Silent Heaven

It's rare to be able to get the chance to see silent films nowadays, particularly in their original setting with live musical accompaniment. I've had the extreme good fortune to have seen two in the last seven days. Starting off with Salome, a very fragrant and curiously unique Biblical epic, starring the lesbian Russian star Alla Nazimova in the title role, directed by her homosexual husband Charles Bryant (in a "lavender marriage" as it was once dubbed by the press), and the production is very opulent to look at, if mostly intended to be in awe of the enigmatic Ms. Nazimova, who does a snappy dance when she gets round to it. It was nice to hear the splendid organ accompaniment by Donald Mackenzie, using the "The Duchess" Odeon Leicester Square instrument for its original purpose.

Then on Friday as part of the "Electric Silents" film weekend at the Electric Palace in Harwich, I managed to squeeze in A Cottage on Dartmoor, which belies the notion that Britain - and Anthony Asquith - could only make conservative dramas. A quite simple but boldly made thriller (similar in plot to later films such as Ealing's It Always Rains on Sunday), using a mostly European cast, in the days when film was a universal language. I found it powerful, beautifully photographed, and quite moving at times. On the piano of the cinema was Stephen Horne, giving it the proper atmosphere. The most amusing moment was when the musical accompaniment to a silent film (in the Electric Palace as well as on screen) stops because a "talkie" is about to start, and shows all the problems audiences had to adapt to the new medium when it was first introduced in 1927.