Mozart Festival 2020: Cinema Improvisando - The Crowd

Originally organised in 2006 in commemoration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday anniversary, the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival has developed into a highly successful and well-loved annual classical music event.

This February, composer Paul Hanmer, and guitarist Louis Mhlanga, will be hosting two special performances of 'Cinema Improvisando' at The Bioscope.

On these nights, they will be performing a live improvised soundtrack to a classic film.

Tickets are R100 for each performance.

THE CROWD (1928)

The Crowd is an American silent film directed by King Vidor and starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman and Bert Roach.

The film is an influential and acclaimed feature which was nominated at the very first Academy Award presentation in 1928, for several awards, including a unique and artistic production for MGM, as well as the award for best director for King Vidor.

In 1989, the film was one of the first 25 to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being; "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Synopsis: Young John Sims (James Murray) weathers the death of his father and travels to New York City in search of success. Instead, he becomes a low-level worker in an enormous office of a nameless corporation. After he meets a beautiful young woman (Eleanor Boardman), things seem to be looking up, but before long the newlyweds are sullen and bickering, and the arrival of their children leaves John feeling trapped in a dead-end existence. Then tragedy strikes, causing him to reassess his life.