BQE Project: Making Chaplin musical at MoCA

by Seth Rogovoy

((NORTH ADAMS, Mass., June 6, 1999) - Under normal circumstances to say that an orchestra's performance was unremarkable wouldn't seem like a compliment. But in the case of the BQE Project, which performed in the Cinema Courtyard at Mass MoCA on Saturday night, this is in fact the highest praise.

The task at hand was to lend musical accompaniment to the classic Charlie Chaplin film, "The Gold Rush." The art of scoring for film requires a delicate touch. The music should enhance or punctuate the mood or action without drawing attention to itself. It's a subtle task that the multi-talented Chaplin typically reserved for himself, but in the case of the 1925 version of "The Gold Rush" - Chaplin's first film for the nascent United Artists studio he founded - one which he never got around to.

The BQE set out to recreate a soundtrack for the film in the style of the era, and the result was a marvelous pastiche that fully served Chaplin's vision in both creative and technical terms. Through a combination of percussion, sound effects, comical noises, light-classical themes and jazzy figures, the BQE built a sense of character and tone that echoed Chaplin's visual cues, and executed them with flawless accuracy. In the end, one could have watched the film and have easily forgotten that there were six live musicians performing at the base of the screen. This, ironically, is the greatest compliment that could be paid to a band in such a circumstance.

One did pay attention to the orchestra, nevertheless - however much Chaplin's enticing vision played itself out in a beautifully restored print projected onto a screen hung over one of the brick walls of the factory courtyard. Co-composers Tom Nazziola and John Florio drew from a broad palette of sounds and styles for their score, which echoed Chaplin's visual strategy in building character and plot from a few simple, musical devices.

Thus, when we first saw Chaplin wandering through a snowy mountain pass, we heard a light, carefree, almost silly musical figure which we would come to recognize as his theme. This was in contrast to the dark, ominous passage that underlined the introduction of Black Larsen, the homicidal madman. Particular comic routines were accompanied by bright, percussive sound effects or by what we now call cartoon music. The instrumentation included piano, bassoon, flute, clarinet, violin, bass and percussion, allowing for a wide array of moods and tones.

Dancehall sequences were accompanied by perky waltzes and rags, and the introduction of the romantic sub-plot was underlined by a bit of ersatz Vivaldi. The famous scene in which Chaplin turns two forks and dinner rolls into a full-fledged production number was scored to a jazzy, soft-shoe dance number.

As for Chaplin, his comic genius has been long well-established. But in case anyone needs reminding, "The Gold Rush" was all the more remarkable for the way in which it anticipated so much of cinematic history to come. This simple tale of a lone prospector seeking fortune in the Alaska gold rush forecasted such filmic mainstays to come as natural disasters (avalanche), murder and violence, crime, mental illness as plot device (amnesia), cruelty to animals, romance, production numbers (the aforementioned soft-shoe dance of the dinner rolls), and even special effects, such as when Chaplin's character morphs into a chicken, at least from the point of view of a half-starved, half-crazed miner, to which the viewers are made privy.

Then of course, there is Chaplin himself, whose simple comic character has influenced virtually every comic actor since. Such disparate comic talents as Woody Allen and Robin Williams are unthinkable without reference to Chaplin, and the audience's ovation at the end of the showing was as much for the film as it was for the orchestra.

Filmgoers - or were they concertgoers? - chose between theater-style seating in folding chairs set up on bleachers and seating around tables at MoCA's outdoor café. Snacks and simple dinner fare were available at modest prices. The overall ambiance was part drive-in movie, part outdoor concert, with an intimate feel lent by the enclosed courtyard. One minor technical glitch: a recurrent breeze blowing against the live microphones caused a deep rumbling sound akin to thunder, when in fact there was none, real or cinematic.

Search by Artist Name Album Title