BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you’ve ever seen a Charlie Chaplin film, you 21st Century hipster, then you’ll know the comedy is as fresh today as it ever was.
The soundtrack, on the other hand, is something that probably needs a bit of a revival — that is to say, it needs some sound.
This is where Nick Russoniello steps in. The Australian saxophonist has composed his own music to Chaplin’s 1917 film The Immigrant, proving this silent film can be just as fun for the ears as the eyes. It’s all bar fights, romance, and a C-melody sax.
Nick, you’ve written an original score to a Charlie Chaplin film. Take us back — not way back to 1917 when this film was released, but back to when you first encountered the films of Charlie Chaplin in your own life.
I started to develop a fascination with Chaplin’s films really just 18 months ago. We did our first Nick Russoniello & The Golden Age Quartet concert in June 2018 with a program looking at popular saxophone music of the 1920s. We were brainstorming ideas for future programs, and started thinking about the golden age of cinema, and that idea led to the concept of doing something with silent film.
From there, I started watching Chaplin films of around this era, the Mutual films. They are incredible. They are also in the public domain, so I knew it would be possible to use them in a concert.
From about 10 seconds into The Immigrant, I knew it was the right film for us. The opening scene, a seasickness sequence, reminded me of my grandmother’s experience of being seasick for months on her boat trip to arrive in Australia from Italy.
Although I was born in Australia, it feels like the migrant story has been a part of my life through the experiences of my parents and grandparents. I know there are millions of Australians that can identify with this migrant story, so it was such an obvious choice for this project.
When we imagine silent films, we tend to imagine two things: silence (obviously), or those deliciously sprightly piano themes that would have been played live for a cackling, flapper-donning audience. How did those old musical themes or devices influence your own work?
I found myself trying to tread a careful path between the music of that era (1917) and contemporary art music. I wanted to write music of today. I didn’t think there was much point writing music that was in the style of the early 20th Century; then, we could have simply had a pianist play some rags and waltzes during the film.
That being said, the film calls out for the sounds of that time and place, and there are some musicians in the background scenes of the film so I wanted to factor in what they might be playing.
I tried to write music that is contemporary but evocative of those earlier styles. Ultimately, the harmonies, rhythms, and instrumental techniques of the score are contemporary — but the themes are gesturally reminiscent of waltzes and rags.
It was hard to avoid cliché. I found my first gut instincts often fell to cliché, or sounds we would expect to hear from a silent film piano player. So, the challenge became to take the cliché and reinvent it.
Hopefully, audiences can have the emotional response the original cliché would create, but hear it in a completely new way.
Chaplin’s audiences are not 21st Century audiences. While the comedy is often such raw slapstick that it doesn’t outdate, the way audiences interact with films certainly does change over time. How does your score bring this experience into the 21st Century, when people would just as soon whip out their mobile as they would watch a film?
The good news for modern audience with short attention spans — myself included! — is that the Chaplin films are short. The Immigrant is just over 20 minutes, so it’s the length of something you might watch on YouTube. It’s amazingly fast-paced, we get an entire narrative: love story, fish-out-water story, death, violence, confusion, mystery, and happy ending all in 20 minutes — with comedy to boot! That’s pretty good for our distracted audiences, and should keep them away from the cat videos for 20 minutes!
I also found that with my first viewing of this film, I noticed the slapstick — but with each repeat viewing, the subtleties came to light. I started to notice how human and political the messages of the films are. This is a timeless film, and I tried to use the music to bring out the emotional power of The Immigrant, not just the comedy.
Why did you feel there was a need to create your own music to Chaplin’s film The Immigrant, anyway?
There was no original music to the The Immigant; later in cinema history, distribution companies would send out a cue sheets with suggested repertoire to be played with films — but this film was made before that tradition started. In that sense, I felt it was fair game.
Also, it just feels like such a pertinent film for today; people are still migrating and having these same experiences. Nothing has really changed, so it felt okay to give it a contemporary treatment.
I also tried my best to stay out of the way of the film. It’s not a soundtrack in the modern sense, but a suite of music that follows the emotional contours of the film. It’s a really colourful film — though black and white! — so it really evoked an imaginative response in me.
You’ve chosen gut strings and a 1920s C-melody sax to take audiences back, instrumentally speaking. Talk us through this practical side of your composition.
With the Golden Age gigs, we have tried to explore the forgotten sound of older instruments and gut strings. I’ve been playing these gigs on a 1920s C-melody sax, which is basically an extinct instrument, and I recently got a hold of a 1920 Chu Berry alto sax, too. I’ve found that using these instruments changes the way we interpret the music. The instruments need/want to be played differently, and I’m sure I would offer different interpretations if I were to do the program on my modern saxophone; not better or worse, but completely different. This has been fascinating.
For The Immigrant, we’ve actually needed to put the violin and cello back on steel strings to balance better with the piano, and to better express the contemporary string writing; extended techniques, etc. Despite the more modern gear, we still we try use that older expressive language in our vibrato, portamenti, tempi, and rhythmic flexibility.
Will we see more film scoring on the horizon for you? Would you want to score a new film, or stick with these old classics?
Right now, I haven’t though much past the premiere and my main concern is making sure we get some more screenings of The Immigrant. That being said, this has been an amazing thing to work on and yes, I would love to do more in the future.
I do like the old classics, but know how exciting it can be to collaborate with living artists, so would be thrilled to work on a new film too.
For now, I’ll just see what happens next!
Follow Nick’s Golden Age Project on his website.
The world premiere of The Immigrant with Nick’s score is 29 September, Independent Theatre, North Sydney.
Images supplied. Credit: Jacquie Manning. The Immigrant: Public Domain.
