On 7 August the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and Philippe Béran perform Carl Davis’ score for King Vidor’s 1928 silent The Crowd; their concert will open the 2024 Locarno Film Festival.

The Crowd is a poignant depiction of unemployment and deprivation in American society, and a chilling harbinger of the Great Depression that was just around the corner, reflective of King Vidor’s desire to create a movie that traced the life story of an ordinary American citizen. It follows a man whose dogged pursuit of the American Dream ultimately comes to nothing, despite his best efforts, and his life spirals downward; his travails mirror those of the lead actor James Murray who ended up a destitute alcoholic.

Davis’ 103-minute score was first performed in 1981 at the Leicester Square Empire, conducted by Davis himself, and commissioned by Thames Television. His score plays off the tension between the lively – even hopeful – jazz and dance elements, evoking its urban energies with the Charleston and foxtrot – and the more anguished classical and Romantic material, expressing the characters’ emotional turmoil. Watch Davis discuss his music for the film here.

The commission arose in part thanks to the extraordinary impact of Davis’ work scoring Abel Gance’s five-hour silent epic Napoléon in 1980, leading to a succession of scores for Channel 4 television. Davis himself conducted The Crowd with the Hallé Orchestra in 2005 and, more recently, at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 2017.

Davis’ music has been a regular fixture at recent editions of the Locarno Film Festival. In 2022 Béran conducted Davis’ score for D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms – a soft-focus fable of East End poverty and romance - at the opening of the Festival. In 2021 he presented Davis’ music for Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! – a score Béran also conducted with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva in 2022. In 2019 he performed the score for Show People – King Vidor’s playful look at Hollywood at the end of the silent film era.