Silents Synced: Movie Classics with a’90s Rock Soundtrack

Here are three words not normally heard at a silent movie screening: “Crank it up.”

“Silents Synced,” a recurring series created and curated by Josh Frank, takes the traditional silent movie experience and turns it up to 11, pairing century-old films with classic alternative rock albums from the 1980s and ’90s.

The third installment in the series, premiering this week only in select independent and art house theaters, pairs Malcolm St. Clair’s underseen proto-feminist comedy-drama A Woman of the World with Pearl Jam’s Vs. (1993) and select songs from Vitalogy (1994). The mesmerizing screen siren Pola Negri stars as a tattooed countess who leaves the French Riviera after catching her lover with another woman. “I thought a woman of the world should understand,” he tells her as she walks out on him. She heads for a Midwestern town where she proceeds to scandalize the conservative community.

The pairing of Pola and Pearl Jam was not arbitrary. While watching the opening scene, Frank says Pearl Jam’s song “Animal” came to mind (sample lyric: “I’d rather be with an animal”). “I played the song over the scene, and it was perfect,” he says.

A Woman of the World follows Silents Synced’s previous releases: F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu paired with Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac, and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr., synced with songs from R.E.M.’s Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. “What an interesting way to watch a silent movie!” said one Cincinnati audience member on Reddit.

Trailer for Nosferatu with Radiohead (Uploaded to YouTube by D’Place Entertainment)

There is precedent for this. In 1984, Giorgio Moroder, a two-time Oscar-winner for Best Original Song and a winner for Best Original Score, composed a new score for Fritz Lang’s seminal science-fiction film Metropolis.  And that’s not all, folks: Symphony orchestras across the country supply live accompaniment to classic Warner Bros. cartoons as well as Disney and Pixar animated classics and beloved musicals such as The Sound of Music.

Metropolis (1927) [1984 Giorgio Moroder Version] (Uploaded to YouTube by The Cinema Cellar)

Frank says it is “an easier sell” approaching recording artists about using songs from a classic album rather than asking them to compose an original score. “I’m not asking them to do any work,” he says with a laugh. R.E.M.’s manager Bertis Downs said in a statement, “The guys were all big Buster Keaton fans well before this left-field idea came down the pike. Everyone in the band likes the uncanny way the music and film work together.”

“Silents Synced” had its genesis 20 years ago. Frank attended the San Francisco Silent Film Festival premiere of Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen’s 1915 horror film, The Golem, with a commissioned score by Black Francis, front man for the band The Pixies, with whom Frank collaborated on the band’s oral history.

Black Francis: Bad News from the Golem Soundtrack (Uploaded to YouTube by American Pancake)

In 2009, Frank opened the 12-car Blue Starlite drive-in in a downtown alley in Austin, Texas. He primarily screened classics in the tradition of the revival houses of the 1960s and ’70s that introduced new generations to America’s rich film heritage. For a few friends, he had a private screening of, yes, Metropolis paired with Nine Inch Nails’ album The Fragile. The positive reception left a lasting impression on him.

Frank opened a second, five-screen Blue Starlite location off of I-35 — “the world’s smallest drive-in,” he proudly calls it — where he exhibited new indie films along with contemporary and cult favorites. He remained open during the pandemic, but the lack of new content inspired him to consider the concept of “Silents Synced” as a going concern. Might not a new generation be induced to give silent films a try if their soundtracks rocked? It reminded him of college students during the Vietnam War who in revival houses found kindred rebellious spirits in the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields and Mae West.

“I saw how rough it was for my [theater owner] peers during the pandemic,” he says. “I thought that there are creators out there; why isn’t there enough content? What can we do on our own instead of complaining about Hollywood studios?”

Frank believed in his concept and dipped in to his retirement savings to make his vision a reality. “I might as well use it now and gamble on myself,” he says.

It wouldn’t be the first time. A true Marxist (of the Groucho sort), he spent five years co-creating the 2015 graphic novel, Giraffes on Horseback Salad, based on Salvador Dali’s 1937 14-page treatment for a proposed Marx Brothers film, which at the time, MGM deemed unfilmable.

Frank drew on treasured memories of his Gen-X youth to spur him onward and revive what he calls “a lost art.” Those were the golden days of the midnight movie, when Rocky Horror Picture Show ruled, and when planetariums staged trippy laser light shows to Pink Floyd music. And speaking of Pink Floyd, there is that whole Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon mashup that continues to blow audiences away.

“I got to experience all of those things,” Frank says. “I loved the subversive and punk rock feeling. Our culture is missing out on that experience.”

For more information about “Silents Synced” screening locations or to request a theater for booking, visit www.silentsynced.com.