Tag: Robert Israel

Music for The Black Pirate (1926; US; Albert Parker)

This week, I can report on my first film concert of 2026! After a couple of days of archival rummaging in Berlin (of which, more anon), I took the train south to Nuremberg. My goal was the Kongresshalle, where the Nürnberger Symphoniker have their rehearsal space and one of their main performance venues. The composer and conductor Robert Israel had invited me to attend one of the rehearsals before the performance of The Black Pirate, then the first of two concerts being performed at the end of the week. Though I had listened to any number of the scores Israel has played, arranged, and/or composed for silent films, I had never actually had the chance to experience his music live – nor to see him conduct an orchestra.

I was excited by this prospect, but also to see The Black Pirate again. I knew the film only from the old 1995 restoration, which has been released on various home media releases – the latest version being on Blu-ray by Cohen. However, the version of The Black Pirate that I was seeing in Nuremberg was an entirely new restoration undertaken by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and The Film Foundation, completed in 2023. For this version, restorers examined and scanned multiple negatives of the two-strip Technicolor, discovering supposedly “lost” prints in the process. After realigning the original green and red elements to make the image as stable as possible, they also checked the resulting colours against a surviving test reel and production records to match as closely as possible the look of the original film. Missing intertitles were restored, and – a century after its initial release – The Black Pirate is back to something very close to its former self.

MoMA also commissioned an original orchestral score from Robert Israel. The Black Pirate was originally shown with music by Mortimer Wilson, though the result displeased Fairbanks and he never worked with this composer again. Though I am a fan of Wilson’s score for The Thief of Bagdad (1924), I was somewhat underwhelmed with his music for The Black Pirate. You can hear it, as arranged and recorded by Israel himself, on previous media releases of the 1995 restoration. (I note that the recent Cohen release has cut all information about the soundtrack and its context. Thus, there is no credit to the composer of the music – only to Israel’s role as conductor. One must glance back at Kino’s previous release to see the details.) As I was to glean during the next two days, Israel’s 1996 recording of the Wilson score was a rushed affair that hadn’t been given the time (i.e. budget) to do much with the music. Israel’s new, original score for the 2023 restoration is thus a return to his work for The Black Pirate – and a chance to do the film justice.

Thursday, 29 January 2026: Kongresshalle, Nuremberg

It is snowing heavily, and the streets of Nuremberg are a slippery mass of ice and sludge. Robert Israel has warned me that “time will not be an ally” today. I meet him at his hotel, and he guides our taxi driver to the back entrance of the Kongresshalle. Though this hall is part of a much larger structure (a vast arena built by the Nazis for future rallies), I barely glimpse the building before we enter. From the bustle of the city and the traffic, inside it is remarkably calm and spacious. Israel greets various members of the Symphoniker team, and we negotiate various doors to his room. There, we talk about our journeys through the wintry landscapes to get to Nuremberg (I from Berlin, he from the Czech Republic). In the wake of multiple delays en route, in Nuremberg Israel has only three rehearsals and a final run-through with the orchestra. Ideally, there would be more, but the musicians of the Nürnberger Symphoniker (as I will witness) are quick learners. And Israel has as much experience of this kind of work as anyone alive today (and more than most). This is a man who has spent over forty years performing and writing music for silent cinema. To illustrate a point about his score, he opens his laptop and navigates through dozens of clips and recordings, assembled for work and for teaching. Israel shows me the opening of The Black Pirate, accompanied by a recording of his music, to set the scene. The seeds of the entire score are laid out: characters and ideas are introduced through a series of motifs, while the very mood and spirit of the drama is apparent in the sheer fun and drive of the music. He talks about his previous experience of the film, of Wilson’s score, and the pressures of time. Just then, a head pops round the door and a man informs Israel that some schoolchildren have been invited to watch the orchestra rehearse this morning. (This wonderful scheme with local schools seems to be a fixture of early life in Nuremberg. I’d love to have had this kind of experience when I was young.)

Soon, it’s time to go. With time so limited, there isn’t a moment to waste. I hurry after Israel, who leads me downs some steps, through large double doors, and up onto the back of the stage. (For someone always in the wings, it’s a sneaky thrill for me to tread, however briefly, on stage.) The orchestra has started to assemble, and I find myself negotiating the little forest of music stands and precious instruments. Israel wends his way to the podium, puts down his bag, and motions me to take a seat in the auditorium. I clamber down the front steps and find a space a couple of rows behind the two ranks of schoolchildren and their teachers. There is a hushed curiosity among these eager kids, who watch – as I do – the players take their seats on stage. The musicians have their own gentle hubbub of voices, soon augmented by the hubbub of instruments warming up. Suspended in the space above the stage, a large screen bears the promise of images. As ever, the players don’t get to see the film in rehearsal and will scarcely have a chance to do so at any point in their two performances. What’s more, these musicians are sight reading Israel’s score as they go. Not seeing the film, and not knowing the score, their performance will be a remarkable feat of skill and discipline. Only Israel, as conductor, will be able to face the screen and keep them in time with the film.

It’s time to begin. Israel turns to the auditorium and (in German) introduces The Black Pirate to the children. This morning’s session will cover the last third of the drama. In a few words, Israel promises us pirates – and adventure. Then he turns to the orchestra, raises his baton, and the floor shakes with the roar of brass. Drums rattle, strings stride… Then, silence. Israel’s baton keeps time amid the pause. The music resumes, but not in time: “Stop! Stop,” he says. “Let’s not lose count. Takt nummer eintausenddreihundertund…”. Watching him mark the silent bar, my attention is drawn to Israel’s arms and shoulders. He’s wearing a black T-shirt to conduct at the rehearsal, and I can see why. It’s a tremendously energetic occupation, a performance in advance of the performance. The clothes – both of conductor and orchestra – are casual, but only in the sense that a tracksuit might be for an athlete. This rehearsal is a workout in more ways than one, and you can sense the physical energy being exuded by these musicians. It’s an odd contrast, this hall and stage, and the few ranks of observers, with the outside world. Through the windows, I can glimpse the snowbound city, entirely white. Inside, we might be watching a sports team practice their routines, such is the energy and bustle on this cold day. (Something about the pale wooden fittings in here reminds me of a sports hall, too.)

On stage, the music is warming up. Here is a swagger in sound, invisible figures strutting on deck. You can hear the gestures. Israel stops. “Molto espressivo, here”. They go again, and the players respond. Phrases that a moment ago were stiff, unstretched are now mellower, have a glow about them. Menacing steps, a sweep of snare drums. […] “Snare and tam-tam. Can you start at mezzo forte, but…” […] A pause. Israel takes on water. A solo violin tries out a phrase, stretches it, smooths it. The sounds cease. Israel speaks again, introducing the next scene: “Fairbanks is walking the plank into the ocean – but he escapes!” The music growls. The waves tremble beneath a funeral march, a march that’s noble, sad, moving – and menacing. Suddenly Israel’s arms reach up, react. Tension – drums… “OK, let’s stop. Let’s do some work on this.”

The work proceeds. Israel addresses a player: “Tam-tam…”. He explains what’s happening on screen, to get the right effect from the instrument. “He goes into the ocean. That’s you!” There is more work, then another note. “First horn. I know it says ‘mezzo forte’, but considering how it sounds here, you’ve coming through so well, you can lower it a bit.” “Oh, I’m sorry”, the player replies. “No, no, it’s perfect”, Israel explains, “It’s just for the acoustics of the hall.” […] Brass and woodwind are taken through their steps separately, then the strings. The sound is by turns nasal, chesty, sensuous, shimmering. Then they go all together, and it’s steady. […] “At this bar, think Scheherazade!” Israel calls out to a player. “That’s you, above the orchestra.” The take proceeds. “Ja!! Super! Dankeschön!” the conductor cries to the timpani, after a grand moment. […] From the combined body of sound, there is a ravishing violin solo. Between takes, Israel calls for a subtler balance of sound: “Think violin concerto. Those dynamics.” Another take. It sounds gorgeous.

(As the musicians continue, the rows of schoolchildren in front of me are gathered up by their teachers and, with gentle pleas for hush, are quietly trouped from the hall. Suddenly, I feel a little conspicuous, sat alone in the audience as the orchestra continues.)

We go again, but – “First horn, from C natural to B natural…”, and Israel sings the right way to shape the phrase. The first violin soars again. […] “Careful after zweitausendvierhundertundsechzig… At the oboe solo… for two bars, we need to be a little more quiet…”, and they go again. “Ja, das ist gut!” […] “So Douglas Fairbanks gets out of the ocean…”. There is some shifting around, a snatch of conversation. A comment I cannot hear earns the response: “If you’re going to steal, steal from the best, right?” […] The orchestra climbs out of the ocean – “Careful, that’s a major chord there. Ja, G-major.” […] “Violins and the bass, let’s not go for mezzo forte, let’s go with mezzo piano, it’s a bit too much.” They go through it again. As this passage ends, Israel’s arms are aloft. It sounded great, and everyone on stage knows it. “Ja!” he cries, and everyone smiles.

The next section. “Fairbanks is riding on horseback…”. There are quick interchanges between this image, and the other half of the scene – which the orchestra cannot see, only feel by the alternation of themes in the music. The swift changes of tempo and tone catch some out. “You need to be very careful here with your count”, Israel reminds them. […] The orchestra goes through once, twice, each time better. The players are learning the score, not just with their intelligence but with their bodies. Music is kinetic, and you can hear the experience of playing being taken on physically. Music is muscle memory, after all. Israel admires their efforts. “Very good reading, this is very tricky…”. They go again. Muscle and flair on stage, like Fairbanks himself on screen. The music roars and shakes itself, and the floor trembles. There are questions, and Israel reassures. “No, that rubato bar is good. I will go to it.”

We move on. “Takt nummer zweitausendsiebenhundertundzwanzig, bitte…”. The orchestra trips a little, then picks itself up, and skips along. […] “Mitternacht…”. Bass clarinet emerges from the cymbal, harp, strings. It sounds beautiful, and it’s being read on sight. Solo violin for a moment. It all sounds gorgeous.

Bar 2777. The solo violin is not so solo. A mistake. “It’s zweitausendsiebenhundertseibenundsiebzig…”. They go again. Menacing rumbling, a gathering swarm in the strings. […] The musicians follow the conductor, who is the intermediary with the unseen film. Since Israel is also the composer, he can explain the rationale for his choices, his rhythms. “Does anyone know morse code?” he asks. Here, Israel stamps out “SOS” on the padded podium floor. It’s the rhythm behind a phrase, and he describes the Princess being in danger of defilement from a pirate. “Let’s hope Douglas Fairbanks arrives in time…!” There is muttering, perhaps a little titter of laughter, but Israel speaks up. “No, this is really a great film. Because in our time, we need to see justice being served. We all deserve that.” The scene in sound plays again. A big climax, and Israel swipes across to bring a halt, then immediately resumes. (I will fully understand this gesture only in the live concert.) […] A long section, everyone in tune, in their groove. A swig of water. It’s hard work, good work. […] Israel talks through the rhythm, taps the floor, sings – bops, rather – a beat. […] “I understand it’s difficult because it’s in your lower register, but it’s very important to get the pulse right.” A long section. “OK, very nice.” And it is!

Israel introduces the next section. “I think you’ll be able to guess who’s showing up with a galley full of soldiers.” It’s vivace, but the going might be tricky. “I think to get used to this, let’s do this in 4, for the notes, then we can go through again in two beats.” They go through, picking up cohesion, swagger even, as they proceed. […] “OK timpani, forte, bitte, nicht fortissimo.” More directions. “Very, uh, militärisch, OK?” – he hums and stamps the rhythm. Fairbanks’s theme emerges, and orchestra is familiar with it by now, and they leap into it, body it forth. I can see the energy on stage.

Another run-through, this time in two. Sections pulling together, sounds knotting together – the result is a superb effort, tangibly effortful, athletic – it’s a joyful passage of performance. After the take, there is a buzz of accomplishment. Smiles, hums, instrumental scrapes and warbles. “Yes, eroica, let’s do that again please. Eroica, eroica. Sechs, acht. Douglas Fairbanks starts firing cannon at their main mast…”. […] There are more comments. “Clarinet… flute…”, Israel begins. But suddenly his alarm goes off. There is a chuckle, and a murmur. It is the signal for a break. Such is the tight timeframe for rehearsal that these breaks are as exact (and exacting) as a performance. There is thus an immediate dispersal of most players, but a few remain and fill the hall with incredibly rapid flights of sounds. Like birds have suddenly escaped their cage and fly about the room, singing. Last of all, a piccolo continues to flutter on her own. (Even as I write this down, Israel waves at me to follow. I grab my bag, dash from my seat and up onto the stage, and wend carefully through the low forest of music stands.)

[Later]

After another dash back to the stage, and over it, I find myself a seat in the middle of the auditorium. A dense hum of tuning masks my scramble for pen and paper. It begins anew. […] “We’ll do it a bit slowly as it’s very tricky.” The woodwind warble through an awkward passage, a dense thicket of sound. Then the whole orchestra goes together, and suddenly the hero occupies the soundscape – taking centre stage in the score. Soon, a sunbeam seems to spread through the music, a beautiful intimation of rightness – of justice. I glance at the empty screen, floating above the orchestra. Without the film projected, this score is a tone poem, conjuring images from sound. […] “Timpani, just for those two bars: hard hammers please. I wanted a kind of Beethoven scherzo sound.” They go through, but Israel calls out “Stop! Someone’s coming in early here. Please be very careful with counting…”.

[…] They move on. Israel flicks through his score. “OK. Dreitausendfünfundneunzig. This one’s more difficult for me than for you, as the timing with the film needs to be absolutely precise.” They go through, a little slowly. “Stop… A point of information…”. Here, Israel sings and gestures a sudden halt that must match the action on screen. […] The passage is tough. “I’m sorry, but this is the only way to do it. We have to match the film.” They persevere. When they get through it again, Israel complements their efforts. “After Sunday, you’ll feel like you’ve run a marathon.” Another take. High drama, difficulties. “OK, we’ll need to go through this. Bitte, just woodwinds and brass.” They do a run-through. At the end, Israel purrs, and the other sections tap their stands or stamp their feet in appreciation. “OK, strings, now it’s your turn…”. They go through, matching their colleagues in their own time.

“OK, let’s put this all together.” Israel crouches and sets up his laptop on a small stand beside the podium. He presses play with the tip of his baton, then turns to the orchestra. They play. […] “OK, please just follow me, I’ll need to go a little faster here, I’ll try to make it as clear as I can.” I keep an eye on the tiny monitor as Fairbanks cavorts in miniature. […] “I’m sorry but someone is getting ahead.” A tactful investigation is undertaken. First, the brass play their section to iron out the tempo. Then the woodwind play on their own. The error is found herein and easily fixed. Now all together, then once again – this time with the film. […] “Ja! We’re in time with the film now. Congratulations, it’s less tricky from here on. Not that this is easy, I know”, he adds. Indeed, it’s very hard work, and they press on.

[…] Directions of dynamics relayed from the podium, then through section leaders. The first violin relays it to her colleague three rows back. […] “Horn, yes, it’s a D-flat.” […] “Cymbal, I would ask you something here: it needs to be a real POW! It’s a specific effect for something on the screen.” They go again, and the percussionist – a young man at the very back of the stage, behind the level of the floating screen – gives it some welly. […] Israel explains the forte/piano to the strings as the moment when Fairbanks breaks the sword. “Justice is served!” They continue, until the horns squeak at a natural. Israel pauses, clarifies, just as the horns mock their own mistake in sound, then they all go again – and it’s perfect. It continues perfect until the woodwind go awry. Everyone chuckles tolerantly. “I guess we know what they think of my writing”, Israel jokes. “And don’t worry that here the bar numbers go all the way back to 0. It’s the same in everyone’s score, even my own. It’s just a printing error.” Another start, another false step. “Once more, please. We’re coming to the end of this thing, and it’s a lot of hard work.” Another run through, and it’s beautiful.

I watch the percussionist move across to the glockenspiel for his phrase, a droll intervention, placed before the sweetness of the lead violin solo. Then the great leap to “The End”, and it’s hugely satisfying. But “The End” must be reached again. Israel says how wonderful the basses sound. “People don’t realize how high the basses can go. It’s such a beautiful sound, so sweet.” […] They reach “The End” again, and a flutter of appreciative mutterings. “OK, we still have seven minutes. I don’t want to exhaust us, so achtundvierzig, bitte, and not to the end.” So they run through another passage, and then time runs out. There is a winding down, and Israel finishes with a few words. At this evening’s full run-through, Israel will be at stage level: the podium makes him too high for the audience. He promises to make his gestures as clear as possible, to keep them all together. “General rehearsal is for all of us, and if during the film I make a mistake or there’s a problem, I’ll just indicate to go to the next number. So don’t worry. It might happen; it might not.” […] A rapping of stands as orchestra salutes Israel. It is “The End” – for now.

Friday, 30 January 2026: Kongresshalle, Nuremberg

The night of the concert, I approached the hall from the front of house. The space that I had sat the day before was the same yet transformed. The darkness outside, the warmth inside, and the bustle of a crowd finding its way in – these factors made it more enticing. The seats filled out, and as the orchestra appeared – this time in formal black – the audience greeted them with warm applause. The players tuned up, and then Israel appeared from the back of the stage, clutching his score. After bowing, he took his place – without the raised podium. From my seat, a few rows from the front, his raised arms were just below the lowest part of the screen. I always enjoy this tension between the physical bodies of the performers and the projected bodies of those on screen, the way their two spaces are placed side-by-side, their two times placed in synchronicity. The lights fell, leaving the glow of lamps among the players, and the faint glow from small spotlights above the stage. (I break my continuity here to observe that these spotlights were turned off after the interval. I wonder who requested this? I’ve never been to a rehearsal of a film concert without seeing a protracted debate about lighting, where the respective concerns of musicians, projectionists, and venue managers are hotly contested.)

The introductory restoration credits were so numerous that they soon drew a few titters. Israel handled this moment perfectly. Turning to the audience with a smile, he said: “Don’t worry, we’re next!” It was a nice way to win us over (he got a good laugh) but also increased the drama of anticipation – for he had to be quick to turn around and make himself ready for the first cue. The last credit faded away; Israel raised his arms; the film’s first title card appeared, and the orchestra burst into life…

Seen at last on the big screen, The Black Pirate looked stunning. Since this MoMA restoration is not yet available on home media, I can’t offer visual samples. But even the single frame that I can find (from the MoMA page for this project) reveals the astonishing difference in image quality with the previous restoration. (See the images below, with the MoMA frame on the right.) Anyone used to the washed-out colours of old will be astounded (as I was in Nuremberg) at the richness and warmth of the new restoration. Suddenly, the tones of the wood on the ships, the fabric of clothing, the burnished skin tones, the deep blue-green waves, the golden sands – suddenly, all these inhabitants of the screen made sense. It was as if some magical elixir had given them back to their true selves, like they had reinhabited their former bodies. Damn, this film looks good!

The two-trip Technicolor palette is never showy, in the sense of throwing garish colours on screen. In fact, you might say it looks purposefully withheld. The dominant colours are rich, but muted. The film often resembles the canvases of seventeenth-century masters, especially the way the Princess is dressed and lit. Billie Dove might not have a character of great psychological depth to portray, but every shot of her looks fabulous. The way her velvet dress is captured by the colour, you can feel its fabric, sense the sheen of its soft material. And when she turns to one side, gripped with suppressed emotion, the light shapes her profile and haloes her hair – and suddenly it’s like a centuries-old painting come to life.

If the film’s palette is subtle, this also allows it to make certain moments stand out through colour. There is a superb scene early in the film, when the pirates are pillaging a merchant ship. When one of their prisoners hides a valuable ring in his mouth, the Pirate Leader (Anders Randolf) orders one of his men to retrieve it. He mimes a cutting gesture, so we know what’s coming. But we don’t see it. The camera stays put before the Leader as the other pirate gets out his knife, rolls up his sleeve, and stomps out of shot. The Leader stands, chews, spits. A few seconds later, the pirate reappears and gives the ring to the Leader. As he does so, we glimpse his bloody hand and bloodied knife. Seeing this moment on screen in Nuremberg, I nearly gasped at the sight of the blood: amid the browns and greens of the composition, the Technicolor blood is a slick shock of red, gleaming gruesomely on hand and knife. It’s the most vivid patch of red in the entire film, and so perfectly utilized. The murder is all the more shocking for taking place off-screen, its casual brutality brilliantly captured – felt – in that slick of red. (Later, there is another moment when the Pirate Lieutenant (Sam De Grasse) is comparing captured swords. To test the weight of one, he runs through its former owner – the moment of death again happening just off screen. The moment is chilling enough, but the grimly pleasing punchline is when the Lieutenant then wipes the blood from his blade on the victim’s trousers.)

As with its use of colour, the film reserves its camera movement for one or two special moments. Having remained virtually static throughout the film, there is a remarkable instance of movement in the climactic scene when the Pirate Lieutenant approaches the cabin in which the Princess is guarded by MacTavish (Donald Crisp). We know that he is about to claim his “right” to her body, and the one-armed MacTavish is her only protection. As the Lieutenant reaches the bottom of the small staircase, MacTavish comes forward – but the camera slowly retreats, and the Lieutenant firmly pushes the old man backwards. MacTavish retreats, too, then tries again to stop the Lieutenant. The camera pauses, only for the Lieutenant to push MacTavish back – and the camera withdraws before him once more. MacTavish makes one last effort to stop the Lieutenant, and the camera halts. But in a fraction of a second, the Lieutenant raises his pistol and clubs MacTavish to the floor. The Lieutenant looks ahead, past us, with dreadful calm. He walks on, the camera moving back before him. It’s such a striking scene, wonderfully played and directed.

Then there is the most astonishing shot in the film, when Fairbanks is carried from the depths of the ship to the top of the deck. The camera stays with him – centre frame, perfectly steady – as he rises, miraculously, joyfully, laughingly, via the arms of his men, through deck after deck, space after space. The way his arms reach up to catch hold of each new hand is so wonderful. It’s like he’s swimming upwards from the depths, just as his men earlier (equally miraculously) swam underwater towards the ship. It’s the triumphant, magical ascendency of our hero, our star – but also a kind of bodily metaphor for the narrative itself, with this final shedding of obstacles, of tension, almost of gravity, as rightness and justice are restored. It shows you how you might fly, but it’s a flight sustained by a whole team working together to make it so. It’s a perfect shot, but perfect in a way that takes you by surprise. Though we have seen plenty of stunts on screen, this last stunt is one performed by the film itself. Having reserved its movement for one or two brief moments beforehand, here the camera is miraculously unchained. God, what a shot this is – and what a star Fairbanks is.

And at every point in the film, Israel’s music knows just what to do. His score fits The Black Pirate like a glove. In the concert, all the hard work of the rehearsal makes sense – becomes fully realized. What had been a pleasingly abstract tone poem in the rehearsal was now a fully-fledged co-ordination of sound and image. The pleasure of this aesthetic marriage was not just in the deft movement between motifs for individual characters, for ideas, for actions, for situations, but in the individual moments that the music recognized and reacted to. Israel orchestrates specific visual cues for sound: gunshots, explosions, trumpets. One of the added pleasures of watching a rehearsal is the way you carry a tension with you into the concert hall or cinema. You have seen the musicians try (and sometimes fail) to time their sounds with those actions on screen. Once, twice, thrice they go through the cues – but now, in the hall, before hundreds of spectators, it suddenly counts. There’s no second chance, and there is a part of me that always worries on their behalf. (I suppose it’s my very English sense of embarrassment, waiting and dreading to be exercised.) But this evening, every single visual cue is carried off perfectly. It’s so, so satisfying to see a silent film live like this – because of this. The possibility of error makes live performance thrilling in a way the exact same music can never be on a recorded soundtrack. Here are real musicians, relying on their individual and collective skills to traverse an extraordinary obstacle course of co-ordination and timing. The endless action of The Black Pirate makes for a perfect, and perfectly challenging, marathon for performance – and for viewers, watching both film and performers.

It’s not just the continual progress of sound, it’s the sudden leaps and transitions that make it all so impressive. Israel’s command of the orchestra was marvellous. I loved watching the sideways swipe of his left arm at the end of a cue: it’s such an arresting gesture, controlled and dramatic. The concert answered the questions I had from rehearsal, for with the film in place these sudden gestures made sense. I had wondered about the cue from bar 2777, which was revealed in concert as the sequence for “The noonday of the tomorrow.” Here, the Pirate Lieutenant and the anxious crew watch the shadow of the sundial creep towards midday, when the “agreement” will expire – and the Princess is no longer to be kept “spotless and unharmed”. The score is heavy with tension, building to the moment when we see the shadow past the point of noon. Here, Israel’s dramatic sweeping gesture suddenly halts the orchestra. It as if, while they played, there was still some protection for the Princess. Now the film is briefly stripped of sound, and the awfulness of what the Lieutenant plans is laid bare. The music stilled, there is reaction on screen. The Lieutenant’s mouth curls into a wicked smile. He tosses aside his pewter mug, then throws out his arm to signal the crew to set sail. As if in answer to this gesture, the music resumes – spelling out Lieutenant’s three-note motif in heavy, sinister chords.

Here, then, was the answer to my question in rehearsal, the dramatic realization of Israel’s sweeping gesture. It is quite literally for show: to show the players what to do; but it’s entirely practical: the gesture is part of the mechanics of performance. Indeed, Israel’s movement on stage was part of the tension of watching The Black Pirate live. When the film cuts between Fairbanks coming to the rescue and the events on ship, the sudden switches between musical motifs are matched by the physical changes in Israel’s posture (the way his body tenses, his arms tracing new tempi, the downward swish of the baton), and by the collective reorienting of the musicians’ bodies (the strings swooping into a new phrase, the percussionist stepping across to another instrument, the glint of brass preparing for an entry).

And it’s superb music, equal to the images – respecting them, admiring them, trying (and succeeding) to do them justice. (Israel spoke of the pleasure of watching justice being served on screen. I think the same applies to the music: it’s a pleasure to hear justice being served by the score.) It’s an original score, but it sounds entirely in keeping with the period of the film’s production. Israel also cites a couple of pieces from the period of the film’s setting (c.1700). There is a (bawdy) sea shanty as the pirates have their feast, and there is a delicious baroque piece that accompanies the minor nobility who are captured. The latter piece, in particular, is perfectly utilized. This music has a wonderfully old-fashioned, dignified air to it – perfect for the way these characters are dressed (in conspicuous velvet and lace) and the way they behave (their refined bearing, their gentile gestures). Just as these nobles are surrounded by rumbunctious pirates, so their music is a little oasis, surrounded by the boisterous swagger of the score. (And surely just as liable to be overpowered.) The contrast is not overemphasized, but the flourishes of this period music are a sudden relief – a sense of somewhere, and somewhen, else.

So too with the music for the Princess, the most conspicuously well-dressed figure in the film – and also the most vulnerable. Her theme, often highlighted by solo violin, is another oasis of mood and feeling – delicate, light, beautiful – in the midst of the score. Yet it also stands as a kind of musical defiance against the dangerous, brooding theme of the Pirate Lieutenant (so perfectly played by De Grasse). And when, near the end, the rescue party appears on the sea, the delicate love theme associated with the Princess is suddenly reinforced by the full orchestra just as the film cuts to the “Black Pirate” standing at the head of the boat. The reappearance of this theme makes it clear why he is coming back, but it’s also a kind of union – or promise of union – between him and the Princess. Reorchestrated, the music is the same yet transformed. Not just her theme, it is now their theme.

What was brought home to me in the concert, again and again, is how well Israel’s score understands the film. It finds the right rhythm, the right mood, and knows how and when to change gear and register. Aside from anything else, it’s also great fun. The music acknowledges – and articulates – the sheer pleasure of watching Fairbanks on screen. His musical theme – bold and bright – is as winning as his visual appearance. Few stars can make you smile just by the way they walk, by the way they hold themselves, by the way they smile, or withhold a smile. Fairbanks might impress with his extraordinary stunts (slicing through sails while falling, leaping up chains, clambering rigging), but he can also communicate with the simplest and clearest of gestures. I love his pose on the island at the start of the film, where he spells out grief and isolation with the way he sits alone on the sand, head bowed between his legs. Fairbanks’s character has just buried his father, and his pose here is like that of a lonely child, the contrast between the vulnerable posture and the athletic bulk of his body beautifully touching. Later, there is another moment where a simple gesture says so much. When he forces the “Black Pirate” to walk the plank, the Lieutenant tells him that “at the bottom of the sea you’ll find the ransom ship”. Fairbanks twists his head a little to one side, so we see him in profile: and we know that his character realizes that he has been betrayed. Though he is blindfolded and is seen only in long shot, this little beat in Fairbanks’s performance sends us a signal we can understand.

All these moments make the climactic scenes so pleasing to watch, when Fairbanks and his rescue party arrive and overpower the pirates. The wonderful unfolding of these final minutes, with Fairbanks’s seemingly infinite supply of men who can swim and leap and overcome with their collective bodies all obstacles, is accompanied by a bustling torrent of sound, the strings restlessly muscling their way forward, wave after wave, like the figures on screen. When “The End” was reached, and the orchestra wound up to its sign off, there was a great cheer of enthusiasm in the hall, and a rousing ovation, peppered with bravos. After taking the applause, Israel motioned that he wanted to say a few words. In German, he praised this hundred-year-old film for its technical achievements – but also for speaking about the necessity of justice, and the triumph of good over evil. Apologizing that his German was failing him, he continued in English to say how touched he was seeing the local schoolchildren attend the rehearsal: he hoped that they offered us a bright future. He also paid tributed to the Nürnberger Symphoniker, praising their hard work and skill. “You have a wonderful orchestra”, he finished. “Treasure it. Support it. Thank you – now go have a beer!” With a final round of applause, the evening ended.

In summary, this was an excellent way to start my filmgoing for the year! I fervently hope that the MoMA restoration of The Black Pirate is released on Blu-ray. But nothing can beat seeing this film live with orchestra. In Nuremberg, I had an absolutely wonderful time in the company of Fairbanks’s images and Israel’s music. Bravo to all involved!

Paul Cuff

My great thanks to Robert Israel and to the Nürnberger Symphoniker for allowing me to attend rehearsal.

The King of Kings (1927; US; Cecil B. DeMille)

In the summer of 1926, Cecil B. DeMille embarked on what was considered to be an enormously risky project: an epic treatment of the life of Jesus Christ. There had been plenty of Christs seen on screen in early cinema. In France, films about the Passion produced some of the longest productions thus far assembled. Pathé’s La Vie et la passion de Jésus Christ (Lucien Nonguet/Ferdinand Zecca, 1903) was nearly 45 minutes, while Gaumont’s La Vie du Christ (Alice Guy, 1906) was over 30 minutes. These early Christian narrative films were also boasted elaborate forms of cinematic spectacle. When Pathé remade their La Vie et la Passion in 1907, Segundo de Chomón took charge of the elaborate stencil- and hand-colouring of Zecca’s film for exhibition. Thus, long-form narrative and colour effects were always part of the history of silent biblical productions. But the context for DeMille’s film—to be made on the largest possible scale, complete with Technicolor sequences—was rather different. In the US in the 1920s, there had been much controversy about the depiction of Christ on screen. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) had famously been obliged to include Christ only in the form of an occasional limb or edge-of-frame glow. Were censors, critics, and audiences ready for a modern dramatic interpretation of the Passion? And was DeMille the man to handle the project?

It turned out that he was, and that they were. For a start, DeMille tried to inoculate his production against religious concerns about Hollywood by having Mass performed every morning on set, as well as offering daily prayers via various religious leaders. He also imposed a “morality clause” in the contract of Dorothy Cummings, who played Jesus’s mother. And H.B. Warner, who played Jesus, was segregated from the rest of the cast to preserve his aura of otherness—and presumably to stop him socializing in ways that would not be becoming for someone playing his role. DeMille’s screenplay—by Jeanie MacPherson—was also built around incidents relayed in the New Testament, and the film’s intertitles are dominated by biblical citation. In sum, DeMille did everything in his power to make sure his production would offer a sincere and sanctioned depiction of its subject—and (as ever) his publicity department made sure that people knew about it.

When the film was released in April 1927, The King of Kings still caused a degree of controversy: depictions of Christ were (and, of course, still are) a sensitive issue for many spectators. But though the film encountered censorship in various territories, it was a resounding critical and commercial success. An early review in The Film Daily (20 April 1927) took the lead in what was to be an avalanche of glowing reviews:

There can be said nothing but praise for the reverence and appreciation with which the beautiful story here has been developed. DeMille has been successful in striking a tempo that is remarkable for the peaceful and benign influence it wields on the spectator. […] The spiritual fibre of innumerable numbers throughout the world are being stirred to their very core. […] [DeMille] has shown a supreme courage and a vast daring. He has been brave enough to show The Christ on the screen. […] The King of Kings is tremendous from every standpoint. It is the finest piece of screen craftsmanship ever turned out by DeMille.

Writing in Photoplay (June 1927), Frederick James Smith followed suit:

Here is Cecil B. DeMille’s finest motion picture effort. He has taken the most difficult and exalted theme in the world’s history—the story of Jesus Christ—and transcribed it intelligently and ably to the screen. / De Mille has had a variegated career. He has wandered, with an eye to the box office, up bypaths into ladies’ boudoirs and baths, he has been accused of garishness, bad taste and a hundred and one other faults, he frequently has been false and artificial. One of his first efforts, The Whispering Chorus [1918], stood until this as his best work. / The King of Kings, however, reveals a shrewd, discerning and skilful technician, a director with a fine sense of drama, and, indeed, a man with an understanding of the spiritual. / The King of Kings is the best telling of the Christ story the screen has ever revealed. […] You are going to be amazed at the complete sincerity of DeMille’s direction. Nothing is studied. There is no aiming at theatrical appeal. DeMille has followed the New Testament literally and with fidelity. He has taken no liberties. […] The King of Kings is a tremendous motion picture, one that, through its sincerity, is going to win thousands of new picture goers. DeMille deserves unstinted praise. He ventured where few would dare to venture, he threw a vast fortune into the balance and he carried through without deviating. Congratulations, Mr. DeMille.

And in Picture Play (August 1927), Norbert Lusk saw the film not just as a triumph for DeMille but for cinema itself:

The King of Kings is Cecil B. DeMille’s masterpiece, and is among the greatest of all pictures. It is a sincere and reverent visualization of the last three years in the life of Christ, produced on a scale of tasteful magnificence, finely acted by the scores in it, and possessed of moments of poignant beauty and unapproachable drama. This is a picture that will never become outmoded. […] Until you see The King of Kings you will not have seen all that the screen is capable of today.

I begin my piece with this context because I feel that what follows would otherwise do an injustice to DeMille’s film. Following the historical high praise, my own reaction will seem distinctly—perhaps unfairly—negative. Over the recent Easter weekend, I was looking for something culturally appropriate to watch. (I’m in no way religious, but sometimes it’s nice to feel “seasonal”.) I chose The King of Kings because I’d had the gorgeous French Blu-ray edition produced by Lobster say on my shelf for a long time—unopened. I don’t think I’d actually seen the film all the way through before, and frankly I couldn’t make it all the way through in one go this time. Rarely have I been so intellectually bored when watching a film of my own free choice.

It started so promisingly. A two-strip Technicolor cabal of harlots and decadents, lounging around in lurid pink robes. High drama, high kitsch. Mary Magdalene is Judas’s former lover and wants to know where he is. Discovering that Judas is in league with a carpenter named Jesus, Mary starts issuing instructions to her servants: “Bring me my richest perfumes! […] Harness my zebras!” (I think “Harness my zebras” is the most fabulous intertitle I’ve seen for quite some time.) So off she rides in her zebra-pulled carriage to find Jesus and Judas…

Thus ended my dramatic involvement with the film. From this point on, I was increasingly restless. I can only presume that DeMille started his epic with this sequence precisely to lure in a wider audience. Want debauchery, colour, spectacle? Here it is! Now we have your attention, we segue to the real story… Alas, Demille’s Te Deum for God was tedium for me. By the halfway point, I was experiencing such crippling mental boredom that I had to stop. I wanted to rant and rage, or run madly into the night, to vent my frustration. After a break (and a more sedate session to finish the film), I have been trying to ponder why my reaction was so strong. Why was I so totally detached from the drama? What this a problem with the film or with me?

Firstly, the film’s high productions values and superb photography were part of the problem for me. It felt akin to being confronted by one of my local Jehovah’s Witnesses. Doing their rounds, they always dress in their most immaculate suits. Their clothing is never showy, it’s merely tasteful. It’s not a uniform as such, but it defines them, limits them. It’s an invariable combination of immaculate suits, dustless shoes, neatly combed hair, and a tone of voice that is both calm and exceedingly well-rehearsed. This polished smoothness of sound and image is never meant to impress, as such. Rather, the aesthetic is meant to soothe, to calm, to convince. When they open their mouths, the reassurance of middleclass, middlebrow, middle-manager-esque measuredness acts as a kind of anaesthetic for what they’re trying to sell you. As it happens, I’m very bad at telling people that I have no interest in what they have to say, so when confronted by these gleamingly bland, affable people on my doorstep I tend to let them babble away untroubled. (Unlike the Blu-ray of DeMille’s film, I cannot simply press “stop”.) A year or so ago, one of them spoke so long on their chosen topic that their reasonableness eventually gave way to something far more striking: I got conspiracy theories, scatological metaphors, and brutish fundamentalism. I stood, fascinating and appalled, as the man’s charm slowly unravelled and revealed a kind of ideological black hole.

I say all this because my experience stood at my front door, helplessly confronted with two impeccably well-presented religious salespeople spouting sententious homilies, is very much like my experience of watching The King of Kings. The film feels the need to dress in its very best clothes to impress you with its message. If a film’s this good-looking, surely the content must be solid? But it’s precisely the contrast between the well-dressedness of the picture and the dramatic paucity of its every move that annoyed me. You could tell how much money had been spent on everything, on how much time had been spent dressing actors and picking props.

Take the way the Roman soldiers are depicted: they all hang around in full body armour and immaculately plumed helmets, which they seem to wear even when sleeping. They’re all too well groomed, too well fed, too well rehearsed. Or look at the flock of sheep that flees the temple merchants, or the lamb that Jesus fondles later in that sequence. I could almost hear DeMille shouting: “Look at the sheep! Each one hand picked for maximum pictorial beauty! Just feel the quality of these fleeces. You know how much each one would be worth on the market? Let me tell you how much I paid for them…!” The trouble is, everyone on screen is too well attired, too well made up. Every piece of furniture is too well designed, too well finished. Even rags or scraps or fragments of woods are too well fashioned, too well placed. Cripples are too pretty, lunatics too cute. Nothing bears the weight or texture of reality, nor does its fantasy go beyond a kind of bland pictorialism. It’s an illustrated children’s Bible, referencing only the most familiar tropes of Christian iconography or art. Neither aesthetically or dramatically does DeMille offer anything that either wasn’t already a cliché by 1927 or has become one since then—perhaps thanks to this very film. Everything from his sanitized, Aryanized Christ—blonde, bearded, blue-eyed—to his impeccably desexed Mary (Mother of) feels so wearingly familiar, I found it almost impossible to enjoy anything on screen.

What’s more, the drama moves at a slow pace. (Is this what The Film Daily critic meant when he said that the film’s tempo is “remarkable for the peaceful and benign influence it wields on the spectator”?) The film is 155 minutes long, but that’s not the issue. The problem is that every incident is so painstakingly relayed, and so laboriously earnest in citing (literal) chapter and verse, that the drama gets sucked out of every situation. Nothing in this film has bite, or tension, or excitement. The children who are subject to the first instances of Christ’s on-screen miracles are irritating for their cuteness, as is the length of time it takes for their inevitable curing. Soon after, the cleansing of the “seven deadly sins” from Mary Magdalene is already long and absurd without one of the apostles turning to another and explaining to them (and us) what’s going on. Yes, the multiple superimpositions are technically marvellous, but the personifications of the “sins” are ludicrously crude.

By the time we get to the climax of Judas’s betrayal, I’d grown infinitely weary of DeMille’s painstakingly earnest treatment. Just see how, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas goes in to identity Jesus with a kiss. DeMille milks this scene ad infinitum. Judas approaches slowly, moves to Jesus slowly, hovers at his side slowly, moves even closer slowly, leans in slowly, kisses him slowly, reacts slowly, moves away slowly. Poor Jesus has to stand stock still, staring straight ahead, for an eternity—like us, waiting for Judas to bloody well get on with it. The scene is so laboured, its contrivance so drawn out… (Even writing about this scene is tedious—I just want it to be over with!) We come to this scene, as we do to every incident, already knowing exactly what to expect, so to drag it out like this is dramatically absurd. Do something unexpected, Cecil! Surprise me! It’s even more of a shame, since the hand-coloured flames in combination with blue tinting make the Garden of Gethsemane sequence visually extraordinary. Why couldn’t the drama do anything to match it?

Part of the issue is that the film seems to imagine it’s offering us something with profound insight into universal moral truths, but I found it simplistic and superficial. No matter how much backstory the film gives us, I simply cannot believe in Judas as a real human being with real concerns or motives—and thus I cannot believe in the reality of his divided loyalties, his betrayal, or his remorse. Just as all the various Marys on screen are not real women at all, just walking illustrations from a crude book of dogma. And none of this is helped by the way the film uses endless biblical citations as dramatic punchlines to scenes. It ends up smacking the viewer as a kind of narrative (not to mention moral) smugness. This is a film that feels superior to (all but one of) its characters.

If the above makes it sound like I got nothing from the film, this is not quite true. Amid the pomp and platitudes, H.B. Warner gives a very restrained and (within the film’s own terms) rewarding performance as Jesus. He manages to be dignified and sympathetic even when the film around him is not. Both the role itself and the screenplay allow Warner little room for psychological or emotional complexity. He is caring, or sad, or knowing-yet-forgiving. He’s also miraculous, in a way that is oddly unimpressive. When DeMille’s Christ waves his hand to heal the sick, there’s no suspense, no emotion. The effects (like the soldier’s vanishing wound in the Garden of Gethsemane) take place too smoothly, or too swiftly. They’re so miraculously effortless that they are no longer miraculous. (And no-one in the film ever pauses to question the motivation or context of these miracles: like absolutely everything else in the film, they are meant to be received without a scintilla of scepticism.) Given all this, Warner’s eyes are often the source of the only real emotion in the film—even if these emotions (pity, love, resignation) lack any kind of human context. Jesus as a character is merely Christ the symbol. He might walk around and interact with people, but a real human being—as an individual with a human consciousness or a personal history or a complex inner life—he is not. Warner does his best within the many limitations put upon him.

If DeMille cast a very un-Jewish-looking Jesus, he did cast two actual Jewish actors in prominent roles. The father and son actors Rudolph and Joseph Schildkraut were Austrian emigres who had come to the US at the start of the decade. In The King of Kings, they respectively play Caiaphas (the High Priest of Israel) and Judas. The former has the less nuanced character: he’s all bearded malevolence and unrepentant scheming. But as Judas, Joseph Schildkraut has more work to do. It’s a shame that the script’s effort to give him some kind of backstory makes his character less interesting than he might otherwise be. DeMille makes Judas a power-hungry schemer, eager to gain influence (and affluence) once he has installed Jesus as king. Making a villain more villainous does not make him a more interesting character. Joseph Schildkraut’s performance is as mannered as his character is simplistic. Ne’er has a man been seen to so shiftily fondle his cummerbund in villainous contemplation. In the Last Supper scene, the breaking of the bread is a cue for more scurrilous shifting on Schildkraut’s part. He resembles a schoolboy faced with unpalatable food (I’ve been there), who must pretend to eat his portion while secretly depositing it onto the floor. We are presumably meant to take against him from the outside for being dark-haired and clean shaven. Once things get serious, Judas’s hair becomes tangled—as if this could in any way make his character arc more convincing.

Of course, casting the two main villains in the film as Jews is not exactly sensitive. DeMille is also nasty to both the Schildkrauts at the end. Judas, per the tradition, hangs himself. Though we don’t see him do so, we see his swinging body tumble into the abyss, courtesy of the clunky earthquake that intervenes during the crucifixion. Meanwhile, Caiaphas falls on his knees at the temple: “Lord God Jehovah, visit not Thy wrath on Thy people Israel—I alone am guilty!” For once, there’s no biblical citation. DeMille is at least more courteous here than in the similar scene in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), which (in)famously takes the opportunity (via Caiaphas’s dialogue) to pass the blame onto the entire Jewish people forevermore. DeMille wants to have it both ways: cast Jews as the villains yet insert an excusatory note. The note is meant to excuse the Jews, but it’s also an excuse for DeMille. Like Pilate, he washes his hands.

The rest of the cast is uniformly uninteresting. Among the disciples, only Peter (Ernest Torrence) stands out, though not for good reasons. His alternately comedic and sincere characterization hits every note so squarely and obviously, I immediately took against him. I know it’s part of the New Testament story, but the way Peter is told that he will deny Jesus three times, then refutes this, then is proven wrong, then acts repentantly, is the perfect example of how the film fails to deliver any novelty, any friction or doubt, in its adaptation. What is meant to be the tragic fulfilment of Jesus’s prediction comes across as almost comedic on screen, such is Torrence’s eye-bulging doubletake. It’s a kind of visual “D’oh!” Likewise, the film’s laborious setting-up of the moment, and equally laborious explication of the punchline, is another instance of dramatic smugness. But at least I can remember Peter. The rest of the disciples are virtually indistinguishable. They have no personality, no inner lives, no function beyond the affirmation of what we already know. (In the liner notes of the Blu-ray, Lobster include a wonderful advert for the film in which the whole cast appear to swarm around the central figure of DeMille. Such is the size of font and layout of the design that it looks like the “King of Kings” is DeMille himself!)

If the adults are too often piously bland, the children are worse. I would like to restate how irritating I found the children in this film. They’re part of the ingratiating way the film seeks our sympathy, the way it hopes to humanize the story. Thus, the soon-to-be New Testament author Mark is a picture-book pretty child equipped with an enormous crop of curly blond hair—a cliché of fresh-faced cuteness that instantly made me take against him. Not only does he introduce us to Jesus via another child (a blind boy, who is likewise fair-haired), but he’s there right to the end. It’s he who encourages Simon of Cyrene to take up the burden of Jesus’s cross in the penultimate sequence. This is another of DeMille’s biblical amendments, since the scriptures state that it was the Romans that “compelled” Simon to carry the cross. Why the amendment? Merely to squeeze our sympathy glands again?

But was I really this annoyed by the film? Did it never affect me? Was I entirely unmoved? Hmm. Well, no. I did find moments moving, but this was often more due to the choice of music. For Lobster’s restoration of The King of Kings, Robert Israel used Hugo Riesenfeld’s orchestral score (as recorded for the synchronized 1928 version of the film) as the basis for his own adaptation. Copying Riesenfeld’s cues from 1928, he expanded the music to fit the longer 1927 version. I will have more to say on the score shortly, but for now I just want to point out how particular pieces of music seemed to make something more of the film—at least, for me. Take the Last Supper sequence. I’ve already said that I find the handling of Judas in this scene clumsy, but at the end of the sequence Riesenfeld introduces music from Wagner’s Parsifal (1882). It’s the opening of the Prelude to Act I: a soundscape of shifting, unresolved harmonic tension that hypnotically ebbs and flows—it’s music of unworldly beauty, of abstract sorrow, of unfulfilled longing. As rendered for Israel’s modern recording, the music is reduced for a smaller orchestra than Wagner intended—but it still sent shivers down my spine. And though the music doesn’t sound like it should in better performances by larger orchestras, and though Riesenfeld cuts and pastes from other sources as the scene proceeds, the effect as a whole is still superb. For once, something unearthly creeps over the picture. But then, inevitably, a voiceless choir comes in at the end of the scene with the melody from “Abide with me”, and the effect is ruined. From late romantic mysticism—all unsettled harmonics and soft, swirling rhythms—the score crashes to earth with resounding cliché.

That said, I did find Israel’s adaption of the Riesenfeld score very impressive. What’s most remarkable is its fleetfooted switching from one piece to another. Rarely does Riesenfeld see out a whole movement from its original context. Rather, he will use a single iteration of a theme, a single phrase, then segue rapidly to another piece. Thus, we sometimes get the “Dresden Amen” theme (usually as orchestrated by Wagner in Parsifal) in the brass, but the entire thing lasts one or two bars. It makes its point, then moves on. Later, we get more from Parsifal—but only a few more bars, just enough to introduce the right mood for the moment. Pontius Pilate gets the anxious, unsettled opening of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Antar” symphony (1868, rev. 1875/91), but only the opening—again, Riesenfeld moves on to something else to follow the action on screen. Even the way he unleashes music from the finale of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (1830)—surely the most extrovertly wild and exciting music of the entire score—he does so only for a few measures during the scourging of Jesus by the Romans. There are even smaller touches, too. I loved, for example, the delicious way that tambourine strikes accompany the silver pieces falling in a pile before Judas.

Sometimes the brevity of the cues works against their effectiveness. Thus, during the crucifixion sequence, Riesenfeld uses music from the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony, the “Pathétique”(1893). But he reorchestrates it so that the music is less effective than in the original. The original is an extraordinary unwinding of orchestral timbre, the whole movement slowing and deepening and darkening—occasionally lashing out in fury—until the music peters out in the depths of despair. With Riesenfeld, we get a much steadier tempo and rhythm, and the musical narrative of the movement—from anger to oblivion—is cut short. Equally, the way Riesenfeld chucks in some Verdi (the dies irae from his requiem (1874)) for DeMille’s earthquake feels as clunky an imposition as the earthquake itself.

My other reservation is not about the music but about the 2016 recording for the film’s digital release. I can never fully detach my comments from what is inevitably a kind of snobbery, but nevertheless I really do think that there isan issue of quality at stake. When citing well-known musical themes, it is very easy for scores to sound tired and cliched. What makes or breaks the use of such music is the way they are arranged and performed. For example, several cues used in the Riesenfeld score for The King of Kings are also used in the (anonymous, c.1930) score for Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney. Modern renditions of both scores were arranged and recorded almost at the same time, in 2016-17, for their respective digital release. But despite sharing some of the same music, the two soundtracks are very different. Bernd Thewes (for Jeanne Ney) orchestrates the score in such a lively and interesting way—and the music is performed and recorded with such immense panache—that the effect is quite different, and more effective.

Of course, Israel’s forces are smaller than Thewes’s: Israel has the Czech Cinema Orchestra, while Thewes has the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln. My search for “The Czech Cinema Orchestra” yielded no results online. There is such a thing as “The Czech Film Orchestra”, however. As I surmised in an earlier post, Czech orchestras are popular with soundtrack composers for their competitive prices. As the homepage of the Czech Film Orchestra states: “We can offer you world-class orchestral recordings for 25% of the cost of a recording in the USA, Canada, or London.” Is the “Czech Cinema Orchestra” a budget version of the Czech Film Orchestra? I presume it’s a scratch band assembled for the 2016 recording. The performance—especially, of the strings—is less well drilled than it could be, and less atmospherically recorded than more budget-enhanced silent film soundtracks I’ve heard. (For examples of the latter, see: just about anything produced in Germany through ARTE, or any soundtrack produced by Carl Davis.)

It’s a shame, as Riesenfeld’s score does a lot of the heavy lifting as far as mood and emotion are concerned in The King of Kings. When the music really needs to land, it often doesn’t. During the resurrection sequence, DeMille’s Technicolor glows with gorgeous lustre—the music needs to do likewise. Yet I don’t think I’ve heard a less convincing rendition of the prelude to Act 3 of Tannhäuser (1845) than the one given here, per Israel’s performance. The string section, in particular, can scarcely keep together for the swirling crescendo that leads to Jesus’s miraculous reappearance. What should be a sonic whirlwind is something of a whimper.

In summary, I’ve not been so irritated by a silent film in a long time. I find DeMille a very frustrating filmmaker, especially when it comes to his religious (or religiose) productions. Oddly, I almost wished he’d do something outrageous with the narrative of The King of Kings to make it more interesting. The only temporal interpolation he offers is at the end, when Jesus appears to loom over the skyscrapers of the modern world, offering his love. But the effect is banal. Compared with other biblical screen worlds of the 1920s (and even those early Passion films of the 1900s), The King of Kings never gripped or surprised me. Neither realistic nor magical, for me the film offers very little that would make me want to sit through the whole thing again—even if I thought I could bare it. I can see how audiences at the time might have found themselves drawn to its reverent portrayal, and I can appreciate the effort that has gone into its look. The photography is superb, the lighting lovely, the Technicolor gorgeous. But a film can look like a million dollars and still feel impoverished.

Paul Cuff

Music for The Three Musketeers (1921; US; Fred Niblo)

Last year I wrote about the Film Preservation Society’s Blu-ray of The Three Musketeers, released for the hundredth anniversary of the film in 2021. Since then, Cohen Media released another version of the film in a Blu-ray package which also includes The Iron Mask (1929; US; Allan Dwan). The Cohen Media release is an entirely separate restoration to that of the Film Preservation Society. Scanned in 4K and transferred at 21fps, the Cohen release looks excellent – but it is presented entirely in monochrome. As I wrote in my previous post on thefilm, The Three Musketeers was designed to be shown with extensive tinting – including use of the Handschiegl colour process to render D’Artagnan’s “buttercup yellow” horse. In recreating these colour elements, the Film Preservation Soceity’s restoration is visually superior. But where the new release is decidedly stronger is in its musical accompaniment, and it is this soundtrack that I want to write about here.

In 1921, Louis F. Gottschalk assembled a score for The Three Musketeers that was performed by an orchestra for the film’s first run. The music survives, but it has not been well treated in its modern realizations. The soundtrack for Kino’s old DVD edition of the film featured the Gottschalk score “performed by Brian Benison and the ‘Elton Thomas Salon Orchestra’”. Sadly, this “orchestra” wasn’t an orchestra at all, but a collection of synthesized MIDI files. Though I have listened to this rendition of Gottschalk’s music, I still wouldn’t claim I’ve heard the real thing. Budget-saving soundtracks will be familiar to anyone who has collected enough home media release of silent cinema over the years. It’s a familiar history of “orchestral scores” not performed by orchestras, of original music being rendered null by synthetic sound or else replaced entirely. I remember struggling to enjoy much about The Three Musketeers when watching the Kino release. The aesthetic effect of this synthetic soundscape is the homogenization of musical rhythm and timbre, and its computerized tones ensure that the acoustics are divorced from human performance. Put bluntly, the assemble of MIDI files is a bland, insipid procession of synthetic sounds that makes me squirm in my seat. Even if Gottschalk’s music were more varied or exciting (and it isn’t really either of these things), this realization renders it null and void on the soundtrack.

The Film Preservation Society’s Blu-ray release of The Three Musketeers in 2021 featured a score arranged by Rodney Sauder and performed by the Mont Alto Orchestra (a six-piece ensemble). But even if it consists of real musicians playing real music, this “orchestra” cannot produce an orchestral soundscape. My earlier piece discussed how the score frequently lags behind the film’s action, and (above any other factor) struggles to match the scale or richness of the world presented on screen. By contrast, the Cohen Blu-ray features a new orchestral score arranged by Robert Israel and performed by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra. And yes, the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra is an actual orchestra. Despite the claims of the last two home media editions, Israel’s score is the first truly orchestral score this film has received.

Right from the off, the difference is apparent. When the film’s opening titles appear, we get a brassy, boisterous theme—the whole orchestra is up and running. It sets the tone of the film perfectly. It sounds like a period score (i.e. one from the 1920s) while also evoking the kind of music more familiar from this genre in later decades. (One can imagine Errol Flynn arriving on screen just as much as Fairbanks.) The music also captures the tone of Fairbanks’s adventure: excitement, drama, and (above anything else) fun. The period of the film’s setting is soon evoked through baroque turns of phrase and instrumentation. For the domestic scenes with Queen Anne and her staff, a harpsichord forms part of the orchestral texture; then, organ and bell appear for the introduction of Father Joseph. Period, character, and tone are all created and developed with the choice of melody and orchestration.

Israel’s orchestration also makes room for smaller combinations of instruments and soloists. It can alternate between the chamberlike scale that introduces D’Artagnan’s home and father with the brassy fanfare for D’Artagnan himself. There also little gags made musical by Israel’s instrumentation. The little bassoon solo that accompanies the comic figure trying to escape D’Artagnan’s first fight with Rochefort at the inn. Or, when D’Artagnan has just bought his new hat in Paris, the descending glockenspiel scale that signals someone chucking out a bucket of water into the street. The same little gesture occurs again when D’Artagnan trips up on the steps of Bonacieux’s shop. The glockenspiel motif thus becomes one not just of a sight gag, but of D’Artagnan’s social embarrassment.

The greater variety provided by Israel’s orchestral forces means that, even when very familiar pieces are used, you do not get the impression of direct copy-and-paste musical assembly that you sometimes do with smaller ensembles. The melody that accompanies a scene between Queen Anne and King Louis (from Saint-Saëns’s prelude to Le Déluge (1875)) is one that I’ve heard used many times over in silent film scores. (Indeed, I’m sure I’ve heard Israel use it before in his other work.) I’ve heard it reduced for a small ensemble, for a duo with piano, for… well, god knows what else; I’ve heard it well played, poorly played, indifferently recorded, badly recorded. It gets used a lot. What makes it work in Israel’s score for The Three Musketeers is hearing its proper treatment: the violin taking the melody, with strings providing an underlying rhythm, by turns consoling and agitated. The tempo modulates across the scene, quickening as the King interrogates the Queen. The strings sometimes divide into multiple parts, then settle back into their united rhythm. Brass occasionally supports the strings, either to emphasize the return of the main melody, or else to add weight to a particular beat on screen. Even in repeating the same melody, the orchestral timbre provides a shifting soundscape across the scene. What can sound thin and trite when performed by a tiny ensemble has greater depth and gravitas when rendered (as Saint-Saëns originally intended) for orchestra. Give a well-worn theme musical body, greater acoustical depth, and it assumes a kind of grandeur. Put simply, it’s nice to hear a melody written for orchestra actually played by an orchestra.

A real orchestra also makes such a difference to the sense of the film’s scale. Early in the film, D’Artagnan approaches the city that is his destination, and his destiny. There is a title card announcing, simply: “Paris—”. The extended hyphen, which I always like to see, gives us a sense of expectation. It’s as if no more need be said, for Paris is, well… Paris—! This is D’Artagnan’s first experience of Paris, and it’s our first sight of the film’s Paris sets too. It’s a moment and it demands a response from the music. Israel gives us that response. After a few bars of silence that accompanied the previous title and transition, the full orchestra enters at a rapid tempo, responding to the excitement of seeing the city’s grand gates, its tall façade of houses, its bustling streets. This is a proper sense of musical boisterousness for a scene of visual boisterousness. (Compare this with the MIDI score on the old Kino DVD, or the music offered by the Monte Alto Orchestra. Even if the choices of music had been grander, the difference in sonic scale is tremendous. Israel evokes the bustling streets of Paris, the other scores only summon small provincial marketplaces.) Israel’s orchestral forces also have a greater ability to directly reflect sound being produced on screen. Fanfares on screen are accompanied by fanfares in the orchestra. A tambourine struck on screen becomes a tambourine struck in the orchestra. It makes the world on screen more tangible, more directly translated into the sound that occupies the acoustic space of the viewer.

Part of what impressed me was also the subtler shifts of motif within individual sequences. This is music that can shift gear quickly and effectively. Sometimes, only a few bars of a piece are used before segueing to the next. For example, Comte de Rochefort is introduced with a motif from the sinfonia of Verdi’s Luisa Miller (1849). When we first see this character at the inn of Meung, we just have time to register the melody before D’Artagnan enters the scene and the music shifts. Yet the melody recurs later in the film to remind us of this moment: when D’Artagnan sees Rochefort from a window in Paris, there is the theme again—more pronounced, carrying greater orchestral (and narrative) weight. Again, the music shifts gear and moves along… Near the end of the film, for D’Artagnan’s fight with Rochefort and his men, followed by the rooftop escape with Constance, Israel again uses the motif from Luisa Miller, but segues rapidly into Berlioz’s frenetic overture Les Francs-juges (1828). The switching from motif to motif is marvellously assured and effective. It gives the impression of a continuous musical intelligence, even though it is made up of music taken from many different sources and periods.

Many times, I was struck by how Israel’s choices make the drama more… well, dramatic. Take the scene in which Richelieu tries to keep D’Artagnan talking long enough for an assassin to kill him. Richelieu’s line, “If you were about to die, what would you do?”, is invested with real weight by beat of the timpani that underscores the moment. Then the switch to a march motif, complete with snare drum and little flourishes in the brass, makes D’Artagnan’s reply as bold and brassy as it is. The climax, when D’Artagnan makes his daring escape past the Cardinal’s guards, suddenly brings in the whole orchestra swelling into D’Artagnan’s own musical theme. The music makes the moment as thrilling, charming, and satisfying as it ought to be. Switching from motif to motif, this whole sequence worked for me in a way that it never quite did with previous scores.

There is also the pleasure of recognizing pieces of music that arrive out of the blue. For example, in the final court ball sequence, we see live music and dances being played on screen. Israel’s score accompanies the scene with a delightful orchestration of a seventeenth-century melody I recognized as one of Michael Praetorius’s terpsichorean dances (c.1612). (Rechecking my CD liner notes, I find that the melody—a bourrée—originates with Adrianus Valerius (c.1575-1625). Praetorius collected it as part of his series of 300 dances based on popular contemporary melodies from across Europe, especially France.) There was delight in recognizing the music (a quite fabulously catchy little melody) but delight too in the way Israel’s treats it. His score offers a small-scale, period arrangement of the music, then suddenly alters to bring in brass and strings whenever the scene cuts away to exterior scenes of intrigue.

So, in summary, this is a really excellent score. More than just well selected (i.e. appropriate for what’s happening on screen), Israel’s music is warm, charming, and immediately accessible. It is intelligent and emotive, subtle when it needs to be and obvious when required. Though it matches the action through tempo and instrumentation, there are also some very pleasing moments of synchronization. (I’ve already mentioned some comic touches with the glockenspiel, but a scene that brought particular satisfaction was Rochefort’s final clash with D’Artagnan. This sees a more extensive use of Luisa Millar motif, Rochefort’s theme, and Israel times the brass perfectly with several thrusts of his sword in this last scene. It’s a really lovely touch.) Israel’s score for The Three Musketeers in fact pairs very nicely with the wonderful Carl Davis score for The Iron Mask, which is also on the Blu-ray. The latter was recorded by the City of Prague Philharmonic and featured on the 1999 DVD release of the film. It’s curious that the films each have music performed by Czech orchestras (dare I say that rates are cheaper there than in the US?). Occasionally, Israel’s orchestra sounds as though it needed a couple more run-throughs to really gel. (By comparison, the Davis recording—made some quarter-century earlier—sounds not merely professional but polished.) But this is a very minor reservation indeed. Israel’s score sounds much better than many silent soundtracks, and I rejoice at being able to hear it. If only it accompanied the Film Preservation Society’s restoration of the film!

Paul Cuff