Great topic, znex. Thanks for posting about it.

There's an excellent NPR public radio show, The Score, I enjoy listening to on Sunday afternoons, whenever I remember and if timing is working out right at the time. Seeing this thread reminded me of it. If you've never checked out that weekly radio show (it's one hour each Sunday), I'm confident you'd find it very interesting and appealing. It's neat how much a great or a good score can really bring out things in a movie. A film's score is like another character, or a layer, in its own right, of the story.

This is a topic that has always interested me tremendously regarding recent-years-added new instrumental, ensemble, or orchestral scores added to restored silent films. A perfect complimentary new score can feel both well-suited to the era and vibe of a film and accessible and appealing to tastes of today, and serve as essentially the movie's "voice". An effective score ensures that audiences see and feel what the presenters want the viewer to experience.

Often I'll watch a terrific Silent film that has a wonderful complimentary recent-decades score added to it, and the movie magically feels fresh and "now", and I don't really notice the age of the film - I just see and feel the story and the characters, in a very accessible type way. Incidentally, interesting to think that now we're in 2020, virtually all Silent films are of 91+ years ago, as - with only a minor smattering of exceptions - the Silent films era concluded in 1929.

I live near a vintage movie palace built in 1928 that twice a year plays silent movies accompanied by a live theatre organ. One of the organists is skilled enough to improvise a score to the movie just like it was done back then. Have you ever watched a silent movie with live music especially a vintage score.

Silent Movie - Mel Brooks - Score by John Morris

I never have, though that sounds like it would be a real treat to experience!

One of the silents (Greta Garbo's and John Gilbert's 1927 Love) that I own a WarnerArchive DVD of includes, as the score, a live performance by an orchestra, that played simultaneously to a theatre presentation (I think was in some recent year - maybe 15 or so back) of the film. I've read that the live performance was at a university. At any rate, you can hear (whenever watching that movie DVD) people in the audience laughing or gasping at times, corresponding with whatever was occurring onscreen at a given moment.

My late mom (incidentally I was born during the year both my parents turned 44, which is why I'm in my 50s but have always strongly connected, and feel very easily able to relate, to things of the '20s, '30s, and '40s) grew up mainly during the late Silent era and used to all the time go to afternoon matinees during her girlhood years (the 1920s [both of my parents were born during the latter half of the 1910s; believe it or not, one of my great-grandfathers - my paternal grandpop's dad - was born in 1823!!!]). She often spoke of how there'd be a musician or small ensemble performing live throughout the films. Even sometimes there'd be an organ grinder or the such!