In Austin, the line between movies and music is about as thin as a celluloid cell, so take a look at the Austin Film Society’s new series, “Actresses of the Silent Screen” (see Screens story, p.48). The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema at Fourth & Colorado is showing a silent film every Tuesday evening (free) for the next five weeks, with live musical accompaniment by Graham Reynolds of the Golden Arm Trio. Reynolds, who could forge a career based solely on his original scores of non-talkies, admits this is his most challenging undertaking yet in this arena. “It’s a lot of work, isn’t it?” he laughs. “One of the big challenges is how to make them all distinct from each other. I don’t want everyone to be dead sick of me by the end of the series.” Certainly, his collaborators won’t be. “That’s the great thing about my silent film collaborators — they don’t argue. I get to work with someone like [D.W. Griffith], use his genius, but you know, he’s dead.”
April 16: Clara Bow in It (1927) 7 & 9:30pm.
April 23: Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1926) 7 & 9:45pm.
April 30: Mary Pickford in Amarilly of Clothesline Alley (1918) 7 & 9:30pm.
May 7: Louise Brooks in Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) 7 & 9:30pm.
May 14: Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms (1919) 7pm.
For more information on the series, see Screens, p.48
This article appears in April 12 • 2002.