THE SOUNDS OF SILENTS

Mondays, Oct 27, and Nov 3 @ 7:15 pm

Join us for a taste of cinema history with four silent film classics featuring newly composed scores performed live by acclaimed accompanist Martin Marks. After the film, stick around for lively audience discussion. Screenings take place Monday evenings at 7:15 pm in our beautifully restored main theatre on the ground floor.

Tickets are: $9.75 general admission /$3.00 seniors, children, and Coolidge Members

This series is made possible by the generous support of the Bay State Federal Savings and Charitable Foundation

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)


Mon, Oct 27 @ 7:15


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Live Musical Accompaniment by Martin Marks

Screens with THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928)

Lon Chaney's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, marked the actor's hard-earned entry into full-fledged superstardom portraying the maniacal Erik, the spectral figure who lurks within the catacombs of the Paris Opera House, Chaney demonstrated a physical and emotive talent few performers have ever approached. While he has been duly praised for the creation of Erik's monstrous skull-like visage (a masterpiece of makeup that still retains its power to astonish), Chaney is to be credited just as much for his performance from within the featureless, face-concealing mask. Though his expressions are hidden, Chaney moulds the Phantom into a complex bundle of contradictory, libidinal emotions that punches through the surface of cinematic sterotype and carried the art of screen acting to a new plateau, upon which the foundation for the American horror film would be laid.

1h33m, screens from DVD

Tickets

THE MARK OF ZORRO (1920)


Mon, Nov 3 @ 7:15


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Live Musical Accompaniment by Marty Marks

Douglas Fairbanks stars in this silent classic that has influenced generations of swashbucklers. In THE MARK OF ZORRO, his first full-blown effort at the costume thriller, Fairbanks portrays Don Diego Vega, a comically effete young nobleman with a taste for tasseled sombreros and juvenile silk-hanky magic tricks. But when danger calls, Diego swathes himself in black, straps on a well-honed sword and storms the countryside as the mysterious Zorro, slicing his initial into the faces of the "sentinels of oppression," pausing only to boldly romance the woman (Marguerite De La Motte) to whom his shy alter-ego can hardly summon the courage to speak.

1h40m, screens from DVD

Tickets