Silent Film & Live Music
Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh)
With Salomón Canelo
Fri, Oct 23, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
60 pesos

Accordion provides emotional cues

The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but technical challenges delayed synchronized dialogue until the late twenties when the Vitaphone system made it practical.

The visual quality of original silent movies was often extremely high. However, many people erroneously consider these films primitive and barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception is due to technical errors (such as films being played back at wrong speed) and to the deteriorated condition of many silent films that exist only in second- or even third-generation copies, which were often copied from already damaged and neglected film stock.

Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, on-screen inter-titles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and even comment on the action for the cinema audience. Silent film actors exaggerated body language and facial expression so the audience could better understand what a performer was feeling and portraying on screen.

Showings of silent films almost always featured live music. From the beginning, it was recognized as an essential contribution to the atmosphere to give the audience vital emotional cues (musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons).

In a magical fusion of music and film, accordion player Salomón Canelo will accompany one of the most brilliant of all German silent films, F.W. Murnau’sThe Last Laugh, a film that captures the emotional anguish of a man whose life is suddenly devoid of meaning. 

For more information on the musician please go to: http://salomoncanelo.cycast.co.uk or http://www.geocities.com/salomoncanelo/.