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Comment by cpach | Hacker News Reader

If you get the chance, it can be quite the experience to watch a screening of a silent movie where the music is played live, like they did back in the day. Sometimes they are played with newly-composed scores.

Some directors/movies that can be worth checking out are:

Victor Sjöström – The Phantom Carriage

Mauritz Stiller – The Saga of Gösta Berling

Charlie Chaplin – The Kid

Fritz Lang – The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

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I remember watching Intolerance (1916) by D.W. Griffith at the Avignon festival as a teenager in 1986, with a score interpreted by a live symphonic orchestra (https://festival-avignon.com/fr/edition-1986/programmation/i...). The movie in itself is definitively a masterpiece for its ambitious structure, innovative editing and grandiose production design (it was a flop at the box office in 1916.)

(Warning: Intolerance was Griffith's response to the widespread criticism of his earlier work, The Birth of a Nation (1915), considered "the most controversial film ever made in the United States" and "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history" - so we're stepping into controversial territory here).

Definitely an early entry in the “cancel culture is out of control” genre. The subtext is essentially “can’t even cause a revival of a racist paramilitary organization anymore, because of woke”

I remain haunted by the new score that Gabriel Thibaudeau created for the 2010 restoration of Metropolis. I saw it performed live in Toronto and I'm still desperate to hear it again someday, but there's never been any home media release (official or unofficial) so far as I know.

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