The Harding Wind Ensemble and Harding Film Club will host a live score performance and showing of the 1922 silent film “Cops” Tuesday, Oct. 19, at 7 p.m. in the Administration Auditorium on Harding’s campus. The event is free and open to the public.
The program will include an introduction presentation to familiarize the audience with the silent film technique and the classic comedic style of “Cops’” lead actor, “The Great Stone Face” Buster Keaton. The second part will feature silent movie trailers from 1918-1922. The main part of the performance will be a showing of the silent film with the Wind Ensemble performing the original accompaniment written by Ben Model, a film historian and composer associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Dr. Mike Chance, associate professor of music and director of instrumental activities at Harding, will conduct the performance.
“Cops” is a short, comedic silent film that tells the story of a man who accidentally gets on the wrong side of the law during a parade and is chased around the city by the entire Los Angeles Police Department. The film was written and directed by Edward F. Cline and Keaton and was deemed “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” by the United States Library of Congress, as well as selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1997.
“It is a funny film; funny in the old way,” Chance said. “Nothing subtle here, just slapstick comedy from a gentler era.”
