'Nosferatu' haunts audience with live organist
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 09/05/2006
sponsored by
About 950 people nearly filled the vaudeville era Long Center Theater Friday to be transported back to a time period when live music accompanied the movies.
"Nosferatu," the first vampire movie and one of the earliest horror films, was shown accompanied by organist Ken Double as part of a conference of the North American Society of the Study of Romanticism and the North American Victorian Studies Association. The viewing also featured Thomas Edison's 1910 version of "Frankenstein," a short, somewhat comical film that preceded "Nosferatu."
Lance Duerfahrd, assistant professor of English, who introduced both films to the crowd, said he was amazed at the wide range of people who showed up.
"Some people came for the organist, some people came for the film, some people came from the conference," he said. "It was a real democratic cross section."
Though some people are put off by the age of silent films, the Friday night audience got into the 1920s atmosphere and often laughed at funny moments, like the out-of-place title "Frankenstein goes to college." This was no doubt due in part to Double's organ playing.
"I think the organ has helped people stay in the movie in a way that is positive," said Duerfahrd. "The moments of suspense are really strong, the moments of lull in between things are OK. But I like what he's done with the high moments."
Since the original scores have been lost, Double wrote his own music for both films. He's hesitant to call them film scores, however, opting rather for the terms theme writing and musical ad-libbing.
"It's not what I call a score. What you do is create themes for certain characters and certain scenes and then there's a lot of musical ad-libbing going around."
Double said it would be too difficult to do a note-for-note score for this kind of performance.
It wasn't just organ music that accompanied the film. In several scenes, there were small sound effects that mimicked the sound of a clock or drum in several scenes. It may have seemed like there were additional instruments back stage, but Double said those effects are all part of the organ.
"The theater organs were built that way in the '20s to be a complete one person orchestra," he said.
Matthew Crain, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, said the organ added depth to the 84-year-old film.
"I think that the movie itself would be comparatively powerless without that element of sound," he said.
Crain's favorite scene of "Nosferatu" was toward the end as the vampire slowly walks up a staircase and his shadow crawls across the wall. To demonstrate, Crain widened his eyes and slowly rose on his tip toes to mock the slow movement.
"Understanding how primitive it was, it was still very powerful even today; I was very impressed by it," he said.