Karen McAulay, Musicologist

Some months ago, I came across a book that had been given the title of a popular song.  I got the book. I understand it was categorised as ‘sensational ‘ at the time.  This does not denote ‘stunning’. It was a genre, and not the highest literature.

Later, it had become a silent movie, and I wanted to watch it. Indeed, from a research viewpoint, I needed to see it – though I’ll grant you it does seem counterintuitive that a musicologist would want to watch something without sound.

I couldn’t justify going all the way down to London to watch it,  but I managed to find it at NLS.  (Sometimes the spelling of a word, or the presence/absence of an apostrophe makes all the difference in something’s retrievability.) 

But why did this film matter to me? I wanted to see if the original song might have been played at various places in the movie.  There’s no direct link between the film  – or the book – and someone I’ve been researching, but they did sing that song.  A lot.

It takes a while to get a silent movie converted to a DVD, but finally, today, I went and watched it.  The NLS has a Glasgow outpost for digital media.  It’s located in the former transport museum at Kelvin Hall, just a bus-ride from home.

Stakeholders in this building are the NLS, Glasgow City Council, the Hunterian Museum and the University of Glasgow, and there’s also a gym facility and a cafe – so you encounter staff in orange polo shirts and shorts before you pass an enormous hall laid out for University exams. Then a museum store. And then, finally, there’s the NLS!

I tried to imagine myself in a cinema with an audience and a cinema pianist or even a small ‘orchestra’.  It was a far stretch, sitting in a neat, up-to-date viewing room with modern tech and my notebook in front of me!

The film I’d found was the 1923 re-release of an earlier non-surviving film, but it wasn’t quite the whole movie … that’s partly because the lead actor died before they’d finished shooting the movie. Seems strange that it was still released, doesn’t it? I couldn’t tell if what NLS had, was all that had been shot, or slightly less; it didn’t end neatly.

But as for the song? Yes, I found what I was looking for.  So it was worth sitting in silence in a viewing room for 2 hours on a Saturday morning!

As a film adaptation, though, it was interesting to see what was omitted from the narrative, as well as a curious change. Towards the end of the 1875 novel, the heartbroken heroine hints that she’d contemplate impropriety. It’s just a hint – it’s the hero who says the idea is unthinkable.  Whereas in the film, she says (the words appear on the screen) that owing to the situation her beloved is in, they have absolutely no hope of a shared future. 

I hadn’t anticipated a film watering down something that must have been scandalous when published nearly 50 years earlier.  I didn’t notice anything about BBFC classification at the start,  but I imagine it would have been considered perfectly suitable for general viewing.  I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

Maybe I shouldn’t overthink it.  Back to my notebook and my original thoughts!