{"id":257,"date":"2013-02-28T11:32:40","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T16:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tr10023.com\/?p=257"},"modified":"2021-05-07T09:19:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T13:19:03","slug":"a-few-thoughts-about-movie-scores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tr10023.com\/?p=257","title":{"rendered":"A Few Thoughts about Movie Scores"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"'Rick's<\/a>

‘Rick’s wouldn’t be Rick’s without Sam’: Dooley Wilson entertains the crowd.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

What I want from a movie score is pretty straight-forward, though of course nothing that boils down to a matter of taste is ever entirely straight-forward.\u00a0 At the very least, a\u00a0score should add something to a scene that neither dialogue nor picture alone can offer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Pyscho:<\/a>

Pyscho: Cue violins.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

A perfect example of this is the strings in the shower scene from “Psycho.”\u00a0 As you may know, Hitchcock didn’t want music in that scene, but Bernard Herrmann’s score changed his mind:\u00a0 Hitchcock had conceived the scene as silent, except for the sound of the water and the sound of the knife entering Marion Crane’s torso.\u00a0 This original conception was unquestionably violent and disturbing, but Herrmann’s shrieking strings pushed it to an altogether new level of madness and terror, and the concluding notes on the double-basses rounded the scene with a coda of mortality.\u00a0 The scene simply isn’t as intense or hair-raising without the score.\u00a0 It is now quite impossible to imagine that sequence without the music:\u00a0 the score is an essential and indivisible part of the action.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The End of Marion Crane: Double basses finish her off.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

For a somewhat different reason, “Casablanca” offers another example of what I consider great scoring.\u00a0 It’s safe to say that “Casablanca” wouldn’t work at all if it weren’t for its score — at least, not for me.\u00a0 I mean, after all, what could be less romantic than the sight of the chain-smoking, bourbon-soaked, middle-aged Humphrey Bogart with his rabbity store-bought teeth kissing the young and beautiful Ingrid Bergman?\u00a0 Bogey’s romantic dialogue is wooden and paternalistic:\u00a0 “kid” is his only endearment:\u00a0 “Here’s looking at you, kid.”\u00a0“Hey, hey!\u00a0\u00a0Kid!<\/em>\u00a0. . . What’s\u00a0wrong<\/em>?”\u00a0 And yet “Casablanca” is regularly voted one of the two or three most romantic movies of all time . . . and why?\u00a0 I say it’s because the entire love affair between Rick and Ilsa is shown through a series of flashbacks with minimal dialogue (played in front of obvious process shots of Paris) and\u00a0narrated<\/em>\u00a0by those lovely variations on “As Time Goes By.”\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dooley<\/a>

Dooley Wilson, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman: ‘Moonlight and love songs, never out of date.’<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

This is an instance of a score’s doing the heaviest lifting imaginable, and doing so effortlessly:\u00a0 on the strength of fewer than two minutes of excellent scoring, we readily accept that Bogey and Bergman are lost in the embrace of a deep and meaningful romance . . . and we weep at the end when they’re parted.\u00a0\u00a0Steiner\u00a0certainly earned his money for\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0score!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Albert<\/a>

Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot in ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Rodney Bennett’s music for “Murder on the Orient Express” is another example of excellent scoring:\u00a0 it sets you, at the beginning of the picture, in the Ottoman Empire and then, after the train heads to the West, the music resolves into a waltz.\u00a0 His music leading up to the departure of the Orient Express also provides what production and costume design couldn’t do all by themselves:\u00a0 a heady sense of the glamour, luxuriousness\u00a0and excitement of first class train travel in the 1930s.\u00a0 What his music doesn’t<\/em> do is act as aural wallpaper.\u00a0 Nor does\u00a0Steiner’s score to “Casablanca,” nor Herrmann’s to “Psycho.”\u00a0 Music should\u00a0never<\/em>\u00a0be used as wallpaper. \u00a0(Benny Herrmann hated<\/em> Bennett’s score: \u00a0“A train can’t fucking waltz<\/em>!”)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kenneth Branagh lathers up his men: We must have music.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Patrick Doyle’s score to Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V” is so overtly great that I won’t bother to enumerate its virtues here.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that Doyle’s music sets one absolutely in the proper time and place, and provides potent atmosphere.\u00a0 It also got the star\/director out of many a jam:\u00a0 Branagh simply doesn’t have the pipes for the big speeches and Doyle’s score provided the heroism and majesty that his voice could not accommodate. \u00a0Olivier, you may remember, performed the famous Crispin Crispian speech\u00a0a capella<\/em>:\u00a0 he spoke it so musically that underscoring would have been redundant\u00a0and intrusive;\u00a0Branagh’s voice needed help and Doyle’s brilliantly appropriate underscoring has the effect of making one almost believe that Branagh is fit to black Olivier’s boots.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n