CALIGARI

I went into town after work on Monday evening as we had long-held tickets in our grubby little paws (well, mine are usually pretty grubby anyway…) for yet another of those events that we sign up for which sometimes get overtaken by circumstances, as we were, as we always seem to be these days, not convinced that we would actually get there what with the NHS and their constant dithering over my mother and whether or not to send her home on every day that we seem to hold tickets for some event or other.

This time we were off to the Royal Northern College of Music to see the silent film classic “Das Kabinett Des Doktor Caligari” or, if you prefer “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” being shown with a live musical performance by the bowler-hatted musician Martyn Jacques, the front man of the Grammy  nominated punk-cabaret band, “The Tiger Lilies”.

It’s a long time since I attended an accompanied viewing of Caligari, ten years at least, and the seminal German expressionist masterpiece made way back in 1920 remains as bewilderingly enigmatic and visually interesting as ever, even if the scenery sometimes might resemble a school production being mounted inside a cupboard.

You could, of course argue that this demonstrates the claustrophobic nature of the story and you’d probably be right, but throughout I was constantly reminded of Tim Burton’s animations and have no doubt that his style has been very heavily influenced by Robert Weine’s dark meisterwerk.

In fact, coming away from the show I was rather left with a sense of surprise that Mr Burton has not yet attempted an animated remake of this film because I do believe in his hands it might turn out to be a very strange and imaginative movie indeed, even though I’m not usually all that fond of remakes generally.

The plot itself involves a man in a garden telling the tragic tale of what he and his “bride” endured a few years earlier when a mysterious and sinister figure, Doctor Caligari, came into their town to show an attraction, a “somnambulist” at their fair.

Once set up, the sideshow act then seems to predict a series of murders which then start to occur and the investigation points towards the somnambulist himself, only for the story to then move into murkier waters as layers of truth are stripped away to reveal a far more surprising story behind the murders.

I was going to add “than you could possibly imagine” to the end of that statement, but I’m sure that you probably could. After all, that kind of plot behind a plot scenario has been done countless times since, but this particular film does have the advantage – or maybe, to modern eyes, disadvantage – of having been one of the first.

Anyway, it’s a relatively short piece, and the print being shown was a 1996 remaster with English intercards, and many musicians have attempted to accompany it down the years, of which Mr Jacques is the latest.

It was an enjoyable soundtrack which did, for the most part, at least occasionally do the old-fashioned silent-era accompanist’s job of underscoring the visuals with the usual musical “stings” whenever something “dramatic” occurred, but I can’t help feeling that the music could have quite happily existed in isolation from the visuals as a performance piece in its own right rather than having the visuals there at all.

It was a disturbing and very effective performance in its own right with the performer in full face make-up performing the piano and piano-accordian, and in itself it was an astonishing piece of work, but once again – like with “Pandora’s Box” last year, I came away from one of these shows not completely convinced that modern musicians truly “get” the idea of how to fully support the visuals of silent film.

That said, I might be misunderstanding the point. Several modern performers use abstract animations as a backdrop for their more modern shows and no-one necessarily expects them to fully synchronise with each other, so perhaps the idea is for the one to augment the other and in that respect at least, it was something of a triumph.

Another night out in town, and on a school night too. Even a Monday, no less, which is almost guaranteed to leave me feeling exhausted throughout the rest of the week again, especially after the indigestion I suffered from eating far too much in the restaurant before the show and then spending the night being absorbed by the cricket team actually managing to hang on for once…

Unless that was all a dream or just something I imagined in my despair…?

After all, as John Cleese once famously put it in “Clockwise” It’s not the despair... I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”