A MUSICAL event at the Ritz Cinema, in Thirsk, harked back to the first decades of its 100-year plus history.

The accomplished semi-professional orchestra faced the daunting task of providing dramatic music to accompany the silent version of the 1929 Alfred Hitchcock film Blackmail.

Crammed into limited space between the front stalls and screen, the players had to work hard.

There are few pieces in their repertoire that require an hour and a quarter of continuous playing in a piece where the pace and character of the music continuously varies to suit the action.

If they missed a beat, I was too engaged by the film to notice.

This is probably the first time a full orchestra has played to a film at the Ritz. There are no surviving records, but the atmosphere was probably only ever enhanced by a pianist.

The score was specially composed by Neil Brand, leading expert on film music of all periods. The man charged with keeping his eye simultaneously on the screen action, the score and the players was conductor George Morton.

The event was hard work for all concerned, but as an overall experience, the effort was worth it.

The score was well integrated into the action – none of the traditional hackneyed improvisation. The film, very much of its period, was recognisable as a Hitchcock production.

His traditional appearance in the background of his films is here as a passenger on a London tube train, highlighted in the score by a subtle quotation from the theme tune from the Hitchcock television series Funeral March for a Marionette by Charles Gounod.

The orchestra invested much time and money in this event. Rights to the score and the film (beautifully restored by the British Film Institute) added to the costs. It is unusual for a cinema audience to applaud, but they did, and enthusiastically.

Chris Purser