With Easter and Passover right around the corner, the most obvious course of action would be to program music from Biblical epics, but I’ve already done that in the past. In fact, last year I spread it out over two weeks, with one devoted to the Old Testament and the other to the New. It’s been done. This year, I figured I’d give it a rest (kind of) and instead present music from cinematic treatments of the lives of the saints.
We’ll hear a suite from “The Song of Bernadette” (1943), one of Jennifer Jones’ finest hours. Jones was honored with an Academy Award for her performance (the film was nominated in 12 categories). Franz Werfel’s novel tells the story of Bernadette Soubirous, a Lourdes peasant prone to visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Igor Stravinsky made several attempts to break into Hollywood, but he could never keep up with the grinding schedule. He took a crack at scoring the “Apparition of the Virgin” scene, but then thought better of it. The project went to Alfred Newman, who won his third (of nine) Oscars. Stravinsky’s music was recycled in the second movement of his “Symphony in Three Movements.”
The story of Joan of Arc has been translated to film many times. In the case of “Saint Joan” (1957), Otto Preminger adapted the play by George Bernard Shaw. Newcomer Jean Seberg was cast in the title role. Her inexperience brought her in for a sound critical drubbing. Even an old hand like screenwriter Graham Greene was not immune to critical barbs for the liberties he took in reworking Shaw’s play. Despite all that, the score, by Russian-born English composer Mischa Spoliansky, is lovely.
By contrast, the film of “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), after the play of Robert Bolt, was lavishly praised, especially Paul Scofield’s performance as Sir Thomas More (for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor). The film won six Academy Awards in all, including that for Best Picture. The period-inflected score is by Georges Delerue.
It’s sobering to look back and realize that such an intelligent, dramatic film could become such a popular success. “A Man for All Seasons” was the fifth highest-grossing film of 1966. The fifth highest-grossing film of 2014 was “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.”
I guess it’s impossible to get through Easter without some Biblical bombast, so why not go all out with “Quo Vadis” (1951)? Henryk Sienkiewicz’s international bestseller incorporates into its narrative Saints Peter and Paul, but the really interesting characters are the cynical Petronius, who knows how to throw a party, and the quite mad Nero, who plays the lyre even as Rome burns.
Miklós Rózsa’s score has been much-lauded for its attempt at historical authenticity (the incorporation of contemporaneous Greek, Hebrew and Sicilian melodies), though its popularity has been eclipsed, somewhat, by that of his work on “Ben-Hur” and “King of Kings.” “Quo Vadis” is really the film in which Rózsa lays out the blueprint for a decade or more of big screen piety. Bernard Herrmann called it “the score of a lifetime.”
I hope you’ll join me for music from movies depicting the saints this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Jennifer Jones and the Lourdes’ prayer
