The Sound of Silence

Synopsis

The celebrated concert pianist & professor Bruce Vogt presents live piano accompaniment to classic silent cinema!

Charlie Chaplin's The Cure (1917)

The Cure, the tenth film in the series, is perhaps the funniest. Inspiration for the film was drawn from the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where Chaplin was living at the time and where the idea of a health spa first occurred to him. The wrestling bouts in the gymnasium of the Athletic Club caught his imagination and inspired the scene in the film in which Charlie wrestles the masseur. Completion of the film was again delayed because of Chaplin’s quest for perfection. Outtakes survive showing that the film began quite differently, with Charlie intending to play a bellman and later a spa attendant in a health resort before finalizing on the inebriate character. Production was further delayed when Chaplin caught a chill after filming some of the water scenes. Chaplin’s use of dance in The Cure is also notable.

Buster Keaton's The Haunted House (1921)

Keaton plays a teller at a successful bank. Unbeknownst to him, the manager of the bank and his gang are planning on pulling off a robbery and hiding in an old house that they have rigged up with booby traps and effects to make it appear to be haunted.

Harold Lloyd's Why Worry? (1923)

In this film, Harold Lloyd plays a hypochondriac playboy who arrives in a South American Utopian paradise named Paradisio for health reasons. Little does he know that an American mercenary (sort of a silent clown version of Lee Van Cleef) is stirring up a revolution in the relaxed, easygoing village.