Silent films are music to his ears

Boston-born Raymond Griffith (above) starred in silent films that enthusiast Jeff Rapsis now accompanies on synthesizer at Wilton, N.H., screenings.

Being the musical accompanist for silent films isn't something you can build a career around these days.

But that hasn't deterred Jeff Rapsis, a New Hampshire journalist who moonlights as the guy who plays the live music for a silent film series in Wilton, N.H.

By day, Rapsis, 44, is associate publisher of HippoPress, a New Hampshire weekly newspaper which he helped found, as well as its classical music writer. He's a musician, too, playing keyboard and tuba.

But he's also wild about silent films. A couple of years ago he went to a silent film screening and met Dave Stevenson, a vintage film collector, restorer, and archivist. Together they decided to launch their own silent film series, now in its second season, at the Wilton Town Hall. In the golden age of silent films - the decade between 1920 and 1930 - the pictures were often accompanied by small orchestras but in the absence of any such ready-made ensemble Rapsis stands in on the synthesizer, which simulates all sections of the orchestra.

The screenings, held the last Sunday of each month, have included such classics as the 1929 picture "Steamboat Bill Jr." featuring comic Buster Keaton, and "The Freshman," Harold Lloyd's 1925 comedy about a small-town college wannabe. But next Sunday there will be a double feature starring a forgotten comic named Raymond Griffith, an actor with a local connection.

Griffith was born in Boston in 1895, got into movies as a young man, and for a time rivaled Charlie Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd in silent comedy, according to Rapsis. Silent films were the ideal genre for him: Somehow in the course of his performing life he lost his speaking voice and could barely talk above a whisper. (Alas, his onscreen career was wiped out when talkies came in.)

Most of his starring silent features have been lost, according to Rapsis, who contends that Griffith has been unjustly neglected. "He was a big star in the '20s, a name anyone would have known," he says. "He was very suave, dashing, and debonair with a top hat and usually a cape." In the mid-1920s, Griffith began developing a character who came to be known as the Silk Hat comedian who appeared in several of his films, no matter the era or the plot.

In the Wilton Town Hall series, he'll star in the 1925 comedy "Paths to Paradise," playing a polished con artist in San Francisco's underworld ("the toughest dive in the city") in a jewel-thief caper full of gags. Unfortunately the last reel is missing but Rapsis thinks this shouldn't concern viewers: "It's kind of a silent film version of Schubert's 'Unfinished Symphony,' " he says.

The other half of the program is "Hands Up!" set during the Civil War. This time Griffith is a Confederate spy ordered to sabotage a Nevada mine's gold shipment that could bring victory to the North if it goes through. (Got that?)

Rapsis relishes his role as accompanist. "It's very much by the seat of my pants," he says. "It's not about the music as much as it is about supporting the film cues: Letting people know that something is changing, that this is a big moment," he says. "I love doing it because each time it reflects the mood of the audience and my own mood. It's kind of like jazz."

He sees silent films as underappreciated treasures, "like fizzy concoctions that haven't been uncorked for years." He's seen audiences cry during performances, or stand up and cheer. "These things do reach out and grab you in a way that contemporary films don't," he says. "It's the communal experience. If you can get a really good-looking print and show it on a big screen, and have live music that makes sense and an audience that is into it, there is nothing like it. Nothing like it at all."

There will be a free screening of "Paths to Paradise" and "Hands Up!" next Sunday, at 4:30 p.m. at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre. www.wiltontownhalltheatre.com. 603-654-3456.

SUNDANCE SHORTS If you've always wanted to attend Sundance, you can catch a piece of it at the Coolidge Corner Theatre which will screen nine shorts from among the 83 short films shown at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

It starts Dec. 25 through at least Jan 1. www.coolidge.org