Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Silence of the Silents

Rick Altman makes great points but fails to take a side until the end of his paper. Honestly, I think that his best writing occurs during his conclusion because he concretely lays out the way he saw music’s involvement with cinema. If he started with that then it would have made the rest of this paper a lot more interesting. At one point he claims that he wanted, “…to show that silence was one of a number of acceptable film exhibition approaches throughout the pre-1910 era” (p.677). After 30 somewhat pages this is what you’re getting after? You have argued both sides, and bring up many good points, but what he states is obvious. We know that films didn’t come with accompanying music and theaters weren’t equipped with stereos, therefore no film would always have sound. The author even shows obvious quotes that verify music as a practiced form of entertainment during cinema. However, he then introduces a weak argument that music was not a must or a mainstay in all theaters because of many given reasons. Hello?! Stop discrediting other authors on that fact that they make generalizations of music always accompanying films.

I did find this paper very informative despite my lack of appreciation of Mr. Altman’s writing. He does a great job of doing his research and putting together information regarding the presence or lack there-of in movies. I really liked the argument he presented in regards to pianists either playing or not playing in theaters. At face value, you would think that if there were pianos in most theaters, someone would be playing most of the time. But Altman brings good evidence showing that these pianos were used as Ballyhoo and intermission music for the audience. Which makes you think that he neglects the fact that Ballyhoo music was playing during films, which means that it was a background soundtrack to audiences. Since they could hear this music during the films I feel that this would count as music accompanying a film.

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