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If you are reading this I assume (always a dangerous situation) that music in motion pictures is important.
How about initiating a discussion of music utilized in motion pictures from the silver age of silents (pit accompaniment with screen action)to the dawn of the talkies with limited music?
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When I was growing up, watching silent movies had mostly pipe organ scores, and I was comfortable with them. The modern score for a TCM screening last weekend for a movie called "The Penalty" with Lon Chaney Sr. was "wall to wall," reminded me of an endless Phillip Glass piece. It was painful, and it was a pretty good film. Even done right, scores for silents seem to be doomed to fail. I remember the hoopla over Gance's "Napoleon," scored by Carmine Coppola, and realizing after the first couple of hours, that I didn't care about the music at all. In modern sound movies, most directors seem to use the music to compensate for poor film making, or because they realize most movie goers are nearly brain dead from television (or genetics), and use the music cues to tell the audience where to react...like a rim shot from a drummer in a stripper show. Just a rambling opinion.
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For some films, it may be less important as maybe the director didn't know or didn't care about the whole art of pictures and sound. I know you mention older ones, but my view is that the best directors recognize that sound is half of the art.
To me:
Hitchcock and Spielberg both had great composers that they generally used in all of their stuff. For movies back in the 40s, 50s, I recall liking Waxman and Tiomkin as outstanding movie composers also. Actually, I just looked those last 2 up on Wikipedia and found that they also worked for Hitchcock.
Kubrick and Polanski both put as much effort into the sound as they the pictures.
I never listen to movie music except when viewing the movies, as part of the whole piece of art.
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and it's in color!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
Is there actually sheet music written for the bigger budget films that actually survived?
so I don't have an answer.
The few silent films I've seen that were accompanied by live music (not necessarily featuring music composed in the same time frame
as the initial release of the film) certainly benefited from the addition of the music performed. These include "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari",
"Go West", "The High Sign", "One Week", "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" and a few others.
Whether these films would have been as enjoyable, better or worse minus
the music and shown as the filmmaker's had intended I'm not sure.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Audio cues are more important than visual cues in influencing how the audience responds to film. If you've watched a horror sequence with and without the audio, you know what I mean. Or watch it with circus music in the background and see how scary it is.
Audio and motion picture go hand-in-hand. Films like Master and Commander--where the audio, more than the video, makes you feel like you're on a ship--and Babel--which has a compelling soundtrack--suck you in by virtue of the audio cues alone.
This is why I'm amazed that so many audiophiles who come to this site say they don't care about the sound quality of their home theater system.
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world. -Gandhi
Ok lets start with my favorite studio, Universal Pictures. I happen to be a Universal Pictures devotee (from the IMP days to 1936 when the Laemmles were forced out) and Laemmle family historian. That being said.....where to start? An excellent place would be with composer Heinz Roemheld..who working in a theater in Milwaukee composing music (for the pit orchestra)for the Universal film The Phantom of The Opera. Universal head Carl Laemmle, Sr liked what he heard and offered the young composer a position in Berlin at another Laemmle theatre..........shortly thereafter Roemheld was brought to California to head the music dept........he eschewed the usual Tin Pan Alley tune smiths, instead embracing the classical masters and their standard repertoire......Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven and others........listen to most of Universals product during the 1930's.......and one will hear snippets of the great masters.
I'm trying to think of soundtrack material that was composed specifically for a film that I listen to based on only musical enjoyment.
I'm sure there must be some!
I'm not counting 'soundtracks' that are part of a musical or are simply compilations of pre-existing songs.
Great question. I look forward to other people's answers.
And they have pretty darn good sound quality.
-RW-
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world. -Gandhi
the link gives you a run down.
All three of those have gotten a lot of listening time. Local Heroes and Cat People vinyl are about wore out, Staight Story on CD.
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"I'd like to own a squadron of tanks"
...and the music is exquisite.
d
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