STEPPING BACK IN TIME
The RSO’s homage to old Hollywood
Gordon Gerrard is looking forward to stepping back into the early history of Hollywood.
Gerrard, the music director of the Regina Symphony Orchestra, will be on the conductor’s podium Saturday night when the orchestra delivers a special presentation of City Lights, a classic silent film from Charlie Chaplin.
In recent years, the RSO has held similar concerts with the spotlight shining on Phantom Of The Opera, The Gold Rush and The General. It’s an intriguing program to take in with the film being shown on a large screen hung above the orchestra while it plays the accompanying music for the movie.
Standing in the conductor’s podium, Gerrard will be the only member of the orchestra onstage that will be able to see the screen. Will that be a distraction for him?
“It’s not a distraction because I actually have to watch the film to keep us on track,” explained Gerrard. “Sometimes you do these films where there’s a click track and you put it in your ear and it keeps you on track. But these films don’t have it so you actually have to watch it and try and gauge by certain landmarks. Some are written into the score but I have to watch the film and make sure that we’re keeping up.”
The pressure of the performance comes if a cue is missed — then the conductor has to find a way to make up that time.
“It’s a challenge, for sure,” said Gerrard.
City Lights is considered Chaplin’s best film but when filming started in 1928, many in Hollywood felt he had made a terrible decision given that films with vocals — “talkies” — were beginning to revolutionize the industry.
Chaplin felt that silent films still had a role but no one else shared that enthusiasm. Despite his success as an actor, writer, director and producer, Chaplin was unable to arrange financing for the film. Chaplin reportedly spent $2 million of his own money — adjusted for inflation, that’s $27 million in 2018 — on the film, along with an additional $100,000 to promote and market the finished product.
“It’s quite astounding that this entire project rested in his hands, with a bit of help from other people,” said Gerrard.
In addition to his other roles with the film — he starred, wrote, produced and directed the movie — Chaplin also wrote the music. He composed the music over a sixweek period with Arthur Johnston and in interviews later in his life, Chaplin actually downplayed his role in the score. On a number of occasions, he said that he “la-lala’d” the music while Johnston wrote the notes.
Gerrard believes Chaplin did protest too much.
“There might be a bit of false modesty there,” said Gerrard with a laugh. “The music is quite sophisticated. It’s not easy for the orchestra. Sometimes the films are less technically challenging for the orchestra but that is not the case for this one.”
Released in 1931, City Lights tells the story of a tramp who falls in love with a beautiful blind girl who needs financial assistance to receive medical treatment. The tramp’s on-again, off-again friendship with a wealthy man allows him to not only become the girl’s benefactor but her suitor as well.
It was a huge hit at the box office, generating box office receipts of $5 million during its initial run. In 2007, City Lights was ranked 11th on the American Film Institute’s list of the best American films ever made.
City Lights is often thought of as the template used by Hollywood to move from silent films to movies with detailed scores and soundtracks.
“You look at what talkies were doing before this point, you’d hire a piano player or, more often than not, an organ player and they ’d improvise as they watched the movie. Obviously this is much more sophisticated where the music is planned out and written down for an entire orchestra to play along,” said Gerrard. “It definitely points forward to, even if you look at the music that John Williams writes, this as the prototype.”
Gerrard feels this is a rare opportunity for Reginans to see a legendary piece of Hollywood history.
“Audiences don’t often get to see these films, and especially not in this context, so I think it will breathe a different life, if not a new life, into the experience of watching this movie with the music being created as it goes along,” said Gerrard. “And as far as Chaplin films go, if you’re going to see one, this is the one to see.”