Before Danny Elfman was a household name, before movie studios paid people for the specific task of hitting melons with baseball bats for that delightfully squishy sound, even before the Jazz Singer changed the way audiences absorbed film narratives by adding sound for the first time, the creation of movie soundtracks was limited to one discipline — musical accompaniment. The musical vocabulary of silent filmmaking has informed every aural innovation since its inception.
Some of this silent film accompaniment music has been lost, and some has been butchered beyond repair. That which survives requires a uniquely talented ear and eye to interpret. Dennis James, a world-renowned silent film organ accompanist and something of a militant purist when it comes to the scores, sees his relationship to these old relics as equal parts creative and curatorial.
“As an active cultural historian throughout my adult life, I find I have carefully followed the leaders throughout the historical revival marketplace in a number of formats, and found early on I was able to respond with alacrity and sincere dedication to whatever invitations arose,” he says. “[There has been a] marked worldwide resurgence of interest in the revival of silent film presented in the historical manner with authentic period music, utilizing original instruments and performed with authentic preserved historical techniques together with archival prints.”
James’s interest in silent film was piqued while watching silent films on television as a child. Dissatisfied with the musical accompaniment, he would dial the volume down and let his own imagination fill in the emotional gaps. He first scored a 16mm silent short in high school for a variety show, and began scoring longer films for larger audiences in university. James is recognized as one of the pivotal figures in the international silent film revival, and plays regularly at the Uptown’s Silent Movie Mondays.
“I found my typical audience members today are already familiar with the silent film genre, likely by either DVD rentals or cable television broadcasts. However, [they] are being attracted to my presentations by whit of the live musical accompaniment and authentic preservationist attributes,” says James. “I find them predominantly coming out of the more educated [demographic] of the general population and often consisting of people vitally interested in historic preservation in many forms, both physical — architecture, artifacts — and cultural — the forgotten, dying and extinct forms of theatrical presentation.”
Though he often endeavours to play the music a film was originally presented with, sometimes this is made impossible either by circumstance or the corrosive forces of time. Before the characters on film were able to communicate through the use of language, the accompanist set the emotional tone of a scene. This mentality, combined with a certain respect for historical precedent, is what informs James’s style.
“There are people who compile scores in a historical re-creation manner somewhat as I do, but who utilize film and other musical compositions written after the date a film was released,” says James. “For instance, in recent scorings of silents, I have been hearing anachronistic and other unobservant players performing waltzes when the dancers on screen are doing the foxtrot. And then there are the performers who write entirely new music of widely varying quality and various styles, from mock historical to current-day commercial, western pop, jazz improvisation and even rock music. I guess variety makes the world go 'round, but I still prefer authenticity, historical re-creation — or to put it simply, respect for the original filmmakers' intents.”
Though the advent of sound in film may have changed the way films are made, those films made without sound’s benefit will always remain important cultural artifacts. As long as relics such as these exist, there will be those dedicated to their preservation.
