In 1970 Lillian Gish write the Foreword to the book Sounds for Silents, published by DBS in New York, and authored by Charles Hoffman. The odd sized purple book is unpaged with illustrations and facsimiles of musical compositions. The book also contains 1 sound disc (analog 33 1/3 rpm).
Foreword
To tell a story in pictures, unaccompanied solely by music, is difficult. It is a form more challenging that that with spoke words, which at best is bastard theater. The silent film with music is almost entirely a 20th century product. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. . Here was truly a new art form. The age-old art of the theater, based on the author's words to reveal his plots and thoughts, spoken from a stage by players who are lighted and framed by the scenery of designers, is a vastly different art. In the silent film, earth and sky could dwarf ost scenery, and music was used to frame and enhance the story being told.
When we made the silent film version of La Boheme, the estate of Puccini was in litigation, making it impossible for us to use his music. A substitute score composed by Messrs. David Mendoza and William Axt was beautiful. The famous critic, George Jean Nathan, said he thought it better than the one being sung at the Metropolitan Opera. It contributed greatly to the long runs enjoyed by that sad story.
No one today seems to understand this better than Charles Hoffman.
Today, his music for this same film has the same effect.
When I see old films run at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York, he uses his enormous musical repertory to heighten the mood of each scene. He memorizes the film and the music, blending the changes so adroitly that you, watching, are unaware of how the intense vibrations of these sounds are created. Only when it is over, do you realize how your mind has been caught and held captive by what you have seen and heard.
The art of theater is seen and heard from too great a distance to look into the eyes of players and read their thoughts. On stage the voice, almost unaided, must reveal emotion, whereas the camera can be so intimate that it can give something like an x-ray of the human psyche. John Barrymore, who knew both arts well, said that if the camera held your face on screen long enough, it would not only reveal what you had for breakfast, but tell who your ancestors were.
Many of our modern films seem to be returning to the purer forms of telling a story in motion pictures, depending upon music and animation rather than words.No doubt there are minds at work now with enough creative imagination to convert film into a universal language understood by everyone everywhere. What an enormous force and help it would be if each one involved took the responsibility for what he was saying. Such power goes far beyond the printed word. It could show the problems, work out solutions, or at least clarify, simplify and lead to helpful, even peaceful, understanding. Then those films with music could be sent around the world as the Universal Esperanto!
Lillian Gish
New York
1969
Jim Patterson Note: The silent La Boheme, often described as the non-Puccini version for the reason Lillian cited, was an MGM production directed by Texan King Vidor and released in 1926. This was the only screen pairing of Lillian with John Gilbert, who gained stardom as the on-screen lover of Greta Garbo. Lillian's most remembered leading man, she also starred with Ronald Coleman, whose film career rose in the 1930s, "Lost Horizon" and he remained a leading man until his death. Coleman's widow acknowledged Lillian's condolences with a card that said, "Ronnie's in Shangra-La."
Gish Writing and Film Scholar Jim Patterson at Gish Prize ceremonies in New York. 2014.
Recipient Maya Lin.
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