Nosferatu

Last night, my boyfriend and I decided to take advantage of my Groupon subscription for the first time and splurged on $10 tickets to an event being hosted at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center (which is really just a college auditorium). They ran the film Nosferatu with a live orchestra, featuring the west coast premiere of an original score. I am always down to do anything Halloween, and boyfriend had been itching me to rent the film for a long time, so this was an ideal opportunity.

So, I have to say, that the concept was quite cool. Seeing a silent film with a live orchestra can add something that watching a silent film on DVD or television just doesn’t have. If one does see a silent film in a theater, these days it is generally with a live organ or a piano, or a prerecorded track onto the film. I had high expectations going into the event because of this, and may have set myself up for failure.

The most common DVD release of the film is the Kino Lorber release, which features the typical synthesizer that they add to all of their films. Kino tends to replace title cards with a digital still they create, and while they do great work for the budget that they maintain, this would not have been an ideal form of the film to run in this vicinity. Yes—the orchestra played along with the DVD of the film, as shown on a video projector, not properly focused on the screen, and with the home video logo opening the event.

I know there are readers rolling their eyes at me, and they are entitled, but let me clarify why this is a problem. Yes, the film Nosferatu may be in the public domain, but that does not mean that a company’s restoration of the film is necessarily in the public domain. Now, we could give the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center the benefit of the doubt that they got permission from Kino Lorber to run the DVD, but there was no mention in the program, nor in the opening and closing remarks that this was the case, which makes me speculate otherwise.

My biggest nag with this, however, was the score. Oof, that score. I never thought the day would come when I preferred a Kino Lorber synthesizer soundtrack to a live score. Let me break it down for you. A section of strings plays 8 whole notes, and a drummer bangs cacophony for another bar. A section of horns plays 8 whole notes, and a drummer bangs cacophony for another bar. All the while a therymin eerily plays over the whole score doing its own thing. I wasn’t grabbed, and I started thinking about work. And generally, if a movie experience on a Saturday night makes me think about work, it goes in the ‘not fun’ pile.

What could have made this better? A little more liveliness to the score for starters. The wonderful thing about being able to compose a new score for an old film is one can be as creative as he wants when doing so. There were so many opportunities to have an elastic moment with the music composition, and I felt that, beyond lacking a melody, all the audience got was a “BOOM” when Nosferatu showed up. Additionally, these Kino Lorber restorations were meant to be seen at home, on a tv screen. The tints that are used with the image are saturated for that kind of viewing. When they appear on a video projector in a live auditorium, they look lame. The skipping of the film frames (common for silent films released of this time as the elements are in rugged shape) would not have looked as choppy on a tv screen at home, but on a large screen in an auditorium appeared very digital, as if I was watching a slideshow.

Now, in the festive mood of the Halloween Holiday, I will say that for $10 I did not mind paying what I paid for this event. The costumes of the stoned college kids, the homely Santa Clarita crowd, and the lovely college auditorium and its cozy ambience made this an okay evening for what it was. But, I will say, the reason I am being so harsh is we did this on a groupon. There are people who paid $40 for their tickets to this event. For $40, a professional DCP could have been rented. A professional score should have been played. That is all.