French musician Stephane Scharle brings silent film to life with cine-concert

The right echo of the cymbals or the momentous thud of the drum brought alive a century-old French movie in the halls of Indian Museum. In his recent India tour drummer Stephane Scharle from the jazz band OZMA made a stop in Kolkata where he re-imagined the music for Rene Clair’s 1924 masterpiece, the black and white, silent French film Paris Qui Dort.

And not just any re-imagination, he played the music live as the movie screened for the audience in a special screening arranged by Alliance Francaise du Bengale. The movie, in a nutshell, is about a day in Paris where the world stands and time freezes for everyone except for a few people. How do they navigate the extraordinary situation and reverse the phenomenon to the understood normal is all that the sci-fi movie has to offer.

Here's how Stephane Scharle brings silent films to life

Talking about choosing this specific movie, Scharle mentions, “I chose this movie because I like to do films by genre, and I never did a sci-fi movie before. Also, the drums I use are augmented drums which produce complementary sounds. So I felt it’s good to have those sounds with a sci-fi movie.”

Imagining music for a recognised silent movie needs a lot of creativity. Delving deeper into his creative process, he states, “I watched the movie at least five times without the music. First of all, I structured the film and found out where the major highlights of the film are. Then I decided for each part what kind of music I would put. The more I watched the movie, the more ideas came to me.”

This cine-concert was also a medium to bring audiences to watch movies that are not easily available for viewing. He says, “I hope it [his endeavour] brings any film lovers to those films that are not shown much. About his future projects, he mentions, “My next project is with a Syrian singer. But I will work on another movie in future.”

Before signing off, he also talks about his experience in Kolkata, “It’s interesting for me to see the architecture. I went on a stroll around the city and also had Nizam’s Double Mutton Egg roll.”

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