Originally scheduled to take place back in January, I have just learned that Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will be recording their new score for King Vidor's long lost BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT (1926) starting this week. They performed it live at the Kansas Silent Film Festival in Topeka over the weekend. 
No details were provide on the other John Gilbert feature MONTE CRISTO (1922) though. Mont Alto is not scoring this movie, but it too will also be part of the 2 disc Flicker Alley DVD when it is released sometime later this year. Possibly by June or July, but it could slip into the Fall. Here is the latest news from Rodney Sauer. _________________"Yikes! No need to panic.
You already know that MONTE CRISTO is to be included as an "extra" since you complained about it last fall. The release date slipped because rights problems surfaced for a while, so other projects took priority on the release schedule until those could be resolved. (It was rights problems that led to the negative and all known release prints being destroyed back in the 1930s, fortunately this time the issues weren't so serious.)
Mont Alto is recording the score starting Wednesday, and we plan to have it finished by mid-March; though some of the music is more difficult than I had anticipated. I'll try to get some clips up when they're done. The score was very well received in Topeka (with a standing ovation for the combined film/music presentation), and one person familiar with the film told me that the new music lifts the film considerably. I've been told that the English titles (the text of which was luckily preserved at USC) are a big improvement over the French titles in the source material (which dropped the considerable sly humor in translation).
As for the missing reel, I don't find that it hurts the film much at all, as it has been very competently bridged by still photos and all of the intertitles. The choreography of the other fight scenes in the film is so well done that it would have been nice to see the bar brawl, but since it happens that a reel is missing, I consider it a good thing it's that one instead of a more important reel later on.
When a release date is scheduled it will be announced -- it's not that anyone's trying to keep it secret, so please be patient. It hasn't been decided. Current plans are for it still to be released in 2009."
Rodney Sauer
The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
http://www.mont-alto.com
"Let the Music do the Talking!"
