A Fox masterpiece will provide the gala closing show of the Giornate
(Saturday, October 17, 9:00 p.m., Verdi Theatre), when John Lanchbery
conducts the Camerata Labacensis in the performance of his own new score
to accompany John Ford's The Iron Horse. John Lanchbery, who
made his first Pordenone appearance last year, conducting his restoration
of the original 1915 score of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation,
is one of the world's most distinguished musical directors for ballet
and it is especially fascinating to see how applicable to silent cinema
his extensive experience in the medium of dance proves to be. The performance
is a Channel Four/Photoplay production.
"For the Channel Four Silents
presentation we had access to 20th-Century Fox's safety preservation
negative, which was the European release version (so the film is dedicated
to George Stephenson rather than Abraham Lincoln!). John E. Allen of
Cinema Arts in New Jersey produced a colour print. although we did not
trace any original tinting records, it was clear that some scenes were
shot day for night, so the conventional plan of amber and blue was used.
Following his success with The Birth of a Nation, John Lanchbery
was commissioned to write the music. Unlike Birth, this was an entirely
new score, although it drew upon songs of the period, as Ford himself
was to do in his sound westerns. The Live Cinema premiere was held to
great acclaim at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in November 1994 -
a fitting venue, for this was were John Lanchbery and David Gill had
worked as conductor and dancer so many years before."
(Kevin Brownlow & Patrick Stanbury, Photoplay Productions, August
1998)