The San Francisco-based Club Foot Orchestra is well known around the Bay Area, the United States, and even the world for their original scores and musical accompaniment to silent films. The orchestra, which formed in 1983, has been instrumental in introducing the art of silent film accompaniment to contemporary audiences.
On Sunday, November 14th, the renowned musical group will present three of their most popular silent film performances at the historic Castro Theater. It’s an all-day marathon of classic silent cinema.
Buster Keaton – the great stone face, and two macabre masterpieces of German expressionism are the highlights. Here is the schedule for the day:
1:00 Sherlock Jr. (dir. Buster Keaton, 1924) matinee screening
In Sherlock Jr. (1924), a good-hearted projectionist (played by Buster Keaton) is thwarted in his ambitions during his waking life, but when he falls asleep on the job, his dreamself jumps into the movie (the reverse of Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo), solves the crime, and gets the girl. He's disappointed to wake from his marvelous dream, but the girl comes back. Incredible stunts, outrageous gags, innovative film technology, primitive American dream logic – what more could you want?
4:00 Sherlock Jr. (dir. Buster Keaton, 1924)
The Clubfoot Orchestra perform their original score for Keaton’s great masterpiece once more. And to think, Keaton was only 24 when he made this movie.
6:00 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Weine, 1919)
This still bizarre and still compelling classic is considered the first completely realized German Expressionist film. The screenplay combined dream imagery with a strong anti-authoritarian message, an outgrowth of the author’s experiences during WWI. With its dreamlike plot and nightmarish sets, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, is considered one of the most influential movies of all time.
8:00 Nosferatu (dir. F.W. Murnau 1922)
This legendary film was the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula - the vampyr was unforgettably played by Max Streck. Bela Balzacs, a German film writer of Hungarian descent, called the film "a chilly draft from doomsday." And indeed, one cannot fail to be chilled by "the glacial draughts of air from the beyond."
All shows open with Felix the Cat Woos Whoopee.
The Club Foot Orchestra is composed of Myles Boisen on bass, Cornelius Boots on woodwinds, Sheldon Brown on woodwinds, Beth Custer on clarinet, Chris Grady on trumpet, Steve Kirk on guitar, Richard Marriott on trombone, Gino Robair on percussion, and Alisa Rose on violin, with Deirdre McClure conducting.
Club Foot Orchestra founder Richard Marriot once explained how they started writing new scores for old films. It all began with a chance encounter, when Marriot saw a silent film on television. “I turned the channel. And there was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The distorted sets and dreamlike atmosphere in the film were the qualities that I always envisioned accompanying our music. The subversive plot was drenched in the unconscious. I was obsessed to write for that film.”
For more info: A history of the Club Foot Orchestra and additional notes on their original scores (including Pandora’s Box, Battleship Potemkin, andThe Phantom of the Opera) can be found at http://www.clubfootorchestra.com/
Thomas Gladysz is an arts journalist and author. Recently, he wrote the introduction to the new “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Böhme's classic book, The Diary of a Lost Girl (PandorasBox Press). He will speak about this new book at the San Francisco Public Library on November 14.
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