Ryan Loredo
A&E Editor
When films are currently made they are usually accompanied by a score of music set to emphasize the importance or depth of a scene. Music scores can be uplifting or depressing, but they are always meant to be engaging. This is the case for most current film productions; however, it was not usually the case during the silent film era.
One would have to read words upon the screen and might use his or her imagination if music or sound effects were not provided.
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One almost lost silent film titled “Red Heroine” had music provided not from the original production crew but by a band nearly 80 years after its first release.
On Thursday, March 1, against the several inches of snow, the band Devil’s Music Ensemble provide the music in a live performance set in synch with the film.
The band does work on other silent films such as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “Nosferatu.”
The band itself was brought over courtesy of the KSC Art Collective, an art club headed advised by Professor John Gitelson.
Gitelson said, “I’ve known these guys (DME) for almost 15 years, or more and I’ve seen them perform numerous times in Chicago.”
He went on to say, “I emailed Jonah and asked him if they wanted to come. It was through the Art Collective.”
He added, “They really did all of the legwork. They wrote a grant to bring them here. I think it’s kind of amazing they were able to do it with no entry fee.”
The band, according to band member Jonah Rapino, started off in Boston as a rock group and progressively moved towards its current musical state. “It was a mistake; it was literally just a mistake. Someone asked us to do live music for a silent film out of a festival of rock bands doing live music for silent films.”
Band members used equipment ranging from Chinese drums to unusual string instruments such as lapstick guitars. Band member Brendon Wood played the guitar, lapstick guitar, and synthesizer for the performance. He said, “I’m not always playing all of the instruments, I’m either playing two at a time maybe just one. It can be challenging depending on how quickly I had to move from one to the next.”
The band did not take any breaks or intermissions during the 90 minute movie.
Tim Nylander, the percussionist of DME, talked about staying in synch with the film without taking any breaks. He said he prepared for it by “just watching it a lot, recognizing little cues, little hand movements, eye movements, spaces you can see the camera flicker for an edit, things like that.”
Before the show began there was a quick introduction to the film by the band. Rapino said, “[The film] is from Shanghai from the golden era of silent films in China. It took us quite a bit of time to get our hands on this film, three years.”
He went on to say, “It’s really an incredible film, the translation was done at the time the director and his friend did the translation. You will see the inner subtitles have Mandarin and then underneath it is English. But the translation is very funny, misspellings, strange words.”
He also talked about the problems of the film, “The film has a little bit of a problem, the only copy we were able to get our hands on is this one and everything is fine except it was not transferred really correctly, it’s a little bit cropped.”
The cropping occurred on the bottom and left sides of the film causing misspellings and lost sentences in the screening. The film itself is about an invading army taking over small villages.
During one raid, a woman is kidnapped, loses her cousin (the film sometimes referred to him as cousin-brother), and the attempted initiation into the army’s concubine collection.
She is saved by a bearded martial arts master and he teaches her the secrets of his fighting technique. Three years after the initial invasion, a family is put into confusion when the father is arrested for treason charges, an offense punishable by death.
In an attempt to save him, the daughter offers herself unto the head general in marriage. This saddens the kidnapped woman’s cousin-brother because the two were engaged before her father’s kidnapping.
While he mourns the potential loss of his wife-to-be, the old bearded fighter comes back and summons his apprentice who took the identity of Red Heroine and is by then a martial arts master, able to fly from one place to another when she wields her sword.
The old master and Red Heroine infiltrate the fortress, rescuing the daughter, father, and killing the general and various members of his counsel and army.
The young couple is reunited, and Red Heroine flies off to her next challenge.
Audience member Graham Kaletskay said, “I thought [the film] was good. The film itself is hard to follow, but the music went with it very well.” According to Rapino, the film is part six in a 13-part series; the remaining parts, however, were destroyed during politically motivated destructions of films such as “Red Heroine.” According to Nylander, the band found the film when “we heard about it from a projectionist at a film theatre in Pennsylvania. Actually the theatre where ‘The Blob’ was filmed, and he heard about it and we were asking people what films we could do and he brought that up so we started looking for it.”
The band’s next destination is China where it is to present its film March 24 at the Jue Festival of Art.
Ryan Loredo can be contacted at rloredo@keene-equinox.com