Halloween isn’t the only source of scariness this season. As the nights become longer and the end of the calendar year approaches, bringing more holidays and memories along with it, the inevitable facing of one’s mortality – and occasionally morality — can become another reason to shudder with fright. Such was the theme at Friday night’s annual Light Upon Blight Halloween performance at Best Video in Hamden.
This year’s film, the fifth one in this series thus far, was the 1921 classic silent Swedish horror/fantasy The Phantom Carriage. Light Upon Blight’s founder, musician Jeff Cedrone, explained why he picked it. “The number one reason was that the visuals were cool, plus it was long enough. Also, we have already done the more clichéd movies, like Nosferatu, and none of us had ever seen this one before.”
Light Upon Blight previously had performed live scores to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligiuri, Haxan, Carnival of Souls, and last year’s Faust.
Cedrone assembled a larger group this time — seven musicians in all, including first-time Light Upon Blight participants Lys Guillorn on lap steel guitar and Rob Nelson on keyboards. The rest of the ensemble included previous participants Benjamin Hecht on bass, Vance Provey on trumpet, Bob Gorry on guitar, and Pete Riccio on drums/percussion, Gorry and Riccio being the only ones who had previously done film scores with Cedrone and this project.
As always, costumes were encouraged and a few audience members showed up in their holiday-themed best, though band members chose more dark-toned clothing and spooky accents instead — including Cedrone, who wore wire-constructed devil’s horns as he took his place between his synth and Best Video’s piano, both which he would be playing along with guitar for the show.
The premise of the show was simple yet not: the band was to improvise a score to the movie being shown after only one rehearsal viewing of it. They set up themselves and their instruments in the front of the room surrounding and facing the movie screen. After an introduction by Hank Hoffman of Best Video, the movie proceeded silently except for the ensemble’s music.
The Phantom Carriage, directed by and starring Victor Sjostrom, is based on the novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! by Selma Lagerlor. It centers on the story of David Holm, a man in poor health and a drunk, and detached from both — all of which affect his relationships and interactions with his family and friends. These include his wife and two children and Edit, a Salvation Army missionary who tries to save him through her love for him and her devotion to the cause. The carriage itself is a part of folklore that becomes an integral part of the film — mostly told on New Year’s Eve and including a number of flashbacks and even flashbacks within flashbacks. In a graveyard scene, it is stated that “whoever dies on this eve must drive death’s carriage.”
As the film opens, Edit is in a bed dying of consumption as another woman sits beside her hollow-eyed and sad. Bass and guitars folded into one another, setting the tone immediately for the moody and meditative scenes to follow. As the audience bore witness to the beginnings of the intricate tale that followed, all of the musicians easily melded together to create a more frenzied yet orchestral and lush soundtrack that took the viewer from Edit’s request to see David Holm, to the search for him, to his drunken fighting and apparent death — which causes the carriage to appear, driven by his friend who, having died and taken over as driver last year, is in search of his successor.
A bluish tint to the parts of the film that included the carriage as well as the pink and yellow tints to other parts of the film added another layer to the emotional nuances and moodiness of the movie, including the flashbacks of Holm’s life with his family and Edit’s encounters with him where she tries to get him back on track. The music continually enhanced the mood of the proceedings throughout, Cedrone switching between deep synth chords; lighter, more pointed piano key striking; and then fuzzier and darker tones on his guitar when needed. Gorry added in his own melding of string work to the proceedings and occasionally tapped his guitar with his hands or a small stick to bring a percussive vibe to his instrument.
Each musician held their own yet added to the luscious cacophony of sound — Hecht’s deliciously deep and otherworldly bass licks, Guillorn’s tasty and satisfyingly tense twang of lap steel, Nelson’s oozingly ominous keyboards, Provey’s bluesy brass, and Riccio’s punctuating percussion — without ever feeling overwhelming or unnecessary, a testament to their individual talents and their ability to work as a unit to create this soundtrack in the moment, leaving the sizable audience enraptured throughout the film’s nearly two-hour running time.
Karen Ponzio Photos
By the time the movie got to its most famous scene — where Holm is seen using an ax to chop through a locked door, reminiscent of The Shining — both film and music had taken the audience through the story’s many levels of despair, dread, and revelation that lent themselves to comparisons to other well-known classic movies, such as A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life — albeit in a much heavier tone and mode.
Would Edit get to see Holms again? Would Holms and his wife be able to begin anew? Did anyone (or everyone) die of consumption? Who would take over the carriage and collect the souls? A quote from the film, spoken by the carriage driver when he tells Holm he would like to leave humans with a single New Year’s message, acts as a teaser: “Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.”