French trio breathes musical life into pioneering cinema
To say that artist, illusionist, engineer, actor and filmmaker Georges Melies (1861-1938) left a great legacy is something of an understatement.
Whether or not he was “the inventor of cinema” is an argument best left up to film historians but there’s no doubt the Paris-born genius contributed hugely to furthering the possibilities of film. Martin Scorsese even immortalized Melies in his largely-fictitious 2011 family movie Hugo, casting Ben Kingsley in the role of the aged inventor.
Roughly a century before the use of computer-generated graphics (CGI) became commonplace in movies, Melies pioneered techniques like multiple exposures, substituting frames, and timelapse photography, producing the first special effects on film, even hand-tinting frames to colourize his tales decades before Technicolor.
He made over 500 films between 1896 and 1913 — most of them shorts, but some up to 40 minutes long. Pictures like his famous A Trip To The Moon (1902) are celebrated as the first science fiction films, though it’s fair to say that Melies portrayed a fantasyreality born of his own imagination that’s still unique in the history of the medium.
Now, a century later one of Melies’ biggest fans, fellow Frenchmen Jean-François Alcolea and his trio tour the world to celebrate this great legacy, performing their own live musical soundtracks to the master’s silent films. To date, they have put in over 400 performances to accompany Melies in a movie-concert experience they call Right in the Eye, touring across Europe, into North Africa and Asia, and now in North America, where Edmonton is one of only several Canadian dates.
Alcolea was drawn to Melies’ films as a child. As part of a multifaceted career he got involved making music for film and video long ago, including documentary scores. But it was only six years ago that he took a deeper look at Melies’ legacy and began considering how the filmmaker’s images might inspire brand new musical scores.
“I’ve always enjoyed making music for pictures because my music tends to suggest images on its own. In the beginning I started using pictures in my concerts, but these shows are the opposite because they feature music that follows the silent films. When I came to really discover Melies’ universe I knew I had to create this movie-concert.”
As Alcolea explains, the greatest challenge was to come up with musical material that did justice to the unique look of Melies’ cinema.
“I wanted it to be different, more personal, almost like writing a score for an opera. These are very old films but I wanted something really new that could capture the attention of contemporary audiences. At the same time, I didn’t want to go too far and risk overshadowing Melies’ creativity.”
Alcolea and his musicians have spent years developing some of the
scores for the films, and their work is closely tied to the on-screen action. He says “the real conductor is the film itself.” At the same time, their previous musical experience with jazz and modal scales lends an aspect of improvisation and spontaneity to the process.
The show’s title Right in the Eye is a reference to one of Melies’ most famous filmic images, a scene in which a cylindrical spacecraft crashes into the moon, specifically into the eye of the man in the moon. It’s like something out of a fairytale, but remember it was 1902.
The show features 11 Meliès films in all, plus a separate short documentary that helps to put Melies’ achievements in context. Given the age of the original films, Alcolea and his trio travel with digitally remastered film sources for their multimedia experience. They have also released a DVD of their scores put to Melies’ films.
Growing up in Marseilles in southern France, Alcolea started classical studies as a child and gradually moved from classical to jazz, then free jazz to rock and roll and beyond. That experience informs his work as a composer-band-leader. He plays piano and other keyboards, guitar, and a multitude of instruments that work their way into Right in the Eye.
For the current tour, the trio known as Alcolea & Cie features his keyboards, Fabrice Favriou on drums and guitar, and Stephane Brunet on additional keyboards and percussion, but all three are credited with a long list of ‘objects’ or extra instruments, from thumb pianos to hammered strings.
From the trio’s video clips you can see that they enjoy using unorthodox devices to create exotic sounds for the films. Lighting is also an essential part of the performances, designed to feature the musicians but not outshine the films being projected.