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Media Relations

No 'Phantom' revival: Silent films with live music make a comeback

A Q&A with IU alumnus, 'Phantom' accompanist Dennis James

Indiana University alumnus Dennis James began his career in professional film accompaniment while he was a music school student in the late 1960s. Since that time, he has played a pivotal role in the international revival of silent films with live music. James returns to his old haunt, the IU Auditorium, on Halloween night (Oct. 31) to accompany the classic silent film The Phantom of the Opera (1925) starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin. In this interview with "Live at IU," James discusses Phantom, his IU experience and the future of silent films with live music.

LIU: You began professional film accompaniment at IU when you were a music school student in the late 1960s.

DJ: Yes, I was an undergraduate bachelor of music organ major headed for a career in church music. It was October 1969, during the peak of the Vietnam War. The world was familiar with some of the events at Indiana University at that time: the campus being taken over by the students, ROTC building being burnt down and other very serious war protests. The campus had just been taken over, and it happened that there was a need for comic relief ... and I provided it with my silent film scoring debut with Phantom of the Opera using the school auditorium's then-new four-manual Schantz classical pipe organ.

I went down to the craft shop and printed up 400 tickets by hand, stamping them on the craft press. However, 4,000 people turned up and we had to resell those 400 tickets over and over again at the door. Wearing a cape and fangs borrowed from the theater department, I went on, but we had to shut down about five minutes into the film. With all the marijuana smoke in the air the image of the film didn't make it to the screen.

LIU: Why did you become interested in this field?

DJ: For a budding performer, anything that draws 4,000 people to a performance gets his interest!

LIU: What interested you the most about it?

DJ: Although I'd improvised my musical score to that first IU Auditorium silent film showing of the Lon Chaney 1925 silent film Phantom of the Opera, I soon discovered musical scores were actually written for the most of the silent movies. And, most interesting, less than 1 percent of those survive. I learned to discover what was actually played at the time by researching period reviews and trade news articles, talking to musicians who worked at the time and scouring professional music magazines and journals of the period. For Phantom of the Opera I have had the good fortune to have been given the original score for organ plus full orchestra prepared by G. Hinrichs and M. Winkler in 1925 for the film's initial release. I played it in a sellout performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall in Chicago last year and I'll be playing it at IU on Halloween this year as a solo organ transcription -- one of the very few opportunities to do such an authentic performance recreation of this nearly lost presentation art form.

LIU: How did your experience studying music at IU prepare you for your chosen career?

DJ: I have often said that getting through the bachelor's and master's degree programs in performance had many more difficult challenges than have ever been presented in my now 38-year professional international touring music performance and recording career. I often think my life since IU has been a mere vacation.

LIU: At the height of the silent film era, showings of silent films typically featured live music, and many instrumental musicians made a living off performing along with these movies. How does adding music to these classic silent films enhance the viewer's experience?

DJ: There was an immensely seductive atmosphere of the overall film-going experience in the silent era due in part to the contribution of live music performance in creating the overall theatrical presentation aspects. Due in large part to the live music, the silent film had an unparalleled capacity to draw an audience inside it, probably because it facilitated the communal audience's emotional response already highly developed in the other music-enhanced theatrical performance forms of opera, operetta, Broadway shows, ballet, vaudeville and so many others. The silent films inspired audience members to use their imagination, much like the listeners of radio dramas also introduced in the same era. In this instance, though, viewers had to supply the voices while the musicians supplied the supportive musical score and sound effects and in so doing, they made the final creative contribution to the filmmaking process.

Silent film was about more than going to a movie; it was about attending a fully-realized theatrical experience.

LIU: How does it change the experience of viewing the classic silent film The Phantom of the Opera?

DJ: The most common audience reaction to live music at the movies is, in a word, "wonder." People today usually don't realize that films were never really silent and they only got to be called that when sound movies (or, as they were known at first, Talkies) arrived in 1926. There is an eternally growing marvelous fascination internationally now for this nearly forgotten part of the original practice of exhibiting film ... live musical accompaniment at each screening.

LIU: Are there any comparisons to be made between listening to live music being played at the movie and listening to the movie soundtrack?

DJ: I can mention a comment that has been attributed to (legendary silent movie star) Mary Pickford: "When sound came to films, they took a giant step backwards!" To experience in live real-time movies the way they were meant to be ... as performed in a large communal setting with the film image exactly as seen 90 years ago, and heard with historically accurate original musical accompaniment performed with a thorough and fully realized respect for the past and with full confidence of serving the presentation desires of the filmmakers themselves ... if one loves movies as do most moviegoers today, seeing and hearing them as they were originally intended to be experienced should not be missed.

LIU: What is a typical audience reaction to hearing these organs being played along with the action on screen?

DJ: Since the inception of my IU Auditorium Halloween series in 1969, there has been a whole lot of laughing and cheering and clapping. It is really an audience participatory thing just as it was back in the 1920s -- I even have an original glass magic-lantern slide instructing the audience in a silent movie theatre: "You May Applaud The Hero And Hiss The Villain!" At a silent film even in their original time of release, you were given permission to be spontaneous and respond, for it's all really a communal activity. We've become so used to watching movies alone, in the dark in tiny antiseptic modern theatres, or in the comfort and day-to-day surroundings of our own homes via inferior reproduction without any of the live presentation elements, that film-viewing has become much like listening to the radio while driving a car ... and many people are returning to realize how much fun moviegoing can be.

LIU: Why has there been an international revival of silent films with live music?

DJ: There is an emerging 'new' modern-day audience made up of people who have never before seen silent films with live music.

There is an increasingly educated general population made up of people vitally interested in historic preservation in many forms -- both physical (architecture, artifacts) and cultural (the forgotten, dying and extinct forms of theatrical presentation).

There is a growing receptivity of multimedia presentation in live performance emerging from the technical sophistication of the replication enterprises such as television

LIU: Should we expect to see more of these films with live music -- at theaters near us?

DJ: Why yes, indeed! Come on up to the restored Embassy Theatre in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where we present silent films with all of the trappings utilizing the grand Page theatre pipe organ. In fact, just two weeks ago I performed the original organ and orchestra score for Buster Keaton's Civil War comedy, The General, together with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and they've asked me back to do another silent film with them next season on Oct. 27, 2007!

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