'Silent Wagner'

 My friend Prof. G has hipped me to this movie on YouTube. It is from 1913 and it is called "Silent Wagner."

It was a biopic about Richard Wagner that came out in 1913! The movie was supposed to mark the centenary of his birth. As the professor points out, another way in which it was noteworthy was that it could well be the first full-length silent film. Everyone says that D.W. Griffiths' "Birth of a Nation" was the first long silent film but this one predates it by two years. It is 80 minutes long!

At first I thought it was a spoof. I was not watching closely and I was skipping around. And at the beginning they flash that silly quote by Mark Twain: "Wagner's music is really a lot better than it sounds," something like that. So that threw me off.

There are touches that are funny in this movie, I think. One scene in which Wagner is snubbed by Liszt made me laugh. You see Liszt going back to talking to his friends, kind of waving Wagner away.

From what I understand the filmmakers -- Carl Frohlich was the director -- wanted to use actual Wagner music for a soundtrack but the Wagner family wanted to charge too much. They engaged and Italian composer, Giuseppe Becce, and Becce happened to look like Wagner so wound up starring as him. I think Wagner would have gotten a kick out of that.

I am going to watch the whole movie and pronounce upon it. As the Prof. says, it is interesting in that it was made in an era when a lot of people still remembered Wagner and the world that Wagner knew. It gets points for authenticity because of that.

We must discuss. Meanwhile, watching the movie, I confess it is strange.

It is so silent!

Beethoven in my purse

 I have been walking around with a movie in my purse. It has been there a week and today the library just sent me a notice it is overdue.

It is too bad I cannot get around to watching it! Because this movie looks really interesting.

It is Abel Gance's "Beethoven"!

Perhaps the title is "Un Grand Amour." It is one or the other.

To be honest I had never heard of Abel Gance and it is only this minute that I realize this is an old movie, from the 1930s. The movie jacket made it look modern and I was in a hurry as usual and just borrowed it without really looking at it. It did say Abel Gance was famous for a movie on Napoleon but still I did not think it was odd that I had not heard of this filmmaker. There are plenty of filmmakers I had not heard of.

The excerpt from above looks promising. And here is an excerpt from the movie I found just now on YouTube.



The comments on the site are full of arguments about the accuracy of the clip and debates about which organ they are filming and where. Oh well. Why should a Beethoven from the 1930s be less accurate than a Beethoven from now? In the 1930s they were closer to him time-wise. And closer to his era.

Has anyone out there in Blog-O-Land seen this film? I am going to renew it online from the library and try to carve out the time to see it.

Perhaps this will be my lucky week!

'Blossom Time'

One comment the other day got me thinking about "Blossom Time," this old movie about Schubert, which I had never seen. I picked up the vinyl record and it is somewhere, so that is a start.

I found this clip of Richard Tauber singing songs from the movie and I was thinking, that is funny, he looks a little like Schubert.

Now I find out he was cast as Schubert!

That is funny! Talk about making Schubert truly superhuman. Not only does he write this heart-stopping music but he has Richard Tauber's voice.

I mean, I do not think so.

Sorry Charlie.

When Schubert's songs were being performed and he was there, I believe he was playing the piano and not singing. There is that famous account of how he said the accompaniment to "Erlkonig" was too tough for him.

Richard Tauber was my father's favorite singer. He sent his record of Tauber's "Schoene Muellerin" back to the shop because it had a scratch or something, and he never got it back, and he never got over it. They sent him Heinrich Schlusnus' recording instead. I always remember my dad griping about that. Nothing against Schlusnus but he was not Tauber.

Here is Tauber singing "Horch, horch, die Lerch." That title is great in German, you know? Instead of  "Hark, hark, the lark" it is "Horch, horch, die Lerch." English and German are related in hilarious ways.



 I have Web-logged about Tauber before so now I should just stop.

Besides which people are telling me that all I do is write about dead people which is not good for ratings. I should stop writing about dead people and write about living people.

Celebrities.

Hmmm. I cannot believe I cannot find that movie "Blossom Time" anywhere on YouTube. This is the closest I can come. I am not used to having to deny myself like this. I am accustomed to instant gratification. Remember the movie about Brahms and Schumann?

"Blossom Time" must be out there somewhere, free.

It must be!

Crowded house

 Very cool old movie I found myself watching late last night about Robert and Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. I think the whole thing is up on YouTube but I have only watched some of it.

In this clip you can see the Schumanns approached by the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms who comes up and knocks on their door.

I think whoever that actor is who played Schumann sort of captured his oddness. The actor who plays Brahms, he really should have been blond. There is no excuse for having a dark-haired guy playing Brahms. But his face sort of looks like the pictures you see of Brahms when he was young and I like his kind of moon-faced expression. I think he gets the expressions right.

Katharine Hepburn as Clara, got to love it!

The movie has all these sort of sitcom scenes but something prevents it from becoming annoying. At least so far! As I say I have only watched a bit of it.

I get such a kick out of these old movies. I think a movie like this one -- "Song of Love" is the name of it, by the way -- works better in some ways than the movies about musicians we get now. The old movies were not trying so hard.

Also, "Song of Love" does not skimp on the music. They must have known that the audience back then, which was 1947, could sit through an uncut performance of a Schumann or Brahms piano piece. Movies now really goof with that. You get a movie that is supposed to be about a musician but the one thing the movie never does is let you listen, you know?

I cannot wait to watch the rest of this movie. It will be my reward at the end of the day.

I will share my thoughts, unsolicited.

Over the moon

The moon is full and I feel a song coming on.



And another!



And another.



And finally....

Sister act

There is this elegant new movie out that I am looking forward to. It is called "Mozart's Sister" and it is a fantasy about when Mozart was a kid and toured Europe with his father, Leopold, and sister, Nannerl.

I love how the 18th century looks in movies. You do not see the, ahem, outhouses and other inconveniences. You know what, just thinking out loud here, but those scatological references in the Mozart family's letters that raise everyone's eyebrows now, those references were very much of their time. Talking about s--- was probably much more accepted then because heck, it was all around you.

Anyway, the movie looks beautiful and anything about Mozart generally gets my vote.

The only trouble is, the movie starts out saying "The True Story of Mozart's Sister." It is very far from the true story and I do not know what the filmmakers were thinking, making that claim. I mean, come on, from what I gather from the trailer ...

...  it has her having a romance with the Dauphin in France. I am sorry about that picture of the trailer! It is early in the morning where I am plus it is Monday and I absolutely could not help it.

Also the movie exaggerates Nannerl's talents. She was talented but not compared with Wolfgang. Nothing personal, it is just that lightning does not strike twice like that.

Wolfgang was off the charts as far as humanity goes. It is ridiculous to imagine that his sister was just as talented, just as it would be ridiculous to imagine that if he had a brother, the brother would be as talented.

It worries me that this movie's story will become accepted as fact, the way aspects of "Amadeus" became accepted as fact when they were not.

Also the trailer ...

... shows footage of a nun behind a grate, and I suspect an agenda involving feminism and the Catholic Church. The nun is heard saying to Nannerl, "Imagine how our lives would have been different if we had been boys." I can imagine where that discussion is going and I suspect it will be both offensive and boring.

Plus people who do not know anything about religion or history are going to be shocked at the sight of the grate which will make it look as if the nun is in prison. You know the movie is going to capitalize on that.

Oh well. I guess that illustrates the never-ending fascination with the Catholic Church as well as with Mozart. That is good news to me.

The movie does look beautiful, in a perfumed and candle-lit way.

And the music should be good!