Films

We are currently touring and performing four major silent film titles. For clips of the films with our scores go to our YouTube page.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

F.W. Murnau, 1922. 94 mins (Cert PG)

One of the silent era’s masterpieces. Its eerie, Gothic feel – and chilling performance from Max Shrek as the vampire – set the template for horror films that followed. Darkly humorous and tender too – this is a story of yearning and the search for fulfilment.

In 2012 we collaborated with Paul Ayres’ Queldryk Choral Ensemble to create an arrangement of the score with a 40-piece choir. This was performed at Spitalfields Market and won that year’s Silent London poll for best live score. 2022 was the centenary year of Nosferatu. We toured extensively, performing the score 20 times over the course of the year. Nosferatu is very popular in the autumn… when the nights are drawing in – a Halloween special!

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Robert Wiene, 1920. 76 mins (Cert U)

Made in the aftermath of the First World War, this is the quintessential German Expressionist film masterpiece. Distorted sets, sinister shadows and unnerving characters created a paranoid, unreal world at a time of despair throughout Europe.

This soundtrack was first performed in London in 2008, as part of an exhibition “Sleeping & Dreaming” which explored “sleep, the mysterious state we all inhabit for a third of our lives.” In 2013, the Compass Presents group devised a multi-media event based around the film and Minima’s soundtrack. The Caligari Experience had its first shows in 2014 at Motion, Bristol and was performed most recently as part of the Three Palaces Festival in Malta in 2022.

The Phantom of the Opera

Rupert Julian, 1925. 77 mins (Cert PG)

The classic thriller starring Lon Chaney, the “Man of a Thousand Faces”, as the disfigured Phantom, wreaking havoc beneath the sewers of the Paris Opera House. Film critic Roger Ebert said in 2004 that “it has always been a question whether The Phantom of the Opera is a great film, or only a great spectacle.”

Either way, to see this film in 1925 was a momentous experience. Fast-moving and exciting, the film is a dramatic tale of obsession, kidnap, murder and revenge. It is beautifully tinted throughout and features an impressive sequence of early Technicolor as the Phantom appears at a masked ball.

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

Alfred Hitchcock, 1927. 90 mins (Cert PG)

Set in a foggy and unsettled London with a serial killer on the loose, this is Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece of atmospheric thriller filmmaking, containing many of his subsequent trademark themes, including his first recognisable film cameo.

Made for Michael Balcon’s new Gainsborough studios, The Lodger was Hitchcock’s first thriller, and his first critical and commercial success, quickly establishing him as a name director. The film was described in glowing terms by trade journal Bioscope: “It is possible that this film is the finest British production ever made.”