'E.T.' meets the Philadelphia Orchestra

Sound and vision

Upon its release in 1982, E.T. was widely acclaimed as a charming fantasy in which a creature from outer space, stranded on Earth, is nurtured by a suburban boy who provides it with the loving sustenance it can’t get from technology-obsessed adult humans. But Saturday night — with the orchestra spotlighted front-and-center on the Verizon stage, performing under a real major-league orchestral conductor (Stéphane Denève), and delivering the sort of power and nuance of which Hollywood studio orchestras are incapable — I found myself thinking that the whole film would seem silly and tiresome without the Williams score to push my emotional buttons. Scratch the audio and visual gimmicks in E.T. and you are left with little more than a modern variation of the Peter Pan tale: the kids believe, the grownups don’t.

Conversely, I found myself thinking that the Williams score itself would be worthless without the movie. Which is true of all movies, of course. Every film depends for its success on the synergy of script, acting, direction, and music, of which no one part would be viable by itself. Sitting alone in a dark movie theater, it’s easy to suspend disbelief for two hours and allow your psyche to be blissfully manipulated. Not so easy to watch a movie in a concert hall with a live orchestra.

What, then, was the point of this exercise? The answer, presumably, is to expose the orchestra and the Kimmel to potential new patrons. In this respect, last weekend’s E.T. concerts seem to have succeeded. At Saturday’s night’s performance the hall was nearly filled, yet I spotted not one of the regulars who normally attend orchestra concerts (surprisingly few kids, too). Whether these film groupies will be sufficiently uplifted to return remains to be seen. But a symphony orchestra struggling for solvency can’t be blamed for experimenting, occasionally, with a pop sensibility.