LDV118

19 JEAN-MARC LUISADA I can’t resist asking you a rather provocative question: do you think that music is a necessity in a film? I’ll give you an equally provocative answer: the older I get, the more I think that cinema needs to be silent – or, to put it more precisely, that the image is sometimes so powerful that sound becomes superfluous. I remember seeing Murnau’s Sunrise at the Cinémathèque Française de Chaillot, projected at nineteen frames per second, without any sound or musical accompaniment. This silent film from 1927 became a genuine . . . symphony! Where did your love for the cinema originate? It was the year I turned thirteen. I was going to England to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School. I saw Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice , which is still for me the most beautiful film of all time. That masterpiece made such an impression on me that it probably gave me the urge to become a professional musician. I told myself that one could die of love, and love the cinema to distraction. It was a strange film to produce that kind of emotional upheaval, to be honest, because in fact it’s almost entirely silent . . .