Tweet THE DEVIL'S NEEDLE

At 67 minutes, this is the most complete version of the film. Indeed, this version is from the 1923 re-release in which the characters' names have been changed. There is one missing scene but the story flows nicely. Lots of decomposition in a few places but still quite watchable.

The film was re-released by Tri-Stone in part because Norma Talmadge had become by 1923 a major film star. It was common to re-release early films of actors who later became big stars. Probably by coincidence, the film was released after the morphine-related death of Wallace Reid in January 1923. Morphine was much in the news. Indeed, Dorothy Davenport (now billed as Mrs. Wallace Reid) produced, directed, wrote, and starred in (with Bessie Love) HUMAN WRECKAGE, a film about the evils of drug addiction. This film was released in June 1923.

Marguerite Marsh was surprisingly good. Her final film was released in 1923. She died of pneumonia in 1925. Her best year in films seems to have been 1916 when she co-starred in THE DEVIL'S NEEDLE (original release), THE AMERICANO (with Douglas Fairbanks), INTOLERANCE (modern story), and a few others.

Marguerite Marsh was pretty good in the serial The Master Mystery (1920), though Ruth Stonehouse gave the best performance (acting performance, anyway)

greta

Never seen that one.

So who played the drug pusher and the janitor? I didn't recognize either actor..

and I forgot to mention the excellent piano score by Rodney Sauer.

Hey, thanks. I watched a bit of The Devil's Needle and the other films last night (finally got my own copy!), and had a slightly strange mental experience.

I didn't take a lot of notes on the score while I made it, just pulled a bunch of pieces out that I thought would work, mostly from a box of piano-solo-film-accompaniment-books I got from a guy in Chicago, and played them where they fit. Then I put the pieces back in the box. While watching last night, I found myself thinking "I wonder what piece this was. Sounds familiar, but I can't place it..."

It's no wonder that there are so few records of what particular piece was played for what particular film in any given theater -- imagine if you made new scores from the same collection two or three or seven times a week. Then later someone asks you what you used for a love theme for some movie that interests them. To you, it was just another movie out of hundreds. It would be like trying to remember which seat you sat in on a bus you took to work last March.

Well it's a good thing you have that magic box of tunes. I thought they fit the film very nicely. There was one piece especially I liked but of course I can't tell you which it was because I'm musically illiterate, but it had an unexpected left hand movement of a few keys. I play by ear so it's all magic to me!

If you tell me where it is in the film (either describing scene, or giving the DVD time code) I can check and see if it's a piece I remember then at least you'll have the title and composer...

It's the piece that starts at about the 20-minute mark.....

It's the piece that starts at about the 20-minute mark.....

Okay! I just went and listened. For the drug injection scene that starts before the 20 minute mark the music is improvised, but shortly thereafter I go into a gorgeous little piece called "Andante Doloroso," by Gaston Borch, 1917, published by S.M. Berg. We've played this with the five-piece orchestra as well, though not yet on a recorded score.

The opening has an accompaniment with chords that change by one note one at a time, which is a neat trick that Chopin used in his E-minor Prelude (Op. 28, No. 4). It's pretty easy to find on youtube (the Chopin, that is, not the Borch).

S.M. Berg was later merged into the Belwin Company, which is still around today (the name "Belwin" comes from the principals' names, all of whom were silent film composers: S.M. Berg, Sol P. Levy, and Henry Winkler). In 1925 they took just the piano/conductor parts from many of their back-catalog orchestrations, and re-released them under the title "PianOrgan Film Books of Incidental Music." Each paper-bound, stapled booklet contained from four to eight pieces grouped by similar mood. I have over two dozen different volumes, and I have no idea how many may have been published. They're very useful, but occasionally they'd put in pieces that are actually impossible to play as written, since the melody is up in the violin cue notes and both hands are busy playing accompaniment; nevertheless, they'd be an invaluable aid to non-improvising pianists (and organists can use their feet).

The Andante Doloroso comes from "Book of Melancholic Music," optimistically labeled Volume 1 (as, apparently, all of them were). No one saw the talkies coming...

Thanks for the information!!