New Release with Original Score on DVD

If you would like to get something very close to the 1920 experience of this film in your living room, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra has released their own DVD of The Mark of Zorro, playing the original score (and playing it very well, as one might expect from a gang of Juilliard musicians), precisely synchronized to the film. I watched it last night and immediately went online to get copies for my kids.

If you are not aware of Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, they were founded by Rick Benjamin who discovered some 10,000 scores from the days of wax cylinders in an abandoned warehouse, a trove from the Victor Talking Machine Company. He formed the group to bring the music back to life--I have several CDs of their ragtime and vaudeville tunes--and film scores are another project of theirs. Back in the day, whole scores were sent with the silent films, ranging from piano to full pit orchestra arrangements depending on the size of the theatres (and towns) where the feature was being shown, and Benjamin seems to have found some of these, too. Their URL is http://www.paragonragtime.com/ .