I see silent cinema as a unique form of ballet.
Compositional Collage is a form created by my friend Graeme Kirkland:
https://www.discogs.com/release/3460554-Graeme-Kirkland-And-The-Wolves-Compositional-Collage
https://www.amazon.ca/Compositional-Collage-Graeme-Wolves-Kirkland/dp/B00019Q58Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Kirkland
For lovers of THE MERRY WIDOW the principal attraction is the music of Franz Lehar.
To present this motion picture without the music of Lehar is quickly dampen the enthusiasm of those who love the music.
“The Merry Widow was one of the biggest box-office successes of 1925. Even Franz Lehar was impressed by the film. He said that if he hadn’t already composed the music he would have been inspired by Erich von Stroheim’s version,”–Maud Nelissen.
No one seriously interested in Lehar’s music will balk at presenting that music at anything less than its fullest.
Silent pictures are almost always presented at less than their fullest.
Decades ago, in 1968, I learned a vital lesson in scoring silent films.
I was showing an 8mm print of Rudolph Valentino in the 1922 version of BLOOD AND SAND at THE QUEEN VICTORIA SLEPT HERE BOUTIQUE & CINEMA.
Unhappy with the score I had created for the film the venue got another fellow to create a score.
This score made no attempt to synchronize with the film. It consisted solely of powerful Spanish guitar.
Thanks to a piece in THE GLOBE AND MAIL the presentation was a huge hit.
Night after night I watched the audience walk out moved as I had never seen an audience moved by a film. The women, in particular, old and young walked as if they had witnessed the death of a man they loved.
That radically changed my approach to scoring silent films.
“The libretto of Léon & Stein was based upon a comedy L’Attaché d’ambassade of Henry Meilhac and is set in Paris around 1900. Stroheim realised that despite Lehar’s captivating music, the story itself was too thin to make an interesting film and together with Benjamin Glazer he was permitted by Irving Thalberg to rewrite the libretto. Stroheim moulded the story to his own artistic beliefs, accepting Thalberg’s only condition that hekeep the two most popular operetta moments: the nightclub scene at Maxim’s and The Merry Widow Waltz danced at Hanna’s grand entrance in Paris. [iv]
“What came out of this was a film script almost completely different from the operetta.
“Stroheim, with his need for a thorough exploration of character, takes 70% of the script to explain how Sally becomes a widow, which, until the final pages, makes any resemblance to the operetta purely coincidental.But the most inventive aspect of the adaptation is the splitting of the Danilo character into two.[v] It delivers the dark, villainous Crown Prince Mirko and the bon vivant Prince Danilo, both coming from Monteblanco, a small principality deep in the Balkans, where almost all the action occurs.
“Starting with the same lightheartedness as the original operetta, the film version becomes darker and dramatically more intense. Stroheim takes an analytically sarcastic view of status, money, love and eroticism and slowly and brilliantly reveals their essence.”–Maud Nelissen.
Before I begin showing a silent picture I let it speak to me.
“To get people into the theatre we must offer them Satan. When they sit down we must give them GOD. They won’t come out for GOD but if we don’t give them GOD they will walk out unhappy,” said Cecil B. DeMille who knew a thing or three about filling theatres.
It has been said that the reason contemporary theatre (and motion pictures are theatre) is the absence of the Devil.
He has his place. A world without him does not mean he’s not in it.
He is, after all, the master of deception.In Stroheim’s THE MERRY WIDOW Sally O’Hara brings love into a world that denies its existence.
Love is for the common people. Royalty does not marry for love.
I have restored the lost Technicolor ending.
–Reg Hartt
https://moviessilently.com/2014/03/23/the-merry-widow-1925-a-silent-film-review/
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheMerryWidow1925
https://www.filmcomment.com/article/erich-von-stroheim-by-jonathan-rosenbaum/