Degenerate Art and Tin Can Men

You start some things and before you know it, you lose interest.

Other things are so pleasurable, you keep doing them until you look up one day and realize years have gone by and you're still doing them.

That's the Silent Music Revival, for me at least.

I went to my first SMR back in 2007 and somehow six years have passed and I still never miss an opportunity to hear local music improvised to a vintage silent film.

Walking over to Gallery 5 tonight, I found SMR organizer Jameson sitting outside enjoying the beautiful evening.

As we talked about all the SMRs he's done over the years, he mentioned that he needs to add more silent films to his collection or he'll have to start repeating films from the early days.

"Of course, nobody but you would know that I've shown them before," he laughed.

And honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing a silent film I haven't seen in five or six years again.

When last he showed "The Mechanical Man" back in 2007, DJ Mike Murphy provided the soundtrack.

Tonight he'd carried that tradition forward, asking DJ Ohbliv to do the honors.

The evening kicked off with a 1928 Dadaist film called "Ghosts Before Breakfast" and Ohbliv getting warmed up doing music for it.

The nine-minute film, destroyed by the Nazis as "degenerate art" according to the opening credits, was full of the kind of ghosts that would have amazed 1920s audiences.

Flying hats, water going back into a hose, branches sprouting leaves, ties untying themselves.

In other words, stop motion and reverse film, but who knew that back then?

Introducing "The Mechanical Man," Jameson praised Ohbliv, saying, "No one's really holding down hiphop in Richmond like Ohbliv."

Then he explained that we were about to see a 1921 science fiction film that had been lost until a Portuguese print had been discovered in Brazil, albeit only part of the original 80-minute film.

To make up for what we weren't going to see, Jameson offered a "trailer version" to bring us up to speed on the plot.

Basically it amounted to the only way to stop an evil mechanical man was with another mechanical man.

Duh.

The first thing that struck me about MM was what mincing steps he took; you'd think a big scary robot-looking creature would take big, hulking steps, but he walked like a girl in a tight skirt and overly high heels.

In one scene, two women are taking off their jewelry after a party, putting it in a chest and storing it in a wall safe.

Then a title card tells us, "We were tranquil when suddenly Mechanical Man enters."

Ahhhhh!

Let's just say their tranquility was shattered when MM rips the safe out of the wall as the cowering women watch.

So much for tranquility.

In another scene, MM appears at a party, only this MM is supposedly a costumed guest and he's nice to everyone, even calling for champagne for those at his table.

Not surprisingly, he opened it by snapping off the top of the bottle, upsetting the men at the table, while the woman happily drank the glass he poured her.

Not long after, there was an epic battle between the two mechanical men which got the entire audience tittering over the clumsy effects, but no doubt impressed audiences in 1921 no end.

And through it all, the hospital scenes, the fire, the marauding MM, DJ Ohbliv kept the music apace with the action, whether fast or slow, scary or comical.

You have to appreciate a man who can think on his feet, since, like the audience, he was seeing the film for the first time.

And when our hero, Saltarello, manages to ride a stolen motorbike to the laboratory of the evil criminal Mado and flip a switch to short circuit the MM, Ohbliv's music was right there with the last minute save.

It was so good a climax, I almost needed a cigarette.

Now I just have to wait until October for the next installment of SMR.

I already know it'll be worth the wait.