Friday the 13th! Beware of ladders, broken mirrors, and… black cats?
Unluckily, metaphorical big cats is the focus this week on “Picture Perfect.”
Simone Simon’s barely repressed desires are made manifest in Val Lewton’s “Cat People” (1942). Lewton was a master of suggestion, with a majority of the horrors in his films imagined, rather than seen. Part of the approach was practical, the result of shoestring budgets imposed by RKO. Whatever the case, the insinuating weirdness undeniably produced psychological chills. In fact, it was only as a concession to the studio that a literal big cat was included at all. The music was by RKO workhorse Roy Webb.
Sean Connery plays a Berber chieftain who faces off against Teddy Roosevelt in “The Wind and the Lion” (1975). In a letter to Roosevelt (played in the film by Brian Keith), Connery’s character writes, “I, like the lion, must stay in my place, while you, like the wind, will never know yours.” Jerry Goldsmith provided one of his best scores for the Moroccan adventure. In fact, he was fairly confident he finally had a lock on the Oscar. He experienced a harsh reality check when he went to see “Jaws.” (Goldsmith would win his only Academy Award the following year for his music to “The Omen.”)
Luchino Visconti’s epic telling of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” (1963) is a melancholy exploration of the fading Sicilian aristocracy. A bewhiskered Burt Lancaster plays Prince Fabrizio, who feels himself slipping into obsolescence. Nino Rota gives the film a full-blooded, operatic soundtrack, full of lyricism and pathos.
Finally, Lyn Murray provides the breezy accompaniment for Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief” (1955), with Cary Grant a reformed burglar, known as The Cat, who attempts to clear himself of some “copycat” crimes while romancing Grace Kelly on the French Riviera.
We throw salt over our left shoulder and caution to the winds, with an hour of music for metaphorical big cats – any excuse to ignore Valentine’s Day and get “The Wind and the Lion” and “The Leopard” on the same program – on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Category: Picture Perfect
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Metaphorical Big Cats on “Picture Perfect”
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Music Propels the Action on “Picture Perfect”
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we take flight with music from movies about airports and airplanes.
In the original “Airport” (1970), producer Irwin Allen established the prototype for disaster movies of all stripes by placing an all-star, aging cast in spectacular peril. Burt Lancaster! Dean Martin! George Kennedy! Jean Seberg! Jacqueline Bisset! Helen Hayes! The list goes on and on, longer than the longest runway. The bongo-laden theme is by veteran film composer Alfred Newman,” from the last of his over 200 scores.
Another movie with something of the same feel is “The V.I.P.s” (1963), allegedly inspired by the real-life love-triangle of Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and Peter Finch. The story is set at London Heathrow Airport, where flights are delayed because of a dense fog. The film was written by Terrence Rattigan and the parts cast from another laundry list of stars, including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, and Orson Welles, with Margaret Rutherford in an Academy Award-winning performance. The music is by Miklós Rózsa.
By contrast, Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” (2004) is an (intentionally) comic take on the predicament of a hapless Eastern European who finds himself in a kind limbo, trapped in an international arrivals terminal in New York, after his country erupts into civil war, so that his passport and other documentation are no longer valid. His plight mirrors that of real-life Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian who lived for 17 years in a terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Tom Hanks plays the unfortunate traveler, who makes the terminal his home, and Catherine Zeta-Jones the airline attendant with whom he strikes up a relationship. The music is by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams (whose 94th birthday it is on Sunday), and I think you’ll find it quite different from the Williams known for his work on “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones.”
Finally, we’ll turn to the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest” (1959), a film in which Cary Grant encounters love and danger in, on, and from a variety of planes, trains, and automobiles. Planes are particularly significant. During the course of the film, it’s revealed that the title is in reference to a Northwest Airlines flight; Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) must do all she can to avoid getting on a plane with Phillip Vandamm (James Mason); and of course, Roger Thornhill (Grant) flees from a strafing crop duster. Bernard Herrmann’s opening fandango propels us into the adventure.
FUN FACT: The film’s most iconic scene (pictured) is actually played without music.
Rush more to Rushmore! Music propels the action on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu -
Film Composers Think Inside the Box on “Picture Perfect”
Before “Harry Potter.” Before “Jurassic Park.” Before “E.T.” Before “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Before “Superman.” Before “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Before “Star Wars.” Before “Jaws.” Before even John Williams… there was Johnny Williams.
Well before Williams became America’s most famous living composer, he was busy honing his craft as an orchestrator, an arranger, a session pianist, and a composer in the bush league of television. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear some of “Johnny” Williams’ music for “Lost in Space.”
Also on the program will be selections from “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” by Bernard Herrmann, the theme from “Wagon Train” by Jerome Moross, and a medley of well-known television music by Jerry Goldsmith.
Don’t touch that dial! Movie composers think inside the box, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies (and television), now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu -
Bustin’ Out of the Joint on “Picture Perfect”
This week on “Picture Perfect,” get yourself free. It’s an hour of music from movies about prison breaks.
Indomitable Steve McQueen does hard time on Devil’s Island in “Papillon” (Jerry Goldsmith); Paul Newman sticks it to The Man in “Cool Hand Luke” (Lalo Schifrin); Tim Robbins makes good use of a Rita Hayworth poster in “The Shawshank Redemption” (Thomas Newman); and an all-star cast, led by a barbed-wire hopping McQueen, flee their Nazi captors in “The Great Escape” (Elmer Bernstein).
Let’s face it, nobody looks good in orange. Grab a shank and a file. We’re bustin’ out of the joint, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu -
Double Your Pleasure on “Picture Perfect”
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’re seeing double.
James Stewart plays Scottie Ferguson, a traumatized police detective who becomes obsessed with the woman he loves – and loses – in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958). Kim Novak portrays both the enigmatic beauty and her spitting image, who Ferguson, rather creepily, attempts to mold. Bernard Herrmann wrote the hypnotic score.
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “La double vie de Véronique”/“The Double Life of Véronique” (1991) depicts parallel characters living in Poland and France who are mysteriously linked, both of them played by Irène Jacob. The performance(s) earned Jacob an award for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. The music, which plays a significant role in the actual plot, is by Zbigniew Preisner.
For the second time in her career, Bette Davis gets a chance to play an evil twin in “Dead Ringer” (1964). The first was in the 1946 good twin-bad twin melodrama, “A Stolen Life.” When asked what the difference was between the two performances, Davis quipped, “About 20 years.” “Dead Ringer” was directed by her longtime friend and “Now, Voyager” co-star Paul Henreid. The music is by André Previn, whose score employs a stock-in-trade sinister harpsichord, yet when he comes to write the love theme, he manages to whip up one hell of a tribute to Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Korngold scored a number of Davis’ films in the 1940s, though he is principally remembered for his work on the swashbucklers of Errol Flynn. To capitalize on Flynn’s star-making performance in “Captain Blood,” Warner Brothers produced a big screen adaptation of Mark Twain’s Tudor switcheroo, “The Prince and the Pauper” (1937). Flynn steals the show as Miles Hendon, the devil-may-care guardian of Prince Edward and Tom Canty, Edward’s mirror image, played by real-life twins Bobby and Billy Mauch. If you’re a Korngold fan, or an enthusiast of violin concertos, you may recognize some of the music. Korngold recycled the theme for use in the last movement of his Violin Concerto, championed by Heifetz and others.
Double your pleasure with an hour of doppelgangers, twins, and dual identities, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
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