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October 1986: The Anzac
Now, look what happened on
Sunday, 26 October 1986, at the Anzac (Anzac, Anzac, Anzac, say it over again, Anzac).
The Anzac presented a day of wall-to-wall films, including Metropolis with a “piano track.”
Behold:
What pray tell was that?
I bet this was the Griggs Moviedrome 16mm now supplied by Essex, and now with the Oderman piano track.
If so, this screening was either in violation of copyright,
or it was somehow cleared with the Murnau-Stiftung or a sublicensee.
(This was just half a year after my visit. Wish I could have stayed to see this. Oh well.)
So, there was the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra library score assembled in 1948,
the Heinrich Riethmüller piano-drum-organ score for Nordwestdeutscher Filmverleih in 1963,
and the Konrad Elfers hard-bop score for Nordwestdeutscher from 1965,
in addition to the unofficial Valentino library score compiled by Thunderbird in 1972
and the Stuart Oderman piano score from 1973.
I wonder what else there was prior to 1984.
Let’s do another boring table:
| 05 Jul 1948 | Associated British | Chappell library cues: Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra |
| 18 Mar 1963 | Nordwestdeutscher | Heinrich Riethmüller, adaptation of Huppertz |
| 1965 | Nordwestdeutscher | Konrad Elfers, |
| 19 Sep 1970 | WTTW Chicago, “The Toy That Grew Up” | Hal Pearl, small electric organ |
| 1972 | Thunderbird | Library music, Valentino catalogue |
| 22 Mar 1973 | Griggs Moviedrome | Stuart Oderman, piano |
| 12 Aug 1975 | BBC2 “Tuesday Cinema” | Fitzwater and Davies, electronic effects |
| 10 Aug 1984 | Cinecom/PSO | Giorgio Moroder |
So, that’s it. Eight. Just eight. I don’t think there were any others —
except for Amba’s score, which was seldom if ever heard and which might no longer exist.
At first it looks like an overwhelmingly infinite number of versions of the movie, impossible to itemize or understand.
But when we tease out the evidence, we see that there were only eight sound versions,
by which I mean official or semi-official sound versions, through 1984.
This does not include the Rosa Río score
or any other scores for bargain-barrel public-domain home-video-only editions,
nor does it include scores that were only performed live.
This list contains only the official or semi-official sound reissues on film or on broadcast tape.
When we realize that we are dealing with only eight domesticated animals and not an entire jungle,
the intimidation vanishes and the subject becomes much easier to understand.
As for the later scores....
And this, too.