close up - Monoskop

CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE: DOROTHY RICHARDSON 163
new management', undecorated and with the old pianist restored to his place. The
audience drifted back.
But during the interregnum, and whilst concerted musical efforts were doing their
worst, an incident occurred that convinced me that any kind of musical noise is better
than none. Our orchestra failed to appear and the pictures moved silently by, lifeless
and colourless, to the sound of intermittent talking and the continuous faint hiss and
creak of the apparatus. The result seemed to justify the curses of the most ardent
enemies of the cinema and I understood at last what they mean who declare that
dramatic action in photograph is obscene because it makes no personal demand upon
the onlooker. It occurred to me to wonder how many of these enemies are persons
indifferent to music and those to whom music of any kind is a positive nuisance.
If ever films are made to sound, if not only the actors, but the properties, street
traffic, cooking-stoves and cataracts are given voices as are already in some cinemas
the bombs and thunderstorms falling upon the dumb players, musical accompaniment
will be superfluous whether as a cover for the sounds from the operator's gallery and
the talking of the audience, or as a help to the concentration that is essential to
collaboration between the onlooker and what he sees. For the present music is needed
and generally liked even by those who are not aware that it helps them to create the
film and gives the film both colour and sound. In our small palace we object to any
sound coming from the screen. We dislike even the realistic pistol-shot that was heard
once or twice during our period of great ambitions. With the help of the puff of smoke
and our pianist's staccato chord we can manufacture our own reality.
And since the necessary stillness and concentration depend in part upon the
undisturbed continuity of surrounding conditions, the musical accompaniment should
be both continuous and flexible. By whatever means, the aim is to unify. If film and
music proceed at cross purposes the audience is distracted by a half-conscious effort
to unite them. The doings of an orchestra that is an entertainment in itself go far in
destroying the entertainment one came forth to seek. I saw in Switzerland a number of
films whose captions were in columns and bi-lingual and whose appearance was the
signal for a chorus of linguists making translations for the benefit of less gifted friends.
But the strife of tongues on and off the screen was less disturbing than the innocent
doings of the orchestra which opened proceedings before the lights were lowered with
a sprightly march and went into the darkness with it and played it until the end of the
reel, which had shown us a midnight murder on a moor, and then became visible, lights
up, cheerily playing yet another martial air. They continued throughout the performance,
vanishing and reappearing and playing, regardless of what might be going
forward upon the screen, 'band music' with a perfect mechanical precision.
But orchestral music, whether at its worst or at its best is unsuited to any but the
largest halls where perhaps, though a concert grand can supply all needs, an orchestra,
that has rehearsed, with the film, music written or arranged for that film until the two
are one, is the ideal. Short of that the single player at his best is not to be beaten.