Alumni Gazette

Silent Star

FILM BUFF: As an accompanist for silent films, Philip Carli likes to stay off-screen. “I’m there to assist the film in making its point . . . and above all else, not to call attention to myself,” he says.

Pianist Philip Carli ’03E (PhD) says that in his line of work the best performances go unnoticed.

As a silent film accompanist, Carli knows if moviegoers are focusing on the music, they’re not focusing on the film. And for him, the film is everything.

He admits it’s an odd position for a solo performer, but one he’s grown to understand and enjoy.

“I think of myself as an interlocutor,” he says. “I’m there to assist the film in making its point, to strengthen the link between film and audience, and, above all else, not to call attention to myself.”

Carli, the staff accompanist for the George Eastman House for the past 16 years, began his love affair with silent-era movies when he was 5 years old. In the Disneyland theater not far from his home in North San Diego County, California, Carli would soak up slapstick comedies and cowboy dramas. As a young teen, the skilled pianist discovered a way to combine his interests in music and film. Checking out 16-mm classics from his local library—gems like Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus (1928) or Wallace Worsley’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)—he would improvise entire scores in his living room just for the fun of it.

Today he travels the world performing in period movie houses and at film festivals, including the British Silent Cinema: Channel Crossings in England and the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy. He also conducts and records movie scores, most recently the complete orchestral score for Captain Salvation (1927), which aired in April on Turner Classic Movies.

Bridging the distance between audiences of the past and those of today, Carli says, is at the heart of his work.

“During the silent-film era, going to see a movie was a special occasion,” he says. “And regardless of whether the audience was treated to a full orchestra—such as was the case at the Eastman Theatre—or to a single organist, the accompaniment was an essential part of the film.

“For today’s moviegoers, seeing a silent film is still a special occasion, and if performed well, the music is simply one part of the overall texture of that amazing experience.”

—Jenny Leonard