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Internationally known silent-film accompanist Dennis James will return to Columbia to play his new musical score for the restored 1929 silent restored film, People on Sunday, April 19.
James' presentation, which is free and open to the public, will be at 8 p.m. in the School of Music recital hall.
Since its release in 1929, People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) has rarely been seen. The USC screening presents a fully restored version of the film and live musical accompaniment on the music school's pipe organ.
"The film was a hit in its day and has since been called a stylistic precursor to both postwar Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave for its quasi-documentary aesthetic," said Susan Courtney, director of USC's Film Studies Program. "Its place in film history also is made by its production credits, a veritable who's who of future Hollywood talent, including Curt and Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, and Fred Zinneman, all of whom became star Hollywood directors, and Oscar-winning cameraman Eugene Shufftan."
People on Sunday is the tale of five young Berliners--a taxi driver, a traveling wine dealer, a record shop sales girl, a film extra, and a model--who take a Sunday outing in the country. The film is punctuated by intense flirtations and jealousies and the ordinary rhythms of everyday life in and beyond the modern city.
The USC presentation is the second in a new annual series of such screenings with live accompaniment by James, who tours internationally as a composer and musician specializing in recreating historically accurate scores of silent film. The series is sponsored by USC's School of Music and the Film Studies Program, in which James is a research fellow. Last year, he performed his score to another 1929 film shot in Berlin, Asphalt.
For more information on the screening, call Courtney at 7-2361 or go to http://www.cas.sc.edu/film/.
4/06
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Dennis James
