmed

Mogul Mowgli does not let the returning cineaste down, opening with the most striking of cinematic sequences as we see Riz Ahmed’s rapper Zed, almost whispering his lines in intimate close up before turning to face a crowded auditorium in full rhyme. Now, I may have seen Public Enemy, Eric B and Rakim and LL Cool J at the Hammersmith Odeon back in ‘87 and be followed by Mr Chuck D on Twitter, but I’m no expert on rap. It matters not because this is a film about many things that just happens to feature a rap musician and when Zed is performing we can all recognise the intense, shared experience of a great gig and, being a pro himself as Riz MC, Ahmed is more than convincing; you hang on his every couplet, poetry at its most compelling with the literate and literal beats powerfully synchronised.

Ahmed describes the film as the most personal work he’s ever made and you really feel this not just with his unguarded expression – he’s the most febrile of actors - but also in the story of family, identity and the bottom line of health that so preoccupies us in 2020. There are scenes in hospital that disarm you and disturb the fragile deceptions that keep many from despair: good health is no longer a given, you need to find a new vitality and a new hope. It’s brutal, visceral and without giving anything away, ultimately optimistic in that, whatever becomes of us, acceptance and love transcend all.

The film’s title is taken from Riz’s Swet Shop Boys track, Half Mogul, Half Mowgli – quoted above - and signifies the battle for the soul between Western ideals and Eastern tradition, one that is fought out within families as well as on the streets and in the digital whirl of the culture wars. You can’t take your country back when some question your right of place and when you are no longer just “from” anywhere or any one nation.

Back home?

Zed is London born and rap-raised, of Pakistani Muslim heritage and ferociously driven to make a career doing what he loves. This idea of self-actualisation clashes not just with his friendships but also, obviously, with his family’s faith and devotion. As his girlfriend, Bina (Aiysha Hart) says he’s always rapping about where he’s from but it’s been a long time since he’s been back there.

Zed is making a decent living in New York but is still awaiting a bigger break and this comes in the after-gig party when his manager, Vaseem (Anjana Vasan) lines him up with a support slot on a lucrative, high profile tour which is due to start in a few weeks. This comes as Bina tells him time’s up on a relationship imbalanced by his need to succeed. He returns home to London for the first time in two years to scenes that make it clear exactly why…

Bassam Tariq, who co-scripted with Ahmed, directs with intensity allowing the visuals to speak as directly as Riz’s rhymes, with the adrenal New York scenes replaced by an almost dreamlike atmosphere as Zed is subsumed by family relationships, his heritage and obligations all conflicting with his professional focus. He constantly has flashbacks to his father Bashir’s (a superb Alyy Khan) flight from India, a terrified young boy looking into a dust-filled train carriage, whilst at the same time clashing with him about his own thwarted ambition and faith.

Zed is out of step with even some of his own generation, who have their own interpretation of Muslim strictures and as he attends mosque with his father he starts to have visions of a man with a veil of flowers covering his face; a childhood memory, an emblem of his background faith.

Then the Zed discovers that he has a degenerative disease, a blood condition where the white cells attack his healthy ones resulting in his losing muscle mass so that he can no longer walk. In denial at first, Zed keeps on hoping he can make the tour and then he is offered a stem-cell derived infusion which may help to treat his condition… His father brings in a faith healer who administers a “cupping” remedy which fails and Zed has no option but western science.

The scenes in the hospital are hard to watch as Zed tries to walk and struggles with even the most basic of bathroom routines, and with his father on hand to help, it’s almost funny but still painful for anyone who has had to care for a loved one. The film reaches a feverish pitch as Zed fights to stay on the tour and pushes his parents away as the visions increase and the narrative becomes focused on more basic struggles… the world of the well is so far from that of the unwell.

Alyy Khan

Mogul Mowgli illustrates just why Riz Ahmed is a national treasure both as an actor and a passionate communicator of the need for cultural understanding and advancement. As a marketer I give it five stars but as a cinema lover it has the higher rating of making me feel and think. 

It is exactly the kind of film that makes you realise what we've all been missing. Therefore... it is indeed, unmissable!

Mogul Mowgli is on general release from October 30^th and is distributed by the BFI – full details on their website.

Also, Near the Jugular, a season of films curated by Bassam Tariq and Riz Ahmed, runs at BFI Southbank and on BFI Player from 19th October – 30th November. It features screenings of films that both have found influential in their lives, and those that have inspired Mogul Mowgli.

 

The family that films together… The Cheaters (1929) with Cyrus Gabrysch, London Film Festival 2020

After Pordenone onto London for the next streaming festival and one that brought a collaboration from the Kennington Bioscope and the BFI. KBTV has been running since earlier in the lockdown and has garnered watchers from around the world to share their live experience with a combination of shorts and features accompanied by their team of expert accompanists as seen on the channel’s Piano Cam. It gives the collective “live” experience we’ve all been missing and is given added continuity by KB MC, Michelle Facey, who provides detailed introductions to the programme sat in her North London home surrounded by explosions of fresh flowers: silent films were never silent of course, and nor can they now be thought of as anything less than fragrant.

 

Today Michelle introduced along with the BFI’s Bryony Dixon who filled us in on the remarkable McDonagh Sisters, Paulette who directed this and seven other features, Isabel, the star, acting under the name Marie Lorraine and Phyllis who worked as art director. They even had their own set, using their splendid family home Drummoyne House as well as some stunning locations around Sydney.

Bryony explained how the film was converted into a sound film which was the only version given wide release. It fared badly and over the years became lost with only the silent elements remaining all of which has now been restored by Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive as one of their very few silent films to survive.

 

Handing over to the Bioscope contingent, Michelle showed part of Tony Saffrey’s documentary with Tony Fletcher interviewing the two surviving sons of Isabel McDonagh (professionally known as Marie Lorraine) and husband Charles Stewart, Alan and Charles both still tremendously proud of their mother and her position as Australia’s leading actress at the time.

BFI Bryony and KB Michelle

The Cheaters was the third of the McDonagh sister’s films and shows a remarkable consistency of tone and aesthetic; clearly the three worked very closely. Paulette had had an education in film in the cinema, religiously watching her favoured films as many times as possible. She was no less diligent in directing her own, often being so precise about camera settings, that he cinematographer Jack Fletcher just had to point and shoot.

 

The result is a very proficiently made melodrama with Hollywood level performances allied to a crispness of direction and that visual cohesion described by the National Film and Sound Archive as evidence of the McDonagh sisters' “understanding of mood and atmosphere.” They feel that this is one of Australia's major surviving silent and it was a delight even after a week spent on a virtual world tour at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.The story also has far more sustained drama than I expected and a moral twist that, some have commented, could only have come from three women. Without revealing spoilers, the film’s arc compares very favourably with Cecil B DeMille’s in Romance of the Redwoods (1917), streamed last Friday by Le Giornate.

 

The fatal decision: Arthur Greenaway and John Faulkner who are both very good!

The film starts with Three Fates, a cod mystical prelude that Michelle described as Griffith-esque, the sister had watched a lot of films but how many of them were older ones, at the end of the World-wide distribution? They were probably more likely to get DWG and DeMille than newer Pabst, Murnau, Gance or L’Herbier output. That said, any thoughts of straight-ahead post-Victorian moral fable are quickly dismissed when the film’s harder edge is soon revealed.

 

We open with Bill Marsh (Arthur Greenaway), begging for leniency from John Travers (John Faulkner) a man he has stolen from “Don’t you see? It was not for myself. My wife – she’s desperately ill… if you send me to jail, she’ll never come through.” Taylor’s not for turning and sees it a rather cowardly to hide behind a woman… so, off Bill goes to jail and soon after his wife does indeed die. Those Fates… could it be the sister’s feel there should be more compassion in the law and not just blind justice? We’re find out more on that later. A lot more.

 

“My God, Travers, you’ll pay for this! I’ll get even, if it takes me a lifetime!”

 

Isabel McDonagh also know as, Marie Lorraine

Twenty years later, Taylor’s richer than ever but so too is Marsh who, in the course of dedicating his life to revenge, has amassed his own fortune through criminal means. His gang includes his daughter Paula (Marie Lorraine aka Isabel), and we see her enacting a bold con job on the local jewellers, pretending to be a Lady and her daughter, borrowing “2,000 worth of necklace to make sure her Daddy – “Sir David” - likes it enough to buy it for her birthday. Soon after she leaves, the “police” arrive and arrest her accomplice “mother”, a Lady (Leal Douglas), but they are merely the escape committee allowing Paula to escape with the loot.

 

It’s a decent set-piece and something I’ll be considering for my daughter’s next round of student fees.

 

Marsh's big safe

Back at Marsh’s base we meet the rest of his gang, young Jan (Reg Quartly) his ward (?) as well as his crew of heavies. We also see the huge safe he stores his ill-gotten gains in, shades of master criminal Dr Mabuse so maybe the McDonagh’s had seen Lang’s work. The next job is going to involve Paula immersing herself further in the world of the Sydney super rich. She goes to stay at an expensive hotel and there she meets Lee Travers, adopted son of John and, as with Paula, unaware of their parent’s history. Lee is played by the athletically handsome Josef Bambach who, not for nothing, was known as the Australian Valentino according to MC Facey.

 

So much gorgeousness can not go to waste and Paula and Lee are soon very attractive and falling in love on long rides into the spectacular Sydney countryside with one sequence shot in a pink0tinted dusk and another showing Lee’s sportscar racing across the edge of a lake. The two are free and share such a pure connection but this is only outside the city, once they return Paula has to face up to her past and her suitability for this handsome but innocent man.

 

The Australian Valentino? Probably...

She meets Lee’s father who is concerned with her background, after all, “they are all sweet and charming until they prove otherwise…” to him, she has “seen life – she shows it”. But Lee sticks up for his love and he is right to… Then Paula, reluctantly agrees to do “one last job” and burgles the worst possible house… We’re in for a breathless final sequence as everything is revealed as not quite as simple as it might have been in a fairly audacious way.

 

Throughout Cyrus Gabrysch, played a gamelan of gorgeous rolling themes, matching the drama but also the thread of family and love. Occasionally I glanced down at his work on the famed Piano Cam but mostly, as John and Neil had said in last week’s masterclasses, the music was at the heart of the film and it felt exactly as if it was coming out of the screen!

Cyrus on the Piano Cam!

So, Bravo BFI and Bioscope! Let’s have some more collaborations like this! It’s good to see the silent film community standing so supportively together in these times and we’ll prove, just like the film, that blood is thicker than water!

 

If you’re quick, you can catch The Cheaters on the BFIPlayer, the link is here! Must finish 1PM, 14th October.

Rita, Stan and Babe too… Ballettens Datter (1913), Laurel or Hardy with John Sweeney and Neil Brand, Pordenone Day Eight

And so it ends with a medieval wedding with daft knights and kings dancing to a rag-time band and Stanley Laurel stepping on his princesses bridal train to reveal, “The End”. It ends with belly laughs from the family after eight days of a streamed Limited Edition of Le Giornate and the pledge to return in person next year. They made the best of what we hoped for and it was an experience that as festival director Jay Weissberg said, will have introduced new friends to the experience who will be there for the 40^th Anniversary edition in 2021 even if at this stage, we don’t know where but we do know when.

The final day featured Danish dancing, Hardy romancing and Laurel prancing; it was pure Pordenone.

Rita Sacchetto

Until today I’d never heard of Rita Sacchetto, the German star of Ballettens Datter (1913) but now I know that she was at the forefront of new approaches to modern dance having been inspired by Isadora Duncan and learned ballet only to take her instruction towards freer expression, mixing pantomime with dance to create Tanzbilder (“dance pictures”), aimed at “completing” works of art through movement. She attracted the attention of Loie Fuller, known for her Serpentine Dance, which was captured on hand-coloured films at the turn of the century, and toured America with her.

Sacchetto dances in Holger-Madsen’s film and as accompanist John Sweeney said, it was not ballet and quite unlike anything he’d seen as a dance specialist. Professor Mary Simonson of Colgate University, filled in the dancer’s background in the after screening discussion and made me go back and watch those sequences again.

In a week full of insights into silent film musical accompaniment John explained the difficulties in playing with dance on screen as the performance is quite different in tone and pace to the drama that surrounds it. In this instance, Holger-Madsen’s focus on doorways and general framing, acted as a natural cue between changes in the narrative. It’s a very competently directed film as you would expect from the standards of Danish film at this time.

The Count obsesses before he controls...

Sacchetto plays prima dancer Odette Blant who is being romanced by Count de Croisset (Svend Aggerholm), who watches her performances in love-struck awe. But when she agrees to marry him he tells her that the condition must be that she gives up the stage. A year later Odette’s getting itchy feet and he chides her for dancing in front of the mirror - Holger-Madsen (also known at the time as Holger-Hyphen…), is very fond of mirrors and they give depth to this scene and others.

Odette goes to the Theatre where she used to dance and meets old friends including Delage, the manager and, when their leading dancer injures herself, he calls Odette to stand in – obviously they couldn’t afford an understudy… She agrees and lies about seeing her sick aunt whilst the Count, happy to enjoy watching other women dancing but not for others to enjoys his wife… goes to the theatre and the inevitable happens.

Love this sequence, it explains so much.

The Count then compounds his illogical position by accusing Odette of having an affair with Delage, a duel is arranged and things look like taking a dark turn, all because of his old school pride.

Ballettens Datter is another fine restoration from the Danish Film Institute and whilst the plot creaked to jaded modern eyes it’s a very entertaining window on contemporary mores and the eccentrically wonderful performance art of Rita Sacchetto.

With joyful synchronised serenades from maestro Neil Brand, Laurel or Hardy (US 1916-1925) raised the whole issue of fate and predetermination in slapstick comedy. Living in the era of hot-take history, many folk have difficulty understanding the nature of events, I mean, what took Stan and Ollie a decade to find each other? Didn’t they know?! It’s one of cinema’s great journeys and, whilst it’s always odd to watch one without the other, they were always a class act and it’s fascinating to view them on their way up when you’re constantly reminded of Buster Keaton’s comment, “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest. I wasn’t the funniest. Stan Laurel was the funniest.”

Runt and Plump

The Serenade (1916) was first up and was part of the period when the duo were “seeing” other comedy partners in this case Billy Ruge as Runt to Oliver Hardy’s Plump. Now clearly this is sizeism of the worst order but it is bloomin’ daft and very funny and it’s exactly why my Granddad Jim (yes, he was James Joyce, but the amateur boxer and carpenter variant) loved these men. I always think of Jim watching Mr Hardy’s work and here he oozes comedic charm as a tubby tuba player annoying his neighbours and fighting with Ruge’s Runt for the hand – and other parts – of the Bandleader’s daughter played by Florence McLoughlin.

Sermon on the mount...

Forward five years and Oliver was at Vitagraph for The Rent Collector (1921) and this was the first in a six-year period as part of writer-director Larry Sermon’s company. Sermon was Vitagraph’s biggest comedy star and here he gives himself the difficult task of becoming a rent collector in one of the roughest parts of town. Hardy is Hurricane Smith, a beardy hoodlum not given to polite negotiation having thrown the previous rent officer out of his window to his braying gang below. It’s the same moves from Ollie just different intent – he’s a lot more violent - and he cuts a darker figure than usual as the fearsome Hurricane bopping the opposition at will, winging them over his head and taking advantage of the charitable women of the mission. At Vitagraph Babe worked mostly as “chief comedy support”; he was always a team player and worked very well with Sermon who reputedly taught him golf!

Santa knows Stanley, he knows...

Over to Stanley and Detained (US 1924) from Selznick Pictures where he made a dozen films with Joe Rock after leaving Hal Roach. Rock tried to avoid paying him his due and so, fed up with trying to get blood out the stone, Stan went back to Roach.  In his notes Rob Stone therefore gives credit to the parsimonious Rock for driving Laurel back to the place where he’d end up with Hardy. In Detained, Stanley is rudely interrupted from his task of watering trees in the park by an escaped convict who swaps clothes leaving him to be arrested by the cops and interred in the con’s place. In his own way, Stan Laurel was Kafka…

“Shakespeare said it – No woman can make a fool out of a man. But she can give him a wonderful start.”

Clyde Cook and Noah Young hedge their bets

Moonlight and Noses (1925) sees our hero back at Roach, co-scripting and directing Australian comedian Clyde Cook as well as a young lass name of Fay Wray. Rob Stone says that Cook influenced Laurel and vice versa, and here he is in a duo with Noah Young as a couple of bungling burglars, showcasing a similar slow-paced delivery and relationship to the camera. James Finlayson’s in it too as Professor Sniff, “goofy half the time and cuckoo the rest…” and Laurel writes a great newspaper headline, just read your way down this one…

 

Cook plays the brains of the outfit but that’s not saying much and, as they break in to Prof. Sniff’s house, he agrees to let them off on the condition that they steal the body of Hemmingway Toots from the graveyard so he can prove his medical point (no wonder some have had enough of experts…) Needless to say, things don’t go to plan but you can sense Stan’s cheek and professionalism behind it all. Also, that Fay Wray, what a cracker, she’ll go onto to bigger things, mark my words!

Fay Wray, James Finlayson and Tyler Brooke 

Only half of When Knights Were Cold (1922) survives but it ain’t half funny, especially Stan’s “horse” which is basically just a stuffed head on a stick, with two fake legs over an equine girdle. This, along with such fancies as taking a watering can to trees, and then to a fast-growing vine in this film, shows, to me at least, Laurel’s very Lancastrian humour, revelling in the surreal and the plain daft. That said Frank Fouce, who wrote and directed was born in Hawaii so what do I know? Stan is Lord Helpus who is out to rescue Princess Elizabeth New Jersey (Catherine Bennett) form the evil clutches of the Prince of Pluto (Stanhope Wheatcroft) and his numerous guards.

There’s one moment when Lord Helpus and a guard are so bored with their swordplay, they both lean against the wall tapping swords in a perfunctory way before Helpus kicks his adversary out of the window. Throughout Stan looks direct to camera, Mabel Normand style, but with his own particular twinkle; so much comedy to give. People may look for the Laurel persona in these films but he was clearly a flexible performer who if he was looking for his own defined style like Chaplin or Keaton, hadn’t yet found it. It’s chicken and egg or, perhaps, man and papier-mâché horse.

Which is where I came in. See you next year Giornate Family!

you can lead a fake horse to water...

Swimming with films… A Romance of the Redwoods (1917) with Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton, Pordenone Day Seven

Boys - I reckon when twenty men have been fooled by one small woman - - they'd better take their medicine!

There’s so much to relish in a restored Mary Pickford feature from her peak period; she’s the only person you watch when she’s on screen and runs through the numbers with all the ease of a virtuoso effortlessly emoting and impenetrably in character whether she’s scrubbing laundry, fighting for her life or just in the moments between sadness and resolve. She had what biographer Eileen Whitfield described as “a fountain of feelings” for the camera even if Cecil B DeMille wanted to influence them more than most.

Director DeMille clearly constructed A Romance of the Redwoods to allow its star to shine as often as possible although their relationship was not a straightforward one, one immovable the other unstoppable. Pickford later complained that she thought Cecil was a great producer but she didn’t think he had “any heart”, even though, she corrected, she “loved him”. Dwarfed by her director’s vision as much as the redwoods and the rest of its male cast – almost to a man six feet plus versus Mary’s five feet nothing – Mary gives a powerfully controlled performance and still shines through dominating everything and everybody.

The Queen

For his part DeMille was pleased with the results and accepted that, following the merger of Famous Players with Jesse L. Lasky’s Feature Play Company, it was difficult for his star to surrender her usual control over script and writer but she carried on like the “trouper” – his word – she was allowing him to be the director-producer he was. Today we can watch the result of both troupers’ output and, in spite of an outlandish scenario, the results are a delight especially given a crystal clear restoration that even on my old Dell Ultrabook look fantastic: you can almost sense the reality of the filming, the smell of redwoods, the dusty sets, Mary inwardly glowering at another instruction she was just going to ignore. In fairness, DeMille gives her plenty of close-ups and she was always ready!

DeMille co-wrote with Jeanie Macpherson and the story was Pickford’s first western set among the Californian redwoods during the 49ers goldrush. Mary plays Jenny Lawrence, a young woman sent out to live with her uncle John after the death of her mother but who ends up with less than she bargained for. A stage robber called “Black” Brown (Elliott Dexter) who, as with Smith and Jones “never killed none” during his crimes, has traded places with her uncle after he died a heroic death trying to fend off an Apache attack. Black is mean but he isn’t a wanton killer, disarming his partner in crime, after he tries to cheat him out of their ill-gotten gains.

Elliott Dexter, Mary Pickford and Charles Ogle

Jenny duly arrives after an arduous journey to find her fake Uncle but has little choice but play along, penniless and friendless as Black proves by taking her to the saloon where not a single drunken miner or cowboy will listen to her story and she’s treated as a little joke by the brassy lasses singing and serving. Tully Marshall is at the bar as Sam Sparks, always a good sign, and there’s a sheriff for hire played by Walter Lang as well as a young man, Dick, played by Raymond Hatton who is the only one close to Mary’s height.

Jim Lyn (Charles Ogle) is the most sympathetic of the townsfolk and befriends the niece of the man they all think is John Lawrence. He’s key to the softening of tone as Jenny starts to tidy up Black’s house and attempts to get him to go straight after discovering one of his handkerchief’s with four mysterious holes in them, cue a nice moment as realisation creeps across her face as she lifts the folded kerchief to her face and sees they’re eyeholes.

Lost in the woods

Jenny takes in laundry and there’s a lovely scene with her scrubbing away against the backdrop of the giant redwoods. Jim comes to talk to her and she defends her deadbeat “Uncle” when he talks against him, little knowing that Black overhears her. The improbable seems to be happening as Jenny and Black fall in love and the latter seems willing to toil away prospecting. But searching for gold is hard work and maybe just one last “job” will set them up for a brighter future; what could possibly go wrong?

Donald Sosin accompanied with some gorgeous melodies and well-worked themes that strode hand-in-hand with performers and narrative. He also drafted in Joanna Seaton to provide vocals adding atmosphere to scenes in the saloon and neatly inputting context to the gold rush and western setting. Vocals as part of silent accompaniment can by high risk but for some reason they seem to work best with westerns, perhaps because they are so much apart of the cinematic musical landscape for so much of this genre?

Talking of musical landscapes, there was another excellent masterclass on Day Seven, this time featuring The Three Multi-instrumentalists, Frank Bockius, Günter Buchwald and Stephen Horne. Günter plays violin as well as piano, sometimes mind-bogglingly at the same time, Frank plays a whole range of percussion and Stephen flute, accordion, bells and whistles along with keyboards. The question is how do they make their choices for accompaniment?

Günter, who started silent piano accompaniment in the late 70s, first used violin in 1984, when playing for The Princess and the Violin Player, which featured a character playing a Bruch Violin Concerto. The second instrument was not only used diegetically, but to create different atmospherics and he could also bow or pluck whilst hands playing the piano too.

Stephen started using the flute to add different sonority to his accompaniment to add colour and develop atmospherics. Whilst being an advocate for single instrument accompaniment there’s a danger as a solo pianist that you play as many notes as possible so it’s very restful on the ear to play a single line on another instrument.

Günter Buchwald, Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius

Frank observed that both violin and flute are voice-like instruments and you can modulate the tone in subtler ways than an actual voice which can be dangerous as it captures so much attention from the audience and the violin and flute are a bit more neutral. Frank has to plan his use of “bells and whistles” more carefully as they are less neutral and more reliant on narrative rhythm.

Talking of the dangers, Stephen that one player playing too many instruments that can take the audience out of the film; there needs to be restraint and logic to the choice. Günter having studied the semiotics of silent film music referred to one quote from a 20’s review that said they couldn’t be sure if there had been music or not… and so there’s a delicate balance to be made between scoring over the film and being heard to come from without it. All are well aware of this need but also, as Stephen said, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the occasional moment of showmanship… it’s good to remind the audience they they’re seeing a live performance.”

Günter shares his notes...

These musicians not only play multiple instruments they also play together and this is another art that requires deliberation and patience. Frank talked about the adaptation required; “For a percussionist from the classical area you miss a written score and from jazz you start a rhythm but the film changes and you need to be ready to stop as you’d overrun the action of the atmosphere: listening is the key as always.”

When playing with a trio Günter will leave the lower keys alone so his bassist can occupy that space and Stephen agreed saying that the “space” should always be there and that there’s no imperative to play all of the time. Listening is the most important thing and not to be afraid of dropping out to let the other musician(s) carry on if you feel your lines are crossing.

Frank highlighted that trust and familiarity with the others’ playing were key and also that someone has to lead to provide improvised musical direction. Stephen described Frank as “almost like another piano player, I’m aware that he’s interpreting the film which is quite unusual.” The two talked about their marvellous accompaniment to Lupu Pick’s Sylvester (1923) under the stars at last year’s Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Frank would lead and it worked with because of the film’s speed and frequent cutting.

Sylvester aka New Years Eve

Despite the stress of this successful experiment Frank summed up the process as: “we swim with the film and we have to make interesting waves for the audience…”

Following the pattern of the films is key for any player coming from jazz, whose instinct is to play with 4/4 or other regular rhythm when you need to adjust to the uneven pace of the film and not be metronomic. Stephen had also been unsure about playing with other melodic instruments but is finding a way to do it using a cue sheet approach so you’ve pre-planned out the film in order to prevent thematic clashes. He may also work with one notated theme that you can both return to during the film. This is certainly an approach that has worked well whenever I’ve seen him play with Elizabeth Jane Baldry and her harp.

So, be prepared, pay attention and listen but also be supremely talented would be my biggest take-aways. This session could have gone on all day as far as I’m concerned and thankyou to all the players for their masterclasses as well as accompaniment this week.

More Mary...