CINE-CONCERT on two films by Charley Bowers

 

 

 

 

 

“The King of Charleston” & “Bricolo Inventor” (from 6 years old)
(photo Gilbert Dieudonné)

Keyboard, percussion: Sébastien Paindestre
Saxophone, percussion: Franck Roger

 

Excerpts from “The King of Charleston,” public recording of the ciné-concert at Festiva’son in May 2014

 

Excerpt from “Bricolo Inventor,” public recording of the ciné-concert at Festiva’son in May 2014

The use of music in cinema Musical accompaniment was born with the beginning of cinema (often a simple piano) to attract people to the theaters and to cover the noise of the first projectors. Another hypothesis is that music reduced the anxiety of spectators faced with these new shadows projected on the big screen in silence. At first, there was probably very little connection between the image and the music played. The link between music and image was established over the following years with codifications. In 1907, Gaumont published the Musical Guide. The objective of the ciné-concert proposed by the collective of La Fabrica’son is to introduce a young audience to how silent film screenings were conducted at the time: an orchestra accompanied and improvised live to the film, this practice stopped with the creation of talking cinema around the 1930s.

Who is Charley Bowers?
Born in 1889, Charley Bowers, a genius of cinema and animation, ended up like his contemporary Georges Méliès, forgotten by all before being rediscovered by the media library of Toulouse a few years ago and thanks to a reissue of a DVD box set. Better known in France as “Bricolo.” A tightrope walker and then a caricaturist for the press, he is the creator of “PIM PAM POUM” in 1912, a series of animated drawings. From 1917, Charley Bowers made about a dozen short films combining object animation techniques with real shots.

The King of Charleston (1926) 22’14
An opportunity to discover a new facet of a talent that does not depart from its most recognizable traits: poetry (a goldfish dancing the Charleston) and whimsical incongruity (superb visual gags of rehearsal steps drawn on the wall). Finally, the icing on the cake, Bowers shows tolerance here, the happy ending challenging the already oppressive beauty standards of the time. A complete artist… and humanist. (DVD Classik)

Bricolo Inventor (1927) 11’30
Or the confirmation that Bowers had a more than intelligent conception of his art. Thus, one must see here how the comic turns to his advantage a gag as old as the world, so worn out that it could already claim the title of the most used prank of the 7th Art at the time: the slip on a banana peel. This true national sport of Hollywood at the time is used here to exhaustion, thanks to a genius scenario idea: inventing the non-slip banana peel. The multiplication of falls on slips reaches the sublime here, with a multitude of variations and comic inventions. Certainly not Bowers’ most accomplished film in terms of poetry, but one of the most effective “zygomatically” speaking. (DVD Classik)