A Woman of the World

THE PITCH

Play a silent film. Play a rock record. Start them at the same moment and the two stop being separate things.

That is Silents Synced, a touring series from Josh Frank of Austin’s Blue Starlite drive-in. Frank matches a forgotten silent picture to an album that turns out to have been arguing with it all along, then screens the two together. Earlier pairings put Nosferatu against Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac, and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. against R.E.M.’s Monster.

For the third installment he took a 1925 picture about a countess who refuses to behave, and handed it to Pearl Jam.

She’s punk rock before punk even existed.

Josh Frank, creator of Silents Synced

Frank has said the pairing arrived on a single line: “The moment I rewatched this film, I remembered the lyrics of ‘Animal’ — ‘I’d rather be with an animal’ — it just fit.”

THE PICTURE

A Woman of the World turns one hundred this year. Pola Negri plays a European countess who lands in a small Midwestern town with a blunt manner, a sharp tongue, and a tattoo on her arm — and scandalizes the place simply by declining to be made smaller by it. Frank’s reading of her is the reason the record fits.

Released

1925

Director

Malcolm St. Clair

Starring

Pola Negri, Blanche Mehaffey, Charles Emmett Mack, Chester Conklin, Holmes Herbert

Runtime

75 minutes

Rating

Not Rated

Rescored by

Josh Frank

WHAT THEY SAY