Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1925)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

JANUARY 1925 Pictures and PichjreVve" S3 This popular song from " Mary " {Chap pell and Co.), is a universally beloved selection for a light love scene. why at the smaller picture theatres one is treated to the same music over and over again — until one gets heartily sick of it. Indeed, certain halls are notorious for their habit of playing exactly the same piece to each type of screen action. This species of kine'ma will give you the " DashGalop " with every scene of a horse race, Tosti's " Goodbye " with every love scene, " 1812 " Overture with every battle episode, and " Dead March in Saul "' with even " death " scene. I have heard of solo accompanists— piano 01 organ — making the same piece of music do for any type of scene, by the simple means of altering the tempo. (This may seem an exaggeration, but it is certainly possible to transform, say, a popular . waltz into a religious chant by slowing the time down, and delivering each note as an impressive chord. Try it on your piano with " The Merry Widow ' waltz, and see if it doesn't turn it into a well-known " legato " frequently used in church.) f~\n the other hand, an up-to-date pic^^ ture theatre orchestra, with its extensive repertoire, varies its music so much that even a poor picture programme can be endured. In fact, there art many people who go to the kinema more for hearing the music than to see films. By this means one beoomcs familiarised with many varied pieces, the only difficulty being to learn the names of them, so that one can, if desired, buy the piano score or the gramophone recordings, and thus enjoy these compositions at home. Later on in this article I strive to assist the reader in this matter. In this connection, it was that celehrated musical critic Ernest Newman, I think, who stated that one can often hear a performance of popular classical melodies by a kinema orchestra which compared very favourably with the renderings in some of the recognised concert halls. Let this not be construed to mean that only "high-brow" nunc should be played in kinen On the contrary, if a particular scene calli for " jazz," by all meant Id ui lun e " j.i//." The use of music with films is not merely to break the silence — although it must !><• admitted that to view a film without some -sort of musical accompaniment is like an ctj without salt. No, more than being simply an embellishment, the music is part of the film performance itself And the main essentials towards a perfect combination of the two arts is that the music shall partly express the atmosphere of the various incidents, shall provide a phasing ' background" to the scraen story, but shall not, at any time, obtrude itself over and above the picture. The perfect musical accompaniment occurs when one's attention is not for one moment distracted from the screen to the orchestra. And that is where the expert music " fitter " comes in. As mentioned above, all the leading film companies employ some The title "Mysterious Purioso" (U'inthorp and Rogers) explains its value. Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Sight" (Lafleur) is often played for film firework displays.