Performance: Auckland Philharmonia

Civic Theatre

Review: Gilbert Wong


Silent films were never that. Only the dialogue was missing. Replacing it were the skill of the actors, the quality of the plots and direction, and rousing music often played live.

In a sold-out show on Sunday, patrons of the Auckland Film Festival had the chance to experience what it must have been like as a new print of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times was screened, accompanied by a restored score performed by the Auckland Philharmonia under the baton of US composer Timothy Brock.

It was Brock who shouldered the considerable task of restoring Chaplin's score, which has not been heard live since 1936.

Modern Times is a curious mixture of satirical social comment, love story and sheer physical comedy.

The advent of sound - which would see the demise of the silents - is used sparingly in what would be Chaplin's farewell to the silent genre.

He was clearly disturbed by the dehumanising impact of technology enslaving humans on the treadmill of capitalist production and the economic doldrums of 1930s America that saw so many made jobless and destitute. The police are brutal keepers of order; the workers cast in a sympathetic light.

Chaplin, as the tramp, strolls from production line to jail to workers' protest to wacky job-hunter.

On the way he meets the gamine, a radiant Paulette Goddard. They fall in love, leavening the heavy themes Chaplin has chosen.

His mastery of physical theatre is mesmerising, but the score is a revelation.

We expected Chaplin to be multi-talented, but his mastery of music is exceptional.

His melodic sense is finely tuned, and no better displayed than in the wondrous hit Smile, which becomes the lovers' theme.

The score swept the audience along, conducted with relentless pace by Brock, who had to keep his eye on the screen, the score and his musicians.

To watch him was like watching a bungi jumper. Once he began there was no moment to pause and think - action was all that mattered.

In many ways it was as mesmerising to watch and hear as what we saw on screen.