WB Archive

[GooseWoman]

Transferring this question from the talkie board since it has strayed into silents has any announcement been made as to the actual extent of this project? Will it extend to totally unseen material such as The Garden of Allah which as far as modern audiences are concerned might as well never have been made?

[Gagman 66]

Goose,

I'd love to see THE GARDEN OF ALLAH (1927), but hey they have not even released MARE NOSTRUM as of yet. Let's not get to far ahead of ourselves. Personally, I'm more interested in LILAC TIME first, and it has a vintage score.




Ivan Petrovich and Alice Terry-1927

[Danny Burk]

I don't see WB Archive releasing silents that haven't already been shown on TCM, reason being that those have had scores prepared for them, and others have not (so far). When TCM shows a "new" silent (a rare event anymore), it follows that it will probably be released via the Archive at some point. There are still a lot of silents (mostly MGM) that haven't been shown yet, mostly lesser known but sometimes with big stars, e.g. ANNIE LAURIE, several with Marion Davies, and so on, as well as intriguing and virtually unknown films such as Mae Murray's MGM films that followed MERRY WIDOW. The latter are said to be dreadful (according to a friend of mine who saw them when they were still at MGM), but I think most of us would love to see them anyway. Hopefully, TCM will start introducing more unseen titles when the economic situation improves and they start having scores made for them again.

The Ingram GARDEN OF ALLAH has rights problems (I assume that this is connected with the 1936 version), so it won't be shown until those problems are eventually cleared up. Quite a pity too; it's one of my own "most wanted to see" films, and the few friends who've seen it say that it's excellent.

[silentfilm]

There is always a chance that the Warner Archive will get around to a title like this, but it depends on if they have good material on the film. Since it is a silent, they would have to commission a score. They do this a few times a year, usually for TCM. Unfortunately the TCM young composer's competition has been discontinued, and due to the bad economy they are not producing scores for as many silent films as they used to do.

[GooseWoman]

Forgetting about the order in ewhich and the rate at which particular films are released which is obviously up to WB my query was essentially whether WB have ever indicated that their ultimate intention is to release all archive material, provided it is presentable, at some stage. Comments to this effect are often made in this context but are they ultimately attributable to WB.

[Mitch Farish]

There is always a chance that the Warner Archive will get around to a title like this, but it depends on if they have good material on the film. Since it is a silent, they would have to commission a score. They do this a few times a year, usually for TCM. Unfortunately the TCM young composer's competition has been discontinued, and due to the bad economy they are not producing scores for as many silent films as they used to do.

Why can't they commission a piano score for these movies? Do they all need orchestral scores? And what about the late silents that have scores on film? The Viking doesn't need a score and they haven't released that.

[silentfilm]

Having a composer write a score for a 90-minute movie not only costs money, but it takes a while. This is assuming that he/she writes a new score, instead of using a compiled score like Mont Alto does. Presumably it would be performed by at least a small group of musicians, and then you have to pay them also.

Some of the films that TCM shows from Flicker Alley, Milestone, or Kino simply have a piano score, or a synthesizer score, which is cheaper, but still not free.

[Little Caesar]

Perhaps an economic alternative could be "needle-drop" scores. Actually, I think it would be quite interesting if they would take surviving Vitaphone scores from otherwise lost films and use the music to score some silents. As long as they don't repeat the same cues excessively (like what was done on the Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy DVD series), I think that results could be quite good.

[missdupont]

That's easier said than done, because they have to clear both sync and composition. WB probably doesn't own all the rights to the music, there could be families of composers involved that they would have to clear things with, and that costs money, as does royalties. Some composers' music also would be very expensive, like Berlin, Porter, etc.

[Little Caesar]

That's easier said than done, because they have to clear both sync and composition. WB probably doesn't own all the rights to the music, there could be families of composers involved that they would have to clear things with, and that costs money, as does royalties. Some composers' music also would be very expensive, like Berlin, Porter, etc.

True. I was thinking more in terms of classical music cues from that period, but any use of pop tunes would be problematic. I read that one of the reasons why the Movietone score to Four Sons wasn't retained on the dvd release was because of copyright issues over the movie's theme song "Little Mother." Even using confirmed pd music can be problematic because the recording itself could have copyright issues.

[ColemanShedman]

No silents from the WB Archive released this week...6 Gables and a couple of Man From Atlantis. Yawn.