fun with silent film

So, I'm taking Black Images in American Film this term, and for our first movie, we watched Birth of a Nation. No surprise there. It was technically impressive and horribly racist and on and on, and plenty of people have commented extensively on it and so I don't feel the need to do so here, especially since I'll probably end up having to write about it later anyway. But I do have to say that the music was bizarre. Like, to the point of being highly distracting. It almost never seemed to sync up with the onscreen action, and often seemed in fact to contradict the mood of the scene.

Now, my understanding is that generally with silent films, they would have a pianist or organist or some sort of live music, so I wonder if that's part of the issue—the film didn't have a score of its own, so they just slapped on some music for the video release and went with it. This is the theory that makes the most sense to me, anyway. However it came about, the end result is that it makes the film difficult to watch (not that it wasn't already, given the content), often confusing, and sometimes inappropriately hilarious.

Suffice it to say, I'm really glad they came up with talkies.