MovieChat Forums > Torrent (1926) Discussion > Music Score, Plots, Realism and opinion

Music Score, Plots, Realism and opinion


QUOTE:
TCM shows a tinted print using four tones (sepia, blue, lavender, red) with a fine orchestral score and sound effects. The new score is by Arthur Barrow. There is some obvious deterioration in some of the title cards. The special effects of a dam breaking during a rain storm and the torrent gaining on two characters in a boat are quite well done.
ENDQUOTE

As another viewer has commented (quoted above) this TCM version with the score by Arthur Barrow is wonderful. The music score was so appropriate and mesmerizing to the images and action. And the dam breaking scene was definitely a fantastic achievement in realism for the era. I was amazed. In that scene and another I realized how physically dangerous it was for the actors in those years of film-making! The tinted scenes were delightful too.

QUOTE:
The film holds up well despite some plot problems. Why did the moneyed and successful La Brunna allow her mother to continue to live in poverty as a charwoman? Why is everyone in the home town so dim as to not figure out how La Brunna got her wealth until the confrontation scene where even Garbo's mother rejects her for being "a bad woman?"
ENDQOUTE

Again as the previous poster states the film holds up very well. I agree there were some plot problems, as judged by today's standards. One element that jarred to notice for me, was that several times, long periods of time (years) had meant to pass, yet until the end scene with the "aged" lover, no one or no thing changes to reflect that passage of time! I don't care, but that awareness did come to the fore for me.

As to the concern about the "source" of La Brunna's wealth, both in the movie, and in this viewer's comment, my reaction is: SHE WAS A RENKNOWNED OPERATIC SUCCESS!!!! Why the implication (in the film story line) and in the poster's comment that she must have been a "kept" woman to have that wealth! Ridiculously incongruent to the fact that she was an artistic and commercial success. If anything, SHE could do the "keeping"!


All in all, I was completely enthralled by this film with it's modern score. I will watch it again with pleasure.

Just a comment on judging past art (movies especially) by today's standards. I think this striving for realism is a mistake, and so to criticize a film then or now for being unrealistic is to miss the point. Sure if the quality of acting, filming, story and script writing is lousy that's legit. But it's all fantasy! So why should (today) we have to witness an actor sitting on a toilet (for instance) when it is not part of the story line (such as might be used humorously)? In other words, why do we have to see every single trivial detail of human existence in a film, which is after all fantasy and a work of imagination?

I think something that has been lost since the advent of sound is the audience's RESPONSIBILITY to cooperate in the manufacturing of an artwork. When one views paintings, one stands before them, and cooperates with the painting as it is, to let it communicate. Otherwise, one glances, sees or doesn't see something he likes, and never really experiences the communicaton. Should painting, abstract or realism, be faulted because it's not advertising? Faulted because it takes one some time and takes ones cooperation to receive the communication? No. Likewise, a film is there as a work of creativity, albeit a work of cooperative creativity. We as audience have a responsibility to cooperate too in that experience and let the work speak to us, and not fault it becasue we expected Potayto, and they said Potahto. Critics, professional that is, should always judge a work of art by it's own standards contained within it. To fault a Felix the Cat cartoon by comparing it with a Bette Davis performance is ridiculous.

End of soap box comments!

JACK

reply

Jack, your remarks were spot on. This modern obsession for striving for realism can go too far. We all know a film is a film and thus an artifice. When you go to the theatre you expect painted scenery, but that does not detract from one's enjoyment of the play. The same with early cinema.
As you observed though, the one incongruity I did notice was how none of the actors aged, apart from the final scene with Don Rafael. That could have easily been accomplished (the aging process I mean).
Like you, I was stunned by the dam-bursting scene and the subsequent torrent which gave the film its name. I marvelled that this was in the very earliest days of cinema before even sound was recorded! My hat's off to them for their technical prowess.

reply

I found the new score totally anachronistic, distracting and mediocre... I really disliked it. At some moments it sounded like cheesy music from an 80's pop band... other, like something coming from the fingers of a high-school student who just bought his first keyboard.

The moment I heard an electric bass, I shut down my home theater to mute the volume. Bad music, worse arrangements, really horrible stuff. I just could not stand it. Great movie, though. Well produced, directed an acted. Garbo as gorgeous as ever. Superb!

reply

I agree with electrobird. The music sounded totally synthesized from the opening credits, taking me right out of the mood the film images were conveying and there were times when it was terribly inappropriate. I turned the sound off very soon after the film started.

reply

I realize it is all subject to personal opinion, but I have to disagree with the last 2 posts; I enjoyed the Barrow score.
This, however, leads to another question: Is it proper, in this day and age, to add modern-sounding soundtracks to silent films? I like, for example, the modern Carl Davis score for Griffith's "Intolerance," but, on the other hand, we know what score Griffith desired -- the musical directions still exist ( I remember attending a "roadshow" version of the film with Griffith's score in Chicago several years ago.) Is it our right to add a different score when we know what the director's original intentions were? Obviously this was routinely ignored even in the silent days, when piano players and organists routinely slugged in anything they wanted during a movie, but shouldn't we, as sophisticated film lovers, reject that, and go for the original music directions and notes in those instances where they still exist? (I still cringe at the Queen destruction of "Metropolis). I don't have an answer -- just throwing the question out there.

reply