As part of the BFI’s blockbuster summer project The Genius of Hitchcock, it is announced today that Hitchcock’s early silent film The Ring (1927) will be premiered in its newly restored glory and brought to life with a live performance of a brand new score by Soweto Kinch. Award winning saxophonist, MC and rising star Kinch has been commissioned by the BFI to write the new score for this heavy-hitting boxing drama that helped inspire The Artist - according to its director Michel Hazanavicius. The film will be presented in its newly restored splendour at The Hackney Empire, a venue frequented by Hitchcock, on 13th July as part of the BFI’s official involvement in the LOGOC London Festival 2012 celebrations.
Soweto joins a growing roster of British musical talent writing scores for the new silent Hitchcock restorations including Nitin Sawhney (The Lodger at The Barbican, July 21st) and Daniel Patrick Cohen (The Pleasure Garden at Wilton’s Music Hall, June 28th & 29th).
Universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest film-makers Alfred Hitchcock received critical and box office acclaim early in his career. The Ring, one of Hitchcock’s earliest films, is a brilliantly paced melodrama set in the world of boxing. The director himself claimed that, after The Lodger, this is the next 'Hitchcock' picture. The story is a love triangle between a fairground boxer whose lover falls for the charms of a professional fighter and is told with a bold visual style. This is Hitchcock's one and only original screenplay but its neatness and economy confirmed him as Britain’s leading filmmaker of his generation.
Thanks to new advances in digital technology the BFI now has a narrow window of opportunity to bring the earliest surviving Hitchcock materials together and restore these great early films to show to new audiences. The BFI National Archive has so far raised over £1million pounds to support the restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films, made between 1925 – 1929. These new prints will be presented to the world from June to October 2012, as part of the BFI’s Genius of Hitchcock project, encompassing a major retrospective at BFI Southbank showing all 57 surviving Hitchcock films plus a range of special events and guest appearances, an international touring programme and much more to be announced.
Events already announced include The Pleasure Garden (1926) at Wilton’s Music Hall with a new score by Daniel Patrick Cohen, former student of the Royal Academy of Music (28 & 29 June) – sold out, returns only, tickets £25; and Nitin Sawhney’s score to The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog (1926) will have its world premiere performed by the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall (21 July) – limited tickets still available from £15.
Further announcements of other contemporary composers writing new scores for Hitchcock’s silent films will follow.
