Music to Watch Films By: Times leading article

[Maurice]

The Times 01/02/11
Leading article: Music to Watch Films By
Composers like John Barry provide the soundtrack not only to movies but to our lives

Think of the movie JAWS. Now think of JAWS without the heartbeat thump of the film score signalling the presence of the shark. Think of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Now think of the scene without the mimetic stabbing of the orchestra's sawing string section.

Think of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. What springs to mind first - the plots or Ennio Morricone's iconic film scores? Think of Harry Lime and you'll hear Anton Karas's zither from THE THIRD MAN.

And without the genius of John Barry, who composed the theme for GOLDFINGER along with many other Bond hits, James Bond movies would have remained a B-movie franchise rather than the A-movie phenomenon that they have been for close to half a century.

Yet in the perverse hierarchy of Hollywood glamour, the composer of the musical score lurks alongside the much pitied writer of the script, even though, between them, these two provide the spine of any great film. As Orson Welles said of Bernard Herrmann's musical contribution to CITIZEN KANE, the music does half the work in a movie, mostly without the audience even knowing the composer's name.

The cruellest part of it for the composer is that, in a good film, that is as it should be. Just as the art of dressing well is to dress so that others do not notice your elegance, the art of a great music score is to fuse so perfectly with what is on the screen that audiences are sucked into the mood of the movie - whether by weeping or whooping - without their realizing why.

Barry's successes were not limited to providing music to accompany Drax and Blofeld. He won five Academy Awards, including Oscars for BORN FREE and for DANCES WITH WOLVES. He composed music for ZULU and for THE IPCRESS FILE. For MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Barry minted a haunting signature tune from just eight notes blown out of a bluesy harmonica.

He stood firmly among the masters of an art created by Max Steiner, whose score for KING KONG provided the template of a running musical backdrop to films (Steiner was also among its most passionate practitioners: GONE WITH THE WIND runs for nearly four hours, of which Steiner's score is silent for 20 minutes).

But even Steiner's talent was eclipsed by Bernard Herrmann, who was commonly regarded in Hollywood as the greatest film composer of them all. Between writing scores for CITIZEN KANE and Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER, Herrmann squeezed out music for Hitchcock's VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTH WEST and PSYCHO. For movie music to chew your nails by, nobody could beat him.

Yet from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA to CHARIOTS OF FIRE, from BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S to STAR WARS, movie music has provided the soundtrack to our lives with little recognition to those who compose it.

Harold Arlen, who composed the score for THE WIZARD OF OZ, was among the many composers whose tunes were sung, but who themselves were unsung by moviegoers. Oscar Hammerstein said of him that: "You are listening to sweet and caressing notes and suddenly the tune flies up and away and you are carried with it."

To Irving Berlin, "Harold's best is the best". But Arlen knew his place in Hollywood's hall of fame. When dancing once with Marilyn Monroe, Arlen whispered to her: "People are staring at us." She replied: "They must know who you are." Arlen did not need the joke explained to him. Like his fellow composers, he had grown used to being 'Mister Cellophane'.

[Maurice]

Daily Telegraph 02/02/11
Rowan Pelling, columnist: "Music from the movies has a hold on me that Bach can't match"

The joy of great film scores is that the music is so cheerfully and unabashedly manipulative that it's the listener's duty to surrender. brilliant soundtracks are the Japanese knotweed of music, taking root in such a virulent fashion that they can never be eradicated; flooding your head with lush orchestration when least expected.

You may think that your tastes have matured, and then you suddenly hear a few bars of the BORN FREE theme tune and burst into tears.

So I was a blubbering wreck this week when news programmes ran tributes to the film composer John Barry. As I wept, I tried to explain to my baffled husband that it certainly wasn't the lyrics that moved me ("Live free and beauty surrounds you/The world still astounds you/Each time you look at a star"), but the fact that Barry's music is on speed-dial to certain whirlwind emotions in my psyche.

BORN FREE was one of the first films I saw in the cinema; aged five, it was far easier to feel a devastating sense of loss at the thought of being parted from your hand-reared lion cub than from any human. And Barry's James Bond scores offer an instant conduit to an overwhelming sensation of louche glamour and tantalising peril. At my wedding reception, an old schoolfriend - a Sevenoaks-born banker who's the toast of am-dram circles - belted out Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever to a roar of approval. No chamber music, however glorious, could so rapidly grab such a disparate crowd by the jugular.

I can't be alone in feeling that music manufactured for the movies often has a greater claim to dominate Desert Island Discs than the Bach. Everyone knows exactly what Amanda in PRIVATE LIVES means when she declares: "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."

Puccini's arias may set your heart aflutter, but the chances are that Lara's Theme from DR ZHIVAGO does the job quicker. The 1812 Overture is stirring, but is it as rousing as THE DAMBUSTERS theme?

When I watch a John Carpenter film, it's not the visuals that make me quake, but the extraordinarily ominous scores. The potency of film music resides in the fact that its very remit is to be unscrupulous: we want to resist its melodramatic lure, but it sneaks up on us, like a mugger in a dark alley.

[darrenburnfan]

No matter how much is spent on a film, or how long it is before the cameras, the composer is always the last to be brought in...usually after the film has been completed. This is odd, as often, it's the music that makes a film so good. As Sir Malcolm Arnold once said: "Believe me, music is very important to a film. It can really enhance a good film and make a mediocre film seem far better than it actually is." Arnold was given only a fortnight to compose his Oscar winning score for The Bridge on the River Kwai. "I'd never sweated so hard in all my life", he later said about it. But this seemed a typical attitude among film directors and producers in those days. They had no idea how important a good score would be to the success of their films. Another Oscar winning composer, Miklos Rozsa, was asked by Alfred Hitchcock to score his recently finished film Spellbound. "How long do you want to do the score?", Hitchcock asked him. "Six weeks", replied Rozsa. "SIX WEEKS?" retorted Hitchcock incredulously. "I shot the entire picture in six weeks!" "Ahhh", said Rozsa, "but how long did it take to write the screenplay?" "That's a different matter entirely", answered Hitchcock. "No it isn't", Rozsa told him. "I can record the score in three days, but first, it has to be composed and that will take six weeks." Apparently, Hitchcock hadn't got the common sense to understand such a simple fact. Rozsa's wonderful score for Spellbound won an Oscar, but Hitchcock said he didn't like it. What a funny bloke he was.

[m35541]

For the latter Sergio Leone westerns the Morricone score (or at least large chunks or it) was composed first and then played by Leone when shooting the relevant scenes.

[Steve Crook]

For the latter Sergio Leone westerns the Morricone score (or at least large chunks or it) was composed first and then played by Leone when shooting the relevant scenes.

Powell & Pressburger did this for The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). It let everybody move to the rhythm of the music, even when they weren't actually "dancing". All the voices (spoken and sung) were pre-recorded along with the music so the actors could mime to what they were hearing. Everything was done with reference to the music.

That meant that they could film it like a silent film and that they didn't have to soundproof everything and keep quiet as they were filming it. So they got rid of the big soundproofing "blimp" from the Technicolor camera which meant that it could move a lot more then was usual. It also meant that Powell, and others, could call out to direct the performers as they moved around the set.

Not everyone likes the end result, especially that last act. But it was certainly innovative

Steve

[Moor Larkin]

Rozsa's wonderful score for Spellbound won an Oscar, but Hitchcock said he didn't like it. What a funny bloke he was.

Joseph Losey is said to have *disowned* "The Gypsy & The Gentleman" because someone at rank insisted different music was used to what he had planned alongside his screenplay. I have to say that when I watched the movie, I thought the music was beautiful. I think a lot of this is just about associative feelings in our own minds once we have seen a film we really like, and that a lot of music could fit another film quite easily. There are quite a few blockbusters where I still get confused in the first few bars, about which film exactly it is from.

None of this is to decry the beautiful music, but to say it *makes* the film is a non sense. I can think of one or two films where the music is exceedingly lovely, but the film is still exceedingly poor.

[Rowdon]

None of this is to decry the beautiful music, but to say it *makes* the film is a non sense. I can think of one or two films where the music is exceedingly lovely, but the film is still exceedingly poor.

That first article states that James Bond wouldn't have become an A-list franchise without the music as if it were a fact. I'm not trying to diminish the importance or glory of John Barry's music, but the JB series had a number of iconic points right from the beginning of which JB's music (that's JB, not JB, you understand) was one. I think this kind of overstatement does a disservice to the artist involved.

By the way - what was the story with 1984? Does anyone remember that the Eurythmics were supposed to do it but delivered too late, so there were two versions, and at some awards ceremony (the Baftas?) the director (?) spoke about how you can't just replace one music with another just because they're pop stars or some such?