Reply: a trip to the moon and new soundtracks--2 responses

From: Leo Enticknap <[email protected]>

 Gene Stavis writes:

"Unless there is clear evidence for an original
score approved by the director, a silent film is subject to a wide
variety of choices for its accompaniment."

Why should the wishes of the
director be the only criterion used to determine authenticity? In the
case of many, if not most studio feature silent films, the director was
not the dominant creative force. Before WWI, the role didn't even exist
as a discrete job title in many cases; and where it did, the role was
often not clearly or consistently defined (according to Rachael Low,
Lewin Fitzhamon was the first Briton to return a census form listing his
occupation as film director, and that was in 1911, nearly two decades
after the cinema existed). From the 1920s, there are many examples of
surviving scores or musical suggestions distributed with Hollywood
feature films to theatres, for which there is no evidence that the
director had any substantive role in creating. Fritz Lang is on record
as having disliked many aspects of the Gottfried Huppertz score for
'Metropolis' (performed at the premiere), and Huppertz refused to give
way and make changes. Does this mean that the Huppertz score is no more
authentic than the Moroder one? And where does that leave us when it
comes to forms of filmmaking that never had a director in the Cahiers du
Cinema sense of the term, e.g. newsreels?

I would cite as an example of good practice this DVD
(
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Of-The-Somme-DVD/dp/B001E6Q0KS/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1326643219&sr=1-1
)
of 'The Battle of the Somme'. There are two soundtracks from which the
viewer can choose: a specially composed and recorded, full orchestral
score by Laura Rossi to mark the film's restoration, and an arrangement
of popular music from the time, provided by the distributor to cinema
orchestras, performed on the DVD by a small ensemble led by Stephen
Horne. We can be reasonably certain, I think, that the latter represents
as close as we will be able to reconstruct to what most audiences would
have heard when the film was initially distributed. It is based on
contemporary evidence, and we know from other evidence that the size and
composition of the ensemble is typical of those that would have played
in suburban and provincial cinemas in Britain in the teens.

Leo