News

Portishead and Goldfrapp Join Forces On New Film Score

• 4th Mar 2010

Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) are to collaborate on a new score for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s classic 1928 film 'The Passion Of Joan Of Arc'.

The film will be screened at Bristol’s Colston Hall on May 7th, accompanied by a live premiere performance of the new score. Charles Hazlewood will conduct an eclectic group, including Utley and Gregory, consisting of six electric guitars, members of the Monteverdi Choir, percussion, horns and keyboards.

The music incorporates extended techniques for guitar and voices providing a powerful landscape for this incredibly innovative and moving film about the last days of Joan of Arc.

Long regarded as a towering masterpiece of silent cinema, the film chronicles Joan’s trial, imprisonment, torture and execution. The story is told using her own words from trial transcripts discovered in 1924 shortly before her canonisation.

Dreyer shot much of the film in close up, allowing the faces of the actors to tell the story through their expressions, inspiring many future generations of film makers including Sergio Leone.

The original negative, was, for decades, feared lost in a fire until incredibly, in 1981, it was discovered in a cupboard in a Norwegian mental institution.