A Young Man With a Silent Horn

There is a conceit among some young creators of silent films, trying on the genre as a prelude to their big sound feature. They think that silents should look old, faded, out of focus and scratchy. But the new digital restorations that premiered in Bologna last month of the first films by the Lumire brothers demonstrate the astonishing clarity of the earliest motion picture film stock. These were not improvements on the original, but a replication of the quality in which they were seen all over the world in the last days of the 19th century. Audiences at silent film festivals over the past few years have been rewarded with breathtaking nitrate prints of classic films that look like they were made yesterday.

Now comes Louis, a silent feature written and directed by Dan Pritzker that actually was made yesterday—give or take. It seems to glow right through the screen and reclaim the power of classic film. Visually stunning—and accompanied by a jubilant soundtrack—Louis imagines a fantasy version of New Orleans in 1907, and follows the exploits of 6-year-old Louis Armstrong in the days just before he begins his long, brilliant career. The absence of dialogue and sound effects means that the music has to do double duty as underscoring and to replace conversation. So inviting Wynton Marsalis and the pianist Cecile Licad to score the film was nothing short of inspired. It’s part dance, part Little Rascals, part MTV. And by turns it’s beautiful, funny, astonishing and occasionally frustrating—but always engaging.

The film is set in the tenements, back alleys, cemeteries and bawdy parlors of Storyville, where a variety of scantily-clad ladies rub noses (and other body parts) with gentlemen and politicians. One of the latter turns out to be a very nasty judge, who will stop at nothing to win his bid for the governor’s office. Louis, played by a wide-eyed Anthony Coleman in his screen debut, gets mixed up in the schemes of this character, played with zest by Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, Nightmare on Elm Street) as an homage to Chaplin, although Charlie’s debut on the silver screen did not come until 1914. One of the fantasy sequences involves Haley falling into the clockwork mechanism of a giant voting machine, a nod to Chaplin’s Modern Times, but Pritzker asks the viewer to suspend questions about such anachronisms and let them become part of the texture of the film.

Pritzker is a professional musician himself (he also happens to be heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune and has a net worth in the billions, according to Forbes), and he shot Louis as a sidebar to a sound film he conceived about Buddy Bolden, another New Orleans trumpet player who figures in the tale,  often called the father of jazz.

“Louis came about when I was writing a screenplay about Buddy Bolden, the first jazz trumpeter of New Orleans, and I took my mom to see Chaplin’s City Lights with the Chicago Symphony performing the score. It was without a doubt the best movie experience I ever had,” Pritzker explains. “The challenge of trying to tell a story visually, without dialogue, was compelling. I thought that if I was going to shoot one film, I might as well try to shoot two: the second being a silent film that picked up where “Bolden” ended. And it put Vilmos [Zsigmond] and me on even footing; he’d never made a silent film before either.”

Pritzker evidently gave the art, costume and effects departments free rein. The ladies are splendidly gowned, and art director Gary Diamond’s color scheme begins with sepia tints, swirls of gold and tawny brown, then slowly teases into splashes of red, white and blue. Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters, McCabe and Mrs. Miller) glides his camera upstairs into the bordellos, down into dark cellars, and peering through grates in a seamless fashion reminiscent of the twists and turns of the one-take L’Hermitage, although here the art on display is of a somewhat different character. Many of the scenes have been elaborately choreographed by Broadway veteran Hinton Battle, and a dreamy quality permeates the 70-minute flick. The film comes with a soundtrack that elegantly matches the stylish visuals.

Marsalis and Licad have contributed in equal measure to the underscoring. “The idea of accompanying a silent film telling a mythical tale of a young Louis Armstrong was appealing to me,” Marsalis says. “Of course, calling it a silent film is a misnomer. There will be plenty of music, and jazz is like a conversation between the players so there’ll be no shortage of dialogue. I look forward to playing with Cecile. The contrast between Gottschalk’s music and jazz can be a revelation to those unfamiliar with Gottschalk’s music and jazz.”

Marsalis’ cues run the gamut from authentic New Orleans sounds to much later bop, with some Ellington thrown in for good measure, while Cecile Licad’s crystalline piano tracks incorporate music of Gottschalk and Chopin. At a June press screening, the music was still in process, and what was heard was actually a temp track: a compilation of pre-existing recordings that were not intended to be used in the completed film, but only to fill in during pre-production. Whether Marsalis has time to write actual charts for the film remains unresolved, but if it ends up this way, it is still a satisfying solution most of the time. The playing is tremendous, as might be expected. Intended for DVD release with an R rating (for some sexual content), Louis will have a brief theatrical tour in five U.S. cities in late August—including at the famed Apollo in New York— with live musical accompaniment by Marsalis, Licad and a 10-piece all-star jazz ensemble. > Louis screens Aug. 30, [Apollo Theatre], 253 W. 125th St.; 8, $38.50-$53.50. For more information, visit www.louisthemovie.com.