The Bruno Tommaso Orchestra with the Maestro Bruno Tommaso himself at the helm were at Capannori this evening supplying the sound track to a black and white comic classic film projected outside onto a large screen at a purpose built amphitheatre in the town.
No digital stuff this but real musicians playing real live music as real film whipped through the projector.
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) is a feature-length comedy silent film featuring Buster Keaton.
Keaton is considered one of the greatest comic actors of all time. His influence on physical comedy is rivaled only by Charlie Chaplin. Like many of the great actors of the silent era, Keaton’s work was cast into near obscurity for many years. Only toward the end of his life was there a renewed interest in his films.
An acrobatically skillful and psychologically insightful actor, Keaton made dozens of short films and fourteen major silent features, attesting to one of the most talented and innovative artists of his time.
In the riverside town of River Junction, Captain William Canfield (Ernest Torrence) has an old steamship and disputes the passengers with the powerful banker John James King (Tom McGuire), who has a brandy new passenger vessel. William is informed that his unknown son William Canfield Jr. (Buster Keaton) will arrive by train from Boston to visit him. When Willie arrives, William trains him to work with him in his ship. However, Willie meets his friend Marion King (Marion Byron), the daughter of James King, and they date each other, against the will of their fathers. When a hurricane reaches River Junction, Willie rescues his father and his future father-in-law from the river.
Steamboat Bill’s finest moments come during its cyclone sequence. The film was shot in Sacramento, building $135,000 worth of breakaway street sets on a riverbank and then filming their systematic destruction with six powerful Liberty-motor wind machines and a 120-foot crane. Keaton himself, who calculated and performed his own stunts, was suspended on a cable from the crane and hurled him from place to place, as if airborn. The resulting sequence on film is astonishing and still watchable as spectacle, if not comedy. And it comes punctuated by Keaton’s single most famous stunt. Keaton stands in the street, making his way through the destruction, when an entire building facade collapses onto him. The attic window fits neatly around Keaton’s body as it falls, coming within inches of flattening him
The film is also one of the only Keaton films to play on the stature of Keaton himself. At the time of filming, Keaton had stopped wearing his trademark pork-pie cap. During an iconic scene early in the film in which has the Keaton character trying on various hats, a scene to be copied several times in other films, he briefly has the trademark cap set on his head. Upon first glance in the mirror, the character quickly removes the cap, as if terrified to acknowledge his own fame.
YYEvLCUuZpE
Filming by Sebastian Keane
Click on the link below to hear Alessandro Rizzardi introducing the audience in Capannori to the Buster Keaton film this evening (in Italiano)
[display_podcast]
This is a good time — the onset of Barga Jazz — to pose a troubling question: What exactly is the purpose of the Ufficio di Turismo in Barga? If you ask about Barga Jazz, you learn that the tourist office not only has no schedules to distribute, it knows nothing at all about this terrific event (although it does boast a single copy of the poster, taped to the wall). “Go see the man at the Edicola near Fosso,” they tell you. They don’t even know his name — it’s Mario — because most of the staff commutes from elsewhere. They aren’t from Barga. The office is a branch of the Tourist office of Lucca, which is where its sights are set. Ask about travel to Lucca itself, however, and you draw another blank. Some visitors have been told that there is no regular bus service to the train stations at Mologno and Fornaci. In fact, there are 19 departures every Mon-Sat to and from one or both stations in summer (July 1 to September 13), and more than 30 the rest of the year. There are also three departures to and from the station (and Lucca) every Sunday and holiday. It’s time that our Comune recognized the enormous gap between the extremely high quality of the events and services Barga offers, and the yawning black hole of its information resources. That, in a simple phrase, is why a dozen people sometimes turn out at the theater for world-class music. Barga needs a Pro Loco, or something like it, to close this unnecessary and extremely damaging gap.
couldn’t agree more
one is bound to ask: what input is there from the elected representatives occupying paid and reimbursed positions in the Comune: that plethora of inept officers and assessori (cultura/turismo/etc…) – dare one reach out and even point a finger at the Sindaco himself, always ready at the drop of a hat to below out garbled instructions to all and sundry (including hapless passers by) to deck the town out with tacky plastic flags and plaster the walls with flyers?
what’s the point of such fanfare if one doesn’t create the conditions in terms of infrastructure, marketing, and publicity so as to reach all potentially interested parties (tourists, travellers, residents, ecc…) and facilitate their participation?
hang on … maybe that is the point: the fanfare is self-serving – its objective is not to provide anything of worth to locals or visitors; but simply to create a smoke screen, a seething bustle of activity with which to cover-up and smooth over the real activity of this administration and give the sheepish electorate a vestige of reasoning to warrant electoral continuity. Bread and circuses ring a bell, anyone?