Varieté

The Alloy Orchestra returns to the Film Society with another live, one-of-a-kind musical accompaniment—this time to E.A. Dupont’s dark tale of infidelity, murder, and acrobatics. Famed trapeze artist Boss Huller (Emil Jannings, Oscar’s first Best Actor) meets young, seductive dancer Berta-Marie (Lya De Putti) and abandons his wife and child for her at Berlin’s famed Wintergarten. There, they team up with the aerialist Artinelli (Warwick Ward), who seduces Berta-Marie and sends Huller into a vengeful frenzy. Impressionistically shot by Karl Freund (Metropolis, Dracula), Varieté endures for its energetic direction and camerawork, capturing circus acts with enthralling, dizzying movement. This new digital restoration was undertaken by the foundation Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung, working with the Filmarchiv Austria, using nitrate prints from both the U.S. Library of Congress and the Filmarchiv Austria. A Kino Lorber release.

Alloy Orchestra
Alloy Orchestra is a three-man musical ensemble—Terry Donahue, Ken Winokur, and Roger C. Miller—who write and perform live accompaniments to classic silent films. Working with an outrageous assemblage of peculiar objects, they thrash and grind soulful music from unlikely sources and have performed at prestigious film festivals and cultural centers around the world (including the Telluride Film Festival, the Louvre, and the National Gallery of Art). Utilizing their famous “rack of junk” and electronic synthesizers, an unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics, they have the ability to create any sound imaginable.