Last night,
Paul Merton was at Worthing Assembly Hall with his Silent Clowns Tour. The films he showed were, surprisingly, very good! There were the usual silent classics - Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton - and each was accompanied by Neil Brand, playing the piano as a live soundtrack.
There's no doubting Neil's piano playing ability but for me, that's rather what takes the shine off the old black-n-white silent movies. It took me until the second half to realise this - the films themselves are fabulous: the timing and skill involved to pull off some of the theatrics make some of today's performers look pedestrian and stale. The musical soundtrack, however, is dated and dull.
I've never been a fan of Charlie Chaplin, but watching him make his arrival in America, and the ensuing high-jinx, was brilliant. The comedy was less in the fall-down-farce style and more in the subtle telling of a tale, using facial expressions and body-language beautifully.
Without the distraction of sound, the characters had to squeeze every last bit out of a performance, so that the audience could understand what was going on. It was rather like watching a live-action cartoon, with huge, over-exaggerated actions which all added to the charm of the film.
Laurel and Hardy performed a routine with a goat in their hotel room: not the kind of thing I remembered about L&H. I always thought that they went in for the big scene, dropping-pianos-on-top-of-people visuals, but they were equally as funny in small, intimate scenes.
Buster Keaton played an early version of Brewsters Millions.
You could see him lay the foundations for all that came after him - from the ludicrous Monty Python to Benny Hill. Again, his comic timing was impeccable.
At the interval, after being pleasantly surprised by how good (and bizarrely topical) the films still remained today, I wondered why, when an old classic pops up on the telly, there isn't the same compulsion to sit and watch and admire it.
The second half - dedicated entirely to the Buster Keaton movie Seven Chances (not Steamboat Bill as the publicity stated) - a movie similar to Brewsters Millions, in that Buster has to be married by 7 o'clock in order to receive a 7 million dollar inheritance. And sadly, this is where the true problem with silent movies became obvious: they're not silent! The piano playing - although very clever and technically impressive - was just too persistent. Every scene was accompanied with "diddle-de-dum, diddle-de-dum, diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dum" and punctuated with the occasional "bang" on the lower keys (think Jerry Lee Lewis playing with his feet). Too often, something rising up (be it someone standing up from a chair, someone or something being lifted or flying through the air) was accompanied by a quick run up the piano keyboard. Likewise, anyone or anything coming down (falling, dropping, tripping over) was met with a quick run down the piano.
Clever, in the right places, but because most farce-based comedy revolves around people jumping up and falling down, it quickly became boring and predictable.
It would have been nice to have a change in tempo for some scenes - perhaps even a different style of music, to suit the mood being played out on screen.
It really should have been called "Neil Brand plays along to silent clowns" as Paul Merton appears only for a few minutes at a time, before going off and leaving the film running for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes at a time. At the end of the show, just as we were discussing how he'd had time to pop to the pub for a bite to eat and a few pints while supposedly performing at the Assembly Room, he appeared - no word of a lie - with his coat and a hat on!
I'm glad Paul Merton reintroduced us to these old films.
They really are worth watching - not so much for the plot or the story, but for the theatrics and fantastic performances put in by the stars. If an old silent movie comes on the telly, why not try watching it; but this time, as it was made - turn the volume right down, watch it in silence and marvel at the sheer brilliance of it!
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