Tag Archives: Stephen Horne

The Silent London Poll of 2023: And the winners are …

January 26, 2024 PH Leave a comment

I may be a humble blogger typing at my desk, but just imagine I am a glamorous celebrity cracking first-rate jokes while wearing a designer ballgown. I have counted the votes, and I am ready to announce the winners of the Silent London Poll of 2023!

Congratulations to all the people mentioned below – as ever, these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes, and your comments, which remind us all of the passion for silent film out there.

Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners.

1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2023

Your winner: Stella Dallas (Henry King, 1925), with a score composed by Stephen Horne, orchestrated by Ben Palmer and performed by Orchestra del Teatro Comunale directed by Timothy Brock, in the Piazza Maggiore Bologna, as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato

I said: “Before Monday night’s screening of the original 1925 adaptation of Olive Higgins Prouty’s weepie, some people in Bologna were still dropping the names of Barbara Stanwyck and King Vidor. After Monday, the talk of the town was only Belle Bennett, Henry King and Stephen Horne, whose marvellous score, alongside Bennett’s impeccable performance, left the piazza awash with tears. Horne has long championed this film, as have I, and the new restoration from MOMA is a very welcome, and beautiful thing. I really hope more people get to see this wonderful film now. Silent melodrama really can be the very finest melodrama.”

Honourable mention: Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925), at the same festival, with Timothy Brock’s new orchestral score.

2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2023

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The Magician (1926): Rex Ingram, Michael Powell and the French Riviera

October 16, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Michael Powell made films in the south of France. Before that one. His first job in the film industry was working at the Victorine studios of Rex Ingram, just outside Nice, in the mid-1920s. He was 19 and he took on pretty much any job he could on set, trying to learn the business from the ground up. It worked, didn’t it? He even appeared in front of the camera a few times, often playing a sappy creation called Cicero Simp in the Riviera Revels comic shorts.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023: Pordenone Post No 2

October 8, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Pordenone eh? It’s like Christmas for silent film fans. Quite literally tonight at the breathtaking conclusion of tonight’s headline film. The title was Hell’s Heroes, and we were watching the silent version of William Wyler’s 1929 sound adaptation of the story better known as Three Godfathers.

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The Signal Tower (Clarence Brown, 1924): the romance of the rails

September 29, 2023 PH Leave a comment

I originally wrote this piece for Sight and Sound in 2019, after seeing The Signal Tower at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. I am sharing it here because the festival is making the film available to stream for 24 hours to celebrate Silent Movie Day.

On a remote stretch of American railroad, a hard-working signal operator and his family are terrorised by a snarling villain. While his pretty young wife defends her virtue against the intruder’s threats, our hero engages in a thrilling race to the rescue to save a runaway train. It could easily be the plot of one of D.W. Griffith’s early short melodramas, but this is Clarence Brown’s The Signal Tower, a fully fledged feature film from 1924, adapted from a short story by Wadsworth Camp.

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Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023: women who worry and men who don’t

July 10, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Someone just asked me if I were back from Bologna yet. Oops. I have been back home for over a week now, but I haven’t written anything about the festival. So here I am, to tell you what rocked my world at Il Cinema Ritrovato. This year I enjoyed a truly excellent programme, and some even more excellent company. Here are some of my highlights, of the silent variety.

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Silent dispatches Spring 2023: essays, films and festivals

April 21, 2023 PH Leave a comment

Film on Film Festival

Lots to enjoy at the BFI Film on Film festival this summer (8-10 June) but now the lineup is out we can confirm that there are silents to be savoured among the banquet. British silents in fact: The First Born (Miles Mander, 1928), and two Manning Haynes films: Sam’s Boy (1922) and The Boatswain’s Mate (1924). All three films with be screened on vintage prints with live piano accompaniment, naturally. And I am also intrigued by a programme of dialogue-free “visual documentaries” dating from 1947-71 with live musical accompaniment.

Stella Dallas

Register now at the Film Foundation Screening Room for access to a stream of Henry King’s sublime Stella Dallas (1925), starring Belle Bennett. This is the new, MOMA restoration of the film, and it will screen with a recording of Stephen Horne’s gorgeous score. Don’t miss out.

Weimar Cinema Spring 2023

Remember I told you about the fabulous resource that is WeimarCinema.org? This comprehensive website is also a journal, and the Spring 2023 edition has just been published. Contents include a dossier by Oksana Bulgakova on the difficult reception of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin in Berlin in 1926, as well as essays by Tom Gunning, So Mayer, Tatjana Hramova, Leonard Quaresima, Michael Cowan and Anton Kaes. Oh, and, um, me on Pabst. I especially enjoyed reading Mayer on Queer Weimar Cinema Across Borders, ahead of tomorrow’s Gender Rebels event in Bristol.

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The Silent London Poll of 2022: And the winners are …

January 25, 2023 PH 2 Comments

Well done everyone! The Silent London Poll of 2022 had a record-breaking number of votes, and the winners reflect a thriving, international silent film scene. Congratulations to all the people mentioned below, some of these categories were bursting with great nominations. Thank you for all your votes. And for making me blub a little when I was typing this up.

Without further ado, let me open this giant stack of golden envelopes. Here are your winners!

1. Best orchestral silent film screening of 2022

Your winner: The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929), with a score composed by Stephen Horne, orchestrated and conducted by Ben Palmer and played by Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, with soloists Louise Hayter and Jeff Moore, at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.

I said: “Horne’s music is as deft as Hitch’s camera: always gorgeous, but sometimes delicate and other times thick with portents of doom… Needless to say, Hitch and Horne brought the Verdi to its feet once more.

Honorable mention: The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) with a score conducted and composed by José María Serralde Ruiz, performed by Orchestra San Marco di Pordenone, , at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.

2. Best silent film screening with a solo musician or small ensemble of 2022

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2022: Pordenone Post No 8

October 9, 2022 PH 5 Comments

So the 41st Giornate del Cinema Muto, and my personal 11th, draws to a close with two British silent films. What is that they say about saving the best for last?

I was certainly in Italy this morning, with the Italian drama Profanazione (Eugenio Pergeo, 1924-6) – a tale of adultery, corruption, suspicious, lost pets and automobile accidents. This was spirited drama, if very heavy on the intertitles, with Leda Gys as a woman who strays and yet is more sinned against than sinning. That title translates into English as “defilement”, which gives you a sense of the subject matter, I think, and why censorship delayed the film’s release for so long. Gys is every inch the star, though notably more restrained than the diva mode, and she is the heart of this film that despite its twists and turns, is very much a serious film for grownups.

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Il Cinema Ritrovato: a week in 1922

July 3, 2022 PH 4 Comments

Three little words of Italian you need to learn if you attend Il Cinema Ritrovato: Cento Anni Fa. This must-see strand of the festival, curated by Bologna’s silent cinema supremos Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko, dials back the programming clock by a century. The name means simply: a hundred years ago.

So it was that this week, in between blasts of restorative Italian sunshine and shots of iced coffee, I spent a week in the 1922 cinematic universe: a world of gorgeous location photography, penetrating psychodrama, impeccable slapstick and to generalise, a healthy number of female-led films (including a handful of nasty women). It was clearly a good year for the movies, so much so that even though I skipped some of the Cento Anni Fa screenings as they were already familiar to me (or outside my days at the festival), that left plenty of room to explore some less well-trod pathways through the year, one massive restoration project and at least one cult classic that I had been saving up for a big-screen viewing. Here are some of those highlights.

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Thinking Aloud about Hippfest

March 29, 2022 PH 1 Comment

You know how much I love the Bo’ness bonanza that is the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival. So this week I was honoured to appear with José Arroyo and Richard Hayne on their fantastic podcast Thinking Aloud About Film for a special episode dedicated to all things Hippfest 2022.

• You can find out more about the podcast and this episode here on José Arroyo’s marvellous First Impressions: Notes on Film and Culture blog.

Or proceed directly to the Soundcloud here:

Here’s a picture of us hanging out online. And can you guess why Richard thought I was wearing pearls?

• The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here and on iTunes here.

• Hang out on the Hippfest website and find out more, here.

• Might be sharing another guest podcast appearance here soon, maybe… watch this space.

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The Silent London Poll of 2021: And the winners are …

February 11, 2022 PH 6 Comments

It may already feel like a long time ago, but 2021 was one heck of a year. We were online, we were in-venue, sometimes we were both. But we were all grateful for the films, and the music. Below, it gives me great pleasure to reveal your chosen favourites, and a selection of your insightful and amusing comments too.

Thank you for your votes. Here are your winners!

Best real-world silent film screening of 2021

Your winner: Casanova (1927), accompanied by the Orchestra San Marco, conducted by Günter Buchwald, playing his new orchestral score

You said:

“Casanova at Teatro Verdi, by Gunther Buchwald. But I also want to mention: Shoes at the Frankfurt Schauspiele with Maud Nelissen trio and also Bett und Sofa at open-air Beykoz Kundura Istanbul with Korhan Futaci and his band.”

“I only saw one (down from pre-pandemic 30 or 40 a year). So that one wins! It was a goodie though. Pandora’s Box, 35mm, Hebden Bridge, with Darius Battiwalla. Well worth the terrifying road trip over icy moors!”

2. Best online silent film screening of 2021

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Hippfest is back in Bo’Ness for 2022

February 8, 2022 PH 1 Comment

Hippfest returns! You don’t know how happy it makes me to think about watching silent films with live music at the stunning Hippodrome in Bo’Ness.

The festival is held from Wednesday 16 to Sunday 20 March and the full toothsome lineup just dropped, as they say. Here are a few highlights, some of which have been postponed from the sadly cancelled 2020 edition. I am so ready.

The Dodge Brothers accompany FW Murnau’s City Girl on Saturday night – this is the Scottish premiere of their brilliant score for this incredible, jaw-dropping Hollywood silent.

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London Film Festival review: Around Japan With a Movie Camera

October 11, 2021 PH 2 Comments

The eye wants to travel, and never more so than in these pandemic times. Which means that this presentation from the BFI’s blockbuster Japan season is actually more welcome on its delayed arrival.

In Around Japan With a Movie Camera, across an hour and a quarter, we are transported through space and time to Japan in the very early 20^th century – the films span the period from 1901 to 1913. But you’ll want to devote a full ninety minutes to this one and click the “Watch introduction” button on the BFI Player. The films are more than ably introduced by the BFI’s own Bryony Dixon and Japanese film historian Mika Tomita, and the programme is hosted by Michelle ‘Bioscope Girl’ Facey. They also take time to introduce the band, as it were. The films are accompanied by Cyrus Gabrysch, Costas Fotopolous, Stephen Horne and Lillian Henley – their hands are sometimes visible thanks to the ingenuity of Gabrysch’s pandemic-era innovation, the “piano-cam”.

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2021: Pordenone Post No 3

October 4, 2021 PH 4 Comments

The lure of distant shores drew us into the Verdi this Monday morning, though initially it looked a little like false advertising. Ilka Schütze’s In Den Dschungeln Afrikas/In the Jungles of Africa (1921-24) was a stop-animation story of two dolls travelling via “balloon” not to another continent but only as far as their garden, or their dreams. If dolls can dream. I hope so, don’t you?

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Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2021: Pordenone Post No 1

October 2, 2021 PH 9 Comments

“Now more than ever, welcome home!” If Jay Weissberg’s address to the Verdi at tonight’s opening gala didn’t lodge a lump in your throat, you may be an irredeemable cynic. Or perhaps you were just marvelling at the man’s mastery of the Lubitsch Touch – the exquisite pain of terribly mixed emotions. But more on the importance of being Ernst later. Let us begin at Act One, Scene One. Enter your humble scribe, stage left.

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Silent Sirens: Stephen Horne on playing for the ghosts of silent film

July 7, 2021 PH 3 Comments

This is a guest post by Silent London award-winning silent film accompanist Stephen Horne, to mark the release of his stunning new album Silent Sirens from Ulysses Arts on 9 July.

Early in my career as a silent film accompanist I had an experience, which in retrospect probably affected the way I think about the work. I was accompanying a Louise Brooks film that, as was typical at the time, I had not seen in advance. The piano was positioned directly beneath the screen, so that the image filled my field of vision. I recall it being one of those rare evenings when I was totally lost in the film and music seemed to flow directly from brain to piano, almost bypassing the hand.

At one point Louise was held in an extended close-up – her smiling, enigmatic beauty framed by silver light. Then she started to speak and, although there was no intertitle, it was very clear to me what she was saying. In fact, just for a few seconds, I could actually hear her voice speaking the words. At least, that’s how it seemed. In retrospect, I realised that I had almost certainly been lip-reading. However, something about the moment, as immersive as it was, made the words transform into the sound of a voice within my head.

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Silent summer: some dates for your diary

July 5, 2021 PH 1 Comment

Please excuse typos in this blogpost. I am writing this in a mixture of mental fog and nervous excitement. Yesterday I had my second dose of my Covid-19 vaccination, and the ‘Moderna flu’ is real but suddenly the future seems a little bit brighter. So I thought I would pop on here to remind you of some upcoming silent-film-related events that you can attend in person or online, making your summer a wee bit more joyous and more silent.

Silent Sirens! More on this on the site later this week, but Stephen Horne’s debut album is released on Friday. I am listening to some extracts as I type this and it’s really beautiful. Pre-order now.

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Giornate journal 2020: Pordenone post No 1

October 4, 2020 PH 1 Comment

There is nothing like watching a film in Pordenone, the collective joy of sharing a discovery or a fabourite classic, with hundreds of fellow silent film enthusiasts in the Teatro Verdi. This year’s Giornate del Cinema Muto Limited Edition, also, will be nothing like that. We will be dialling in online, streaming films in our separate spaces, alone. But that is not to say I haven’t been anticipating it with relish. I have been counting down the days.

This year I will not be blogging the collective experience of sharing the silents in the Verdi, of discussing them over coffee and spritzes in the Posta. My experience of the festival will be different to yours, very different in some cases. This is my Giornate journal and it won’t be like the ones I have written before.

Day One
It’s a silent film fan’s nightmare. I am late for the Giornate! When the first programme was broadcast on Saturday afternoon I was not at home with my projector poised, I was … at a film festival in Europe. Lucky me, I was on the jury of the Athens International Film Festival this year, a festival that took place IRL, in the open-air. So as Pordenone began I was in an outdoor cinema in the National Gardens in Athens, handing out prizes and then watching Christian Petzold’s gorgeous water-nymph romance Undine.

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The Silent London Poll of 2019: The Winners

January 4, 2020 PH 2 Comments

Happy new decade Silent Londoners! Let’s kick off the Twenties with a party shall we? A Silent London Poll-Winners’ Party. You know the drill by now, these prizes go to the best of the past year in silent film, as voted for by YOU. With that said, I will starting handing out the gongs immediately

Best DVD/Blu-ray of 2019

This was a very popular winner – the Eureka/Masters of Cinema DVD/Blu release of the magnificent Der Golem was by far your favourite disc of the year. The package comprises a beautiful restoration of the movie, accompanied by a choice of great scores and a feast of insightful extras. An excellent choice. I reviewed this release in more detail in the January 2020 edition of Sight & Sound.

Honourable mention: Fragment of an Empire (Flicker Alley)

Best Theatrical Release of 2019

Go, Golem! The expressionist classic was your classic for the best theatrical release of the year, as this sumptuous restoration played several dates around the world. I saw it in NFT1 in the summer and I am not sure I have recovered yet.

Best Modern Silent of 2019

It may not BE silent but it WAS shot silent, as forthcoming screenings with live musical accompaniment are sure to emphasise – Mark Jenkin’s brilliant Cornish drama Bait was your favourite modern silent of the year.

Read: My review of Bait
Honourable mention: A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, of course!

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The Silent London Poll of 2018: The Winners

January 1, 2019 PH 5 Comments

January is a time for looking forwards, not back, right? That’s just not the Silent London way. With immense thanks to all of you for voting and sharing in the 2018 poll, I am delighted to announce your silent film highlights of the past year.

Best DVD/Blu-ray of 2018

It arrived late in the year, but hotly anticipated and was everything we wanted it to be. Kino Lorber’s magnificent Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers box set is your favourite release of the year. And mine too. Check out selected highlights from the set on UK Netflix now.

Best Theatrical Release of 2018

Never let it be said that there is any kind of bias in this list – but the BFI’s release of Pandora’s Box, in a gorgeous new restoration topped your choices this year. And of course I wholeheartedly agree.

Read: Peter Bradshaw on ‘an intensely erotic silent era classic’

Best Modern Silent of 2018

Slim pickings in this category, but an overwhelming number of you got creative and chose John Krasinski’s held-breath horror A Quiet Place in this category. I see what you did there and I like the way you think.