Giovacchini’s “The Golem”

Latest in Long Line of Silent Film Adaptations

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

CAMBRIDGE - Musician, director and sound designer David Giovacchini will perform, along with synthesist Joe Moreau, his new score for the 1920 film "The Golem: How He Came Into the World," on Nov. 1 at Cambridge’s Zeitgeist Gallery. The film, based on the Jewish legend of the Golem of Prague originally produced by German director Paul Wegener (who also appeared as the Golem), will be shown with the music at Providence’s AS220 on Nov. 13 as well.

Giovacchini, who uses the stage name David Farewell, is a Sephardic Jew of Italian descent. “The Golem” is one of a series of silent films with Judaic content for which he has composed accompaniment. The recipient of an annual grant from the Jewish Community Foundation of the North Shore, he has devoted himself to this work for the past four years. Upcoming performances will include an Oct. 23 at 1 p.m. showing at the JCCNS of the comedy "The Rose and the Shamrock", a silent film about intermarriage between an Irish and a Jewish family which inspired the popular Kellys and the Cohens series, and an April 9, 2003 premiere at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem of his new score for the classic film of life in the Lower East Side ghetto, "His People.”

“I have been a professional musician for over 20 years,” explained Farewell, 43, who consults for the Peabody-Essex’s film program and is the music director/sound designer for Man Mountain Video Productions, “and have been involved in many different kinds of music. But I always find that the music that means the most to me is that which has some Jewish content, where I can express some of my Jewish soul, if you will.” Farewell’s wife Lois is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, and he credits her with returning him to the fold, following an assimilated childhood life. “She's a very inspiring lady. The more I studied reform Judaism the more I was inspired by its social message and commitment to putting those beliefs into action, and I found there was room there for my spiritual and mystical beliefs too.” They have two children: Lido, a boy of 10 and Isabel, a girl of nine, and are about to celebrate their 20^th anniversary. “I have been given many gifts in my life, but they are the best. I naturally tend toward the darker, sadder, more pessimistic side of things, but they help me keep some perspective, as does Lois.”

Farewell has also performed music for the original silent 1927 "Ben-Hur,” D.W. Griffith's "Judith of Bethulia,” and 1929’s "Oded the Wanderer," the first feature film ever made in Israel. “Oded” was the initial music-to-celluloid foray for Farewell.

“For many years,” he recalled, “I was active in a Sephardic music group here on the North Shore called Los Bilbilikos Cativos (the Captive Nightingales), and it was through this group that I organized a musical showing of ‘Oded’ as a Yom ha-Atsma'ut celebration.”

The Oded production was a laborious, authentic and technical undertaking. “This film is totally unavailable,” he noted, “and I had to acquire a copy directly from the director's son in Israel. From this I progressed to scoring the films myself using my computer.”

Wegener's Golem digresses slightly from the classic, historically chilling tale. “It is interesting that what Wegener adds to the plot is an illicit love affair between Rabbi Loew's daughter Miriam and a German knight Florian. The film depicts Jews as exotic outsiders to German society, who are to be feared for their sorcerous powers on the one hand (even the Emperor is cowed by Rabbi Loew's Golem), and desired for their strange charms so different from those of good Germans on the other. It is an interesting gauge of German public sentiment five years before the rise of the Nazis.

“Wegener is masterly in his use of the German expressionistic style, as seen in the better known contemporaneous films like Murnau's ‘Nosferatu’, or ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’. It is a haunting film which influenced James Whale's production of ‘Frankenstein’ in the same way that the original Golem legend influenced Mary Shelley.”

Farewell generally lets the movie determine the style he chooses. “Something like ‘The Golem,’ he said, "is best with a brooding electronic ambient soundtrack, but a film like ‘Ben Hur’ required the full Hollywood orchestral treatment, all done with computer.”

Another Farewell project involved sampling the voices of notable cantors of the 1920s and 30s and placing them over a new electronic setting. “I thought this might be a way to encourage more, and younger people to hear these incredible and unique singers," he said. “The results are available for download from www.mp3.com/netzach. Netzach means eternity, and this is what I hoped I was helping these voices survive until.”

Farewell film music can also be downloaded at www.mp3.com/farewell23_fmp (FMP stands for Film Music Project).

The Zeitgeist Gallery is located at 1353 Cambridge St. in Inman Square, Cambridge. For ticket information, visit www.zeitgeist-gallery.org or call 617-876-6060. CDs of Farewell’s projects will be sold at the show.