Video: Art Spiegelman's "Wordless!"

Watch Art Spiegelman's Stunning 'Wordless!'
NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 19: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been converted to black and white) Cartoonist Art Spiegelman attends the French Institute Alliance Francaise's 'After Charlie: What's Next for Art, Satire and Censorship at Florence Gould Hall on February 19, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 19: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been converted to black and white) Cartoonist Art Spiegelman attends the French Institute Alliance Francaise's 'After Charlie: What's Next for Art, Satire and Censorship at Florence Gould Hall on February 19, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images)

Art Spiegelman and his friend, the jazz composer Phillip Johnston, have collaborated on a project called “Wordless!” It’s an unusual live performance that matches Spiegelman’s passion for wordless novels (a genre that flourished in the nineteen-twenties and thirties) with Johnston’s gift for composing silent film scores. The video above is an outtake from the show about H. M. Bateman’s “One Note Man,” originally drawn in 1921 for the British humor magazine Punch. Bateman’s exquisite timing was cited by Alfred Hitchcock as the inspiration for the Albert Hall sequence in his 1934 film “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” You can see the final live performance of “Wordless!” at Columbia’s Miller Theatre this Friday.

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