'Two Timid Souls' at Tribeca

By Kevin Lally

FJI executive editor Kevin Lally reports from a special screening last night at the Tribeca Film Festival.

New York has Tribeca fever this week, scoping out what's worth seeing out of the 120 features in this year's wide-ranging festival (down from a daunting 160 last year). For me, the standouts have included Man on Wire, the lively and engaging documentary/caper movie about puckish acrobat Philippe Petit, who made international headlines when he walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974, and Katyn, the great 82-year-old director Andrzej Wadja's devastating epic drama about a chilling episode in Polish history, when some 15,000 military officers (including Wadja's father) were systematically murdered in 1940 by the Soviets, in a secret deal between Stalin and Hitler.

Last night, Tribeca offered something truly special: a rare screening at Pace University of Two Timid Souls, a 1929 silent comedy by France's Rene Clair (Under the Roofs of Paris), with a new score written by four current and former NYU students and performed by the 36-piece NYU Steinhardt Chamber Orchestra. The film, which played at last fall's Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy, is a clever farce about a timid young lawyer who botches his defense of a burly man accused of beating his wife. After serving time in prison, the batterer changes his identity and moves to a pastoral village, where he browbeats a milquetoast old man into pledging his daughter's hand in marriage. But the daughter has her sights set on someone else--the young lawyer. Needless to say, plenty of wild complications ensue.

Clair's movie is especially inventive in the opening courtoom scene, which shows both the likely reality of the wife-beating and the lawyer's idyllic portrayal of his client's marriage, with the husband serving his wife's every need in multiple-screen images. As the lawyer, Pierre Batcheff, who also appeared in Bunuel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou, gives a charming and highly skilled comic performance. (Sadly, the actor committed suicide at the age of 25.)

Based on a play by the prolific 19th-century playwright Eugene Labiche, Two Timid Souls is a wonderful rediscovery, and the other discovery last night was the artistry of the NYU Chamber Orchestra and the boon to music and film scholarship that is the NYU Film Scoring Program. Directed by Ron Sadoff, this program has produced numerous film scores and showcased its work for ten years at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Golden Silents" series. Last night's conductor, Gillian Anderson (no, not the actress from "The X-Files"), has conducted scores around the world for classics like Nosferatu, Haxan and Pandora's Box.

The composers for Two Timid Souls are Jaebon Hwang, Jihwan Kim, Seon Kyong Kim and Jin Kyung Lee, and their robust and multi-layered score is a constant delight. Reading Anderson and Sadoff's program notes about the students' process and how they created the themes for the various characters makes you want to experience the live accompaniment all over again. There will be another performance of Two Timid Souls May 4th at 2 p.m. I can't think of a better way to spend your Sunday afternoon.