Salome, with live score by Charlie Barber - Royal Northern College of Music

Charles Bryant’s 1923 silent film, Salome, adapted from the play by Oscar Wilde, is currently touring with a live accompaniment composed by Charlie Barber. The film is rarely shown in the UK, but provides an impressive visual spectacle, with an aesthetic based on designs by Aubrey Beardsley.

As the audience enters the RNCM Concert Hall, they are confronted by a silver screen flanked by two scaffold towers, which will soon be occupied by four percussionists. These scaffolds are the first of many symbols which will keep the prospect of death at the front of the mind throughout the evening. As the lights dim, the musicians strike up a death march, using traditional Arabic instrumentation including a range of drums, cymbals, the Djembe, Sistra and even the scaffolding itself. The ominous score puts the audience in the position of the mob, waiting for the tumbrels to arrive.

The film itself is a byword for fin de siècle aestheticism, with its opulent art nouveau design. Although the action, such as it is, takes place on one stage set, there is a huge crowd of extras. The events of the film take place in real time; captions set the scene. Herod, Tetrarch of Judea, lusts after his daughter in law, Salome. His wife, Herodias, conducts her own affairs, in full knowledge of the court. John the Baptist (Jokanaan), meanwhile, is imprisoned at the bottom of an abandoned well for his own safety; the Jews want him dead, and the superstitious Herod is too fearful to comply.

The theatrical origin of the film is obvious, and the Director creates tableaux in a way that will be very unfamiliar to modern film watchers. Scenes tend to be long, with few cuts. The director leaves visual clues throughout the film; there is barely a shot which does not feature an executioner in the background. The costumes and stage sets are highly stylised, and at times matched by beautiful shots, particularly those of the imprisoned prophet, silhouetted in moonlight in his cell. The cast also add to Salome’s melodramatic atmosphere. Mitchell Lewis as Herod is the essence of debauchery and dissolution, with his lecherous, impotent gaze, whilst his wife (Rose Dione) is a fearful harridan. Nigel de Brulier plays Jokanaan with the wild-eyed intensity of a seventies acid casualty rock star, whilst Nazimova, the film’s star and the main driving force behind the production, plays Salome with feline poise and capriciousness.

The narrative is driven by the sexuality of Salome, who is lusted after by Herod, but is weary of life at court. She is entranced by Jokanaan, whose purity appears to radiate on screen. Her desire is so powerful that two courtiers are driven to suicide by her efforts to seduce the prophet. In an erotically charged scene, he rejects the princess, as a ‘daughter of Babylon’. ‘Suffer me to kiss they mouth, Jokanaan’, Salome begs, but he retreats to his cell. Driven wild by her desire, she forms a plan which will allow her to meet this end, though it will result in the death of both.

The insistent and ominous score maintains an air of heightened tension throughout the course of the film, ensuring that even the lighter hearted sections are underscored with a threat of the violence to come. The audience is obviously swept up in the emotion; very few film screenings can be enjoyed in such total audience silence.

The message of the film is complex; on the surface, we see a clear conflict between the decadence of Herod’s court, and the truth and morality embodied by Jokanaan. The two cannot coexist, and the prophet must be crushed. There are darker undertones though. Jokanaan appears to will his own death, provoking his captors, and the ‘daughter of Babylon’, and rejecting the opportunity of salvation. Meanwhile, love is portrayed as a powerful and destructive force; Salome rejects earthly riches, and destroys the object of her desire, bringing about her own downfall as she declares that ‘the mystery of love is stronger than the mystery of death’. It is ambiguous as to whether the film criticises aestheticism as a philosophy, or simply warns of the need for deeper understanding of morality within the movement.

The film’s one false note, sadly, is the centrepiece, the famed dance of the seven veils which Salome performs, in order that she may be rewarded with the head of her inamorato. The choreography is reminiscent of the last days of Amy Winehouse, as Salome staggers across the screen with seemingly little co-ordination or control.

Overall, this is an excellent production, and a great opportunity to experience a seminal piece of cinema history. The intoxicating atmosphere created by the score is entirely appropriate for such an emotionally powerful film, and enables the audience to bask in a sensory overload of which the aesthetes of the roaring twenties would surely have approved.