Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Dirk Brossé

Royal Albert Hall, September 21, 2019

A special showing of the film often regarded as the pinnacle of the Star Wars series.

I have a distinct feeling that the last time I saw The Empire Strikes Back on the big screen was when the movie was first released back in the summer of 1980, when its use of ‘Episode V’ in the opening crawl surprised many viewers, and its revelations regarding Luke’s parentage had stayed a pretty guarded secret. Of course I’ve seen it since on VHS/DVD/Blu-ray (most recently in the Special Editions from 20+ years ago) but there are so many details that get lost, even on a decent sized HD television.

Seeing the stop motion AT-AT Walkers in action on Hoth at the size they are in the Albert Hall for these showings is quite breathtaking, and I’d forgotten just how much of the film (pretty much the entire first third) is taken up with the action from there. Mention Empire, and people tend to remember the scenes with Yoda as teacher (rather than Yoda as intergalactic nuisance) and the bits in Cloud City, but there’s so much great material before we get anywhere near there.

There’s some bits that don’t hold up as well too – my 17 year old daughter’s comment in the interval was that if someone came on to one of her friends in the way that Han does to Leia, they’d try to get her away from him – and rather weirdly, one or two scenes felt as if they came from a less well preserved print (colour grading and clarity vanishing for five or six seconds). But you go to one of these for the combination of the big screen film and the orchestra, and the Philharmonia provided a terrific musical accompaniment.

This was one of the best mixed films with orchestra that I’ve been to – the subtitles were on but you could hear everything, from effects to dialogue, clearly around, above and amongst the music. There aren’t many moments in this without some form of score and the musicians gave it everything it needed. You could carp about the odd moment that wasn’t as crisp as the LSO were on the digital soundtrack, but that would be totally missing the point of these – it’s the immediacy of the sound, at times almost shaking the floor of the venerable building.

Verdict: An epic presentation of an epic Star Wars movie. What’s not to love? 9/10

Paul Simpson

Tickets remain available for the showings on 22 September at 6.30 and 23 September at 7.30