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Broken Blossoms (1919)
$10
With a Live Musical Score by Brian Traylor •
Thursday, September 6 at 7:00 pm
My approach to sound has
always been as a filmmaker creating sound that would match my visual
style. When I was asked if
I could do an alternate soundtrack to Broken Blossoms as part of the
Lillian Gish Film Festival, the tables had turned, but I agreed.
I've always been
interested in the idea of
scoring a modern ambient soundtrack to a silent film.
Quite often I would turn off the sound of a silent film on my
TV at home and play my own atmospheric experimental music. I started
to find that my friends preferred the nontraditional music I
created to the same old
musical accompaniment that is usually
arranged. When these early films were first made, there was a lot
of exploration happening in the language of film.
Things were being done with sound for film that had
never been tried before.
I like to think of these films as still being open to
interpretation and
experimentation.
I am very excited to be invited back to my hometown to formally
present this approach to live sound for silent film.
Watching Broken Blossoms
makes me feel a type of raw emotion that modern films rarely capture.
And when they do, it is the same drawn-out dramatic scenes that
slowly unfold, so contrary to today's pacing that they seem irritating
and hard to watch for the
contemporary viewer.
It is here that the patient can see and feel raw emotion
erupting on screen. Broken
Blossom's is an avalanche of heartbreak and pain. An all out cry of
cruelty in the world.
My score for this film will be an ethereal experience that will
challenge
the idea of how sound
is composed and presented live for film.
-Brian Traylor
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