| MARCH 21, 2011 -- The Cannon Grange building was erected in 1899, five years after the first commercial exhibition of a projected motion picture presented by the Lumiere brothers in Paris, France. It was a 20-minute program of 10 very short films — most under a minute — of rather mundane subjects: Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, Fishing for Goldfish, Baby’s Meal and the like.
Things have changed considerably, but Wilton will return to visit those earlier years — not quite that early — when the grange presents an evening of silent films on Saturday, March 26. They star titans of the that time period: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Putting Pants on Philip and Buster Keaton in Our Hospitality. Admission is $8.
As they were nearly a century ago, the films will be presented with live musical accompaniment, this time by John Mucci on piano. Mr. Mucci, a grange member and Wilton resident, will also provide a brief commentary before each film.
Mr. Mucci is a big fan of the silent film era, and he approached his fellow grange members with the idea of a silent movie night eight years ago.
“The first year we had about 30 people,” he said. “Last year we had about 100 people. We see adults, their parents, and their children.”
The movies are on 16mm film reels; they are not DVD projections. Both movies are comedies with a certain universal appeal.
Putting Pants on Philip, which opens the evening at 7:30, is a 19-minute short from the Hal Roach Studios that turns on two plot points. Stan Laurel plays a
Scot who arrives in a kilt to visit his pompous American cousin played by Oliver Hardy. In the first film in which they worked as a team, Hardy spends his time trying to get his cousin into a proper pair of pants as Laurel — who comes to America with a letter warning against his tendency to chase women — repeatedly attempts to do exactly that.
The main feature of the evening is Our Hospitality, a 1923 film starring the great Buster Keaton in a play on the Hatfield-McCoy feud. It was his first feature-length film at 73 minutes and he is listed as a director along with John G. Blystone.
The plot synopsis is simple: “A man returns to his Appalachian homestead. On his trip, he falls for a young woman. The only problem is her family has vowed to kill every member of his family.”
Only there is so much more. “Buster Keaton loved locomotives,” Mr. Mucci said. “He played with big trains the way people play with model trains.”
Set in the 1820s, the film depicts the first train traveling south through “the wilds of New Jersey,” Mr. Mucci said.
Chaos ensues, of course, when Mr. Keaton’s character, Willie McKay, stays with the Canfield family, who, due to the rules of southern hospitality, cannot harm him while he is under their roof. There is a great climactic scene where the Canfield girl — the object of Willie’s affection — is trapped on a canoe “about to go over falls that look like Niagara,” Mr. Mucci said. It all provides great fodder for his piano accompaniment.
The film is a family affair in more ways than one. Playing the train engineer is Mr. Keaton’s father Joe Keaton, playing the girl is Buster Keaton’s wife Natalie Talmadge, and even young Buster Keaton Jr. is there playing the one-year-old Willie McKay.
Mr. Mucci said many people have misconceptions about silent movies, thinking of them as jerky black and white pictures with a lot of slapstick.
“Very seldom do you see pies in the face,” he said. They sometimes look jerky when they are shown at a speed faster than they were shot at.
“The kind of humor they had back then wasn’t a cruel humor,” he said. “It’s not what you see on TV.
“When you are sitting in the dark with 30 to 40 people laughing uproariously, well, that doesn’t happen today.”
Mr. Mucci will be presenting his musical accompaniment on a piano older than either film, a 1917 Playotone. “I’ve played it for eight years running,” he said. “It has its peculiarities.
“You could be shameless about what you play,” Mr. Mucci said of his accompaniment, adding that he will come in with a few musical themes he will work around.
“I make up little themes and come back to them throughout ... I’m trying to illuminate what’s going on.”
Mr. Mucci said there was music played on the set when silent movies were shot. On their first run in big theaters, the films would have an orchestra accompany them. Later, they would be accompanied by smaller groups with cue sheets with music everyone knew.
“They’re not very interesting,” Mr. Mucci said, “because they ask you to play things like I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.
“What I’m doing is a live soundtrack. My way of doing it is more immediate, more fun for me and hopefully fun for the audience.”
Mr. Mucci offers his musical film accompaniment to many audiences including film societies, film festivals, and nursing homes. More information may be found at his Web site jmucci.com/Film/. |
