On Thursday January 29, the Jane Pickens Theater and Event Center (The JPT) will be screening a sci-fi film with stunning visual effects and a plot concerning laborers rebelling against an increasingly out-of-touch upper class amidst the birth of artificial intelligence. The twist? The film is Metropolis, a silent picture that first played at the theater 99 years ago, and the future it depicts takes place in (wait for it) 2026.
“It's obviously a different society than what we live in, but it's very much a mirror in terms of rapid technological advances, and it has a lot to say on social class,” says Alex Whitney, the general manager of the theater, who curates the programming alongside owner and theater president Kathy Staab. “There's these poor workers who toil underneath this megacity that has all this advanced tech while these kind of elites on the top do what they will,” Whitney explains, “So with AI and everything, it's so very timely.”
A German expressionist science-fiction film from 1927, Metropolis was directed by Fritz Lang with a screenplay by writer Thea von Harbou, married to Lang at the time. Visually stunning, the story takes place in a high-tech city inhabited by the ultra-wealthy, sustained by laborers who toil underground. When one of the city’s founders falls for a girl from beneath the tracks, a romance blossoms against a backdrop of civil war between the haves and have-nots.
What makes this screening in particular truly special? For starters, The JPT is among America’s oldest working movie theaters, first showing films in 1922, and it has kept the spirit of cinema alive in Newport under Staab’s 22-year tenure. Furthermore, the high-quality digital restoration adds 25 minutes of previously lost footage back into the film. As if those two factors weren’t enough to transport you back to the time of Metropolis’s release, the screening boasts the accompaniment of a live score provided by Jeff Rapsis, whose 20-plus years of live scoring for silent films have seen him accompany everything from John Ford’s The Iron Horse to William Wellman’s Wings.
The New Hampshire-based composer and performer first worked with The JPT for a special screening of Buster Keaton’s The General; his incredible skill and knowledge of the silent era have become a valued staple of the Washington Square theater’s programming. “When you actually put on a film from 100 years ago on the big screen and do it with live music with an audience, it's an awesome experience that has really stood the test of time, because it's all motion and excitement,” explains Rapsis, “It's a whole different experience that we've kind of lost touch with today.”
Described by Whitney as a virtuoso, Rapsis’s score is completely improvised as he watches the film along with the audience, allowing him to react in real time to the emotion on screen – and in the room. “It's not a performance art that takes place in a vacuum,” Rapsis says, “The audience does steer the experience, or can steer the experience, and other times the accompanist can sometimes help the audience understand that something just changed. Even though on the screen, it might not be apparent if there's a change in the temperature of the scene.”
For film lovers on the fence about taking a plunge into the world of silent cinema, Whitney says that “sometimes it takes a screening like this to unlock your appreciation for that particular art form.” Adds Rapsis, "It's not a museum piece for you to hold at arm's length. It's real, you can let it in… And I think the music can be almost like giving people permission to forget that it's an older film, and instead just enjoy it for what it is. Let it do its magic, and if it does work, it casts a spell that’s very different than when you watch a movie with sound and color and all that, it’s more like a hypnotic trance.”
With tickets selling quickly (available for purchase online), Whitney and Rapsis have already scheduled their next silent film screening for February 15, when The JPT will screen 7th Heaven, winner of three Oscars at the first Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Janet Gaynor. Additionally, Whitney is hard at work curating an upcoming screening series inspired by Metropolis that showcases science fiction films that depict a future that has already passed, aptly titled “Films of Future Past.” Of the growing popularity of the unique events, Rapsis says, “When you bring it back and put it all back together, you can see why great-grandpa and great-grandma loved going to the movies.”
The JPT: 49 Touro Street, Newport. JanePickens.com
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