New Experience: A Silent Movie, Old Style

Back in the beginning of the XX century, when movies and movie theaters came to be, all movies were silent. However, the (then new) Hollywood movie studios realized that playing music as the movie was shown made for a much better experience, and so in the 1920's most movie theaters would have a piano (or, in the fancy ones, a pipe organ) playing music during the movie to accentuate what the public was seeing on the screen. At that time, the brand new Paramount Theater was opened in Seattle, to provide the city with a luxurious venue to exhibit the latest hits from Hollywood. As part of that, a huge pipe organ was set up in the theater to play the music for the silent movies of the time. Eventually, the Paramount Theater switched to live theater and musicals, which it does to this day. However, on one Monday a month, the Paramount will revert to its original purpose, and show a silent movie, on its "Silent Movie Mondays".

I checked that out yesterday. The movie for last night was 1923 "Safety Last!", the magnum opus of Harold Lloyd. He was one of the top three comedians of the time, together with Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Chaplin was famous for combining drama with comedy, and Keaton for remaining always unflappable no matter how crazy things were around him. Lloyd found his niche by combining comedy with being a daredevil: it is said that when people watched a Chaplin movie they would laugh and cry, whereas with Lloyd they would laugh and gasp. "Safety Last!" shows that clearly, with a famous scene where Harold Lloyd (with no safety devices) climbs a building in Los Angeles and eventually hangs from its clock.

The screening followed exactly what was done in the 20's: it used one of the few remaining original prints of the movie together with a projector of the time, showing an image that was almost a square. Interestingly enough, in regular movies there are moments where there is no music (and even no dialog, just silence) but on silent movies the organ plays from beginning to end without interruption. The organist was very good and the sound of the pipes was impressive. Despite being such an old movie, I ended liking it very much: it's truly funny and some of the scenes really make you gasp (it's possibly not a great movie for those with fear of heights...). When the movie was over, a movie critic and the organist took questions from the public, to explain more of the silent movie experience. One interesting thing they discussed was that very few movies had music sheets ("Metropolis" was one of the few): most movies, like "Safety Last!" had... nothing. It was up to each organist or piano player in each movie theater to come up with the appropriate soundtrack.

All in all, it was a great experience - it's a movie that is good by itself, and the experience of watching a movie like it was done in this very theater one hundred years ago was fascinating.