Behind the Screen (Charlie Chaplin 1916) & Show People (King Vidor 1928) Silent films with music by Carl Davis performed on stage
by the London Philharmonic Orchestra/Carl Davis; Royal Festival Hall 12 April 2003

Introducing these screenings of films about films in a pre-concert talk, Carl Davis said that it is harder composing scores for comedy than for drama and romance.

These two scores were models of their kind, crisp and pointed, never over-loaded, so well integrated with the action that you need to make a special effort to attend to their expertise. For the hilarious short Chaplin Behind the Screen (about two films being made in the same studio, so close together that the action was continually sabotaged in ways only Chaplin could create) Davis reduced the orchestra to sixteen.

There are twelve of those unsurpassed 1916/17 Mutual two-reelers and Davis is half-way through them. Pleasures to look forward to.

Show People,loosely based on Gloria Swanson’s early career, is about a star-struck girl trying to make it big in Hollywood, with behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Hollywood studios and stars such as Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert and Douglas Fairbanks Snr, making cameo appearances.

Carl Davis’s music, fresh although not particularly innovative harmonically, covers all the moods between slapstick and sentimentality. The prints were excellent and the LPO clearly enjoys these deservedly popular assignments - as we have again and again.

Look out for the Charlie Chaplin Festival at the RFH at the end of November and for more Silver Screen Davis/LPO events my reports of Gold Rush and Flesh and the Devil

William Haines & Marion Davies in Show People