Phillip Johnston's Transparent Quartet goes into "The Unknown," Mass MoCA, Aug. 28

by Seth Rogovoy

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass., Aug. 29, 1999) - The outdoor Cinema Courtyard series concluded on a macabre note on Saturday night with a showing of Tod Browning's 1927 silent film, "The Unknown," starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, with an original score performed by Phillip Johnston's Transparent Quartet.

It is hard to imagine what audiences in 1927 thought of Browning's theater of the grotesque, in which mad, uncontrollable passions played themselves out in the form of physical deformity and mutilation. In this case, the duplicitous past of Chaney's Alonzo, the Armless Knife-Thrower, rubs up against his obsessive present and drives him to the extremes of "heroic" behavior, first in sacrificing his very arms for the woman he loves, and then in leading him to the ultimate sacrifice of his own life.

Maybe it is just a case of fin de siecle superiority that makes us think that we are so much more sophisticated about human psychology than audiences were 70 years ago. We assume the film's original viewers were so much more easily manipulated by Browning's blatant, over the top symbolism in his portraits of Freudian hysteria -- encapsulated richly in Joan Crawford's vivid portrayal of a woman alternately repelled and fascinated by men's hands -- whereas to us Browning's excesses seem like so just so much camp. Who knows? Perhaps audiences in the pre-Depression Roaring Twenties found this stuff even more hilarious than we do. Perhaps 70 years from now audiences will view the films of contemporary filmmaker David Cronenberg with the same emotional distance and haughtiness we bring to Browning.

In any case, composer/saxophonist Phillip Johnston has resurrected Browning's long-overlooked film, breathing new life into it with his original score that, while it doesn't draw attention to itself or get in the way of Browning's vision, subtly freshens it while occasionally commenting upon it with witty counterpoint.

Johnston's quartet was a versatile outfit, and he coaxed orchestral effects from vibraphonist Mark Josefsberg, bassist David Hofstra, and Joe Ruddick, who commanded an arsenal of acoustic and electronic keyboards.

Johnston's score was a study in contrasts, from the slightly plaintive, somewhat ominous solo piano theme that introduced the film, to the perky, frenetic vibes-and-sax duet that the Gypsy circus rode in on. Tango rhythms collided with lyrical, cascading bursts of free-metered chords and bouncy cartoon music, only to be swallowed up in a stretch of anachronistic, gospel-inflected rhythm and blues. Josefsberg's vibes added a faintly noir-ish tone to scenes of manic and maniacal emotion, and Johnston's suggestive saxophone lines highlighted Chaney's romantic obsession and the 18-year-old Crawford's stunning, sweltering body heat, captured to great effect in many full-profile shots by Browning's leeringly lascivious camera.

The music only occasionally bubbled over into the viewer's consciousness with direct references to what was happening on the screen - most notably at the outset, when bassist Hofstra produced a growling sound cued to the roars of the famed MGM lion, and in the gauzy, bubbling synthesizer drones that followed Alonzo and his sidekick, Cojo, into the subterranean depths of the operating room where the former would have his arms amputated. For the most part, however, the quartet merged seamlessly with the screen, acting on a listener only indirectly through unconscious cues.

Although two of the four films in this summer's courtyard series had to be moved inside because of foul weather, the program still ranks as one of Mass MoCA's many artistic successes in its inaugural season - and judging by the heavy turnouts, as a box-office success as well.

One suggestion: to have such great, experimental-music groups as the BQE Project, the Alloy Orchestra and the Transparent Quartet at MoCA and then only to feature them as accompanists is almost a waste of their talents. Perhaps next summer the programming can be expanded to include additional concert performances by the groups, either in tandem with or separate from the film showings.

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