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Tag: John Williams

Titanic Soundtrack & More Ocean Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with “Titanic” back in theaters for its 20th anniversary, we’ll hear selections from James Horner’s most famous score. The “Titanic” soundtrack sold over 30 million copies, making it the highest-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack of all time.

We’ll round out the hour with more oceanic agony, with music from “Raise the Titanic” (John Barry), “The Perfect Storm” (James Horner), “A Night to Remember” (William Alwyn), and “The Poseidon Adventure” (John Williams).

“Titanic” is just the tip of the iceberg, this Friday at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network.

December 1, 2017
Korngold’s Kings Row Star Wars Influence

This week on “Picture Perfect, with a new “Star Wars” right around the corner, we’ll hear an extensive suite from one of John Williams’ acknowledged influences, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Kings Row” (1942). The settings of the two films couldn’t be more different – “Kings Row’s” struggle of decency against sinister impulses takes place in a small Midwestern town – but Korngold’s opulently orchestrated score brims with romance and heroism. Check out that opening fanfare!

Although he was one of the great musical prodigies – celebrated in Vienna in his teens and 20s, especially for his operas – Korngold’s name was kept alive for decades after his death largely because of his work on a number of classic Warner Brothers films of the 1930s and ’40s. His music for the Errol Flynn swashbucklers has been particularly well-loved.

He had already written music for “Captain Blood,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” and “The Sea Hawk” by the time he was offered work on “Kings Row.” Without knowing anything more about the project than the title, he commenced writing music for the main theme, on the assumption that the film was going to be another costume picture. In reality, it was a turn-of-the-century soap opera based in America’s heartland.

Korngold’s approach couldn’t have been more fortuitous, since it led him to compose one of his grandest themes. It punctuates the action of the film like a cinematic “Ein Heldenleben” – which should come as little surprise, since Korngold actually knew Richard Strauss.

“Kings Row” was based on the bestseller by Henry Bellamann. The book reveals a kind of dark underbelly to the civility of small town American life. The subject matter was ahead of its time, laying the groundwork for the novel “Peyton Place,” the film “Blue Velvet,” and television series such as “Twin Peaks” and “Desperate Housewives.” Yet at its core is the fundamental decency of its protagonist, Parris Mitchell, and his circle of friends. It is Mitchell’s ambition to become a doctor, and he heads to Vienna to study a new branch of science known as psychology.

Mitchell was played in the film by Robert Cummings, his best friend Drake by Ronald Reagan, and Randy, a former tomboy from a family of railroad workers, by Ann Sheridan, who received top billing. The studio filled out the cast with a superb ensemble, including Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn, Harry Davenport and even Maria Ouspenskaya, best known as Maleva the gypsy woman from “The Wolf Man.”

It’s a grand piece of entertainment, if you can get into the spirit of it, depending on your tolerance for incest, sadism, involuntary amputation, wrongful commitment to an insane asylum and suicide. This is the film in which Reagan exclaims the immortal line, “Where’s the rest of me?”

Thanks to the Hays Code, the screen adaptation was considerably toned down from – and more upbeat than – the novel. The emphasis is on Mitchell’s idealism in the face of a cruel, and at times horrifying, world. Along the way, there are several amusing (from our perspective) explanations of that mysterious new discipline, the study of the mind.

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of music from “Kings Row,” by the King of Film Composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, this Friday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 24, 2017
Friendly Aliens in Film Scores Close Encounters ET

People of Earth! We come in peace!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” in honor of the 40th anniversary of the release of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (November 16, 1977) and the 35th anniversary of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (June 11, 1982), we listen to music from films about benevolent visitors from other worlds.

Friendly E.T.’s have been out of fashion now for quite some time. We seem to be mired in some neo-‘50s zeitgeist, as far as paranoia and invaders are concerned. But that certainly wasn’t the case back in 1982, when Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” almost singlehandedly turned everything on its head.

No more invaders from Mars. Spielberg would get to that a couple of decades later, when he remade H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds.” No, during the Reagan Era, with the Cold War winding down and terrorism not yet so much in the news, cinematic E.T.’s were benevolent at best, or at worst, just trying to do their thing. They were there to be misunderstood and even imperiled by man until the warm, fuzzy, often poignant finale.

Spielberg had already explored the concept of the benevolent visitor from space, of course, with 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” But there was an ambiguity for much of the film as to what exactly the aliens’ intentions were. In fact, there is at least one sequence that would have given a child nightmares. Whatever tension is generated dissolves in the euphoric finale, centered on the communicative power of music. Like so many films back then and so few now, “Close Encounters” doesn’t so much exhaust the viewer as leave him or her with a feeling of hope.

John Williams wrote the music for both “Close Encounters” and “E.T.,” and the two scores couldn’t be more different. For “CE3K,” the avant garde syntax of the early, eerier sequences dissolves into unabashed lyricism for the transcendent finale. “E.T” takes a much more intimate approach. The moving story of a friendship between a boy and a stranded space botanist is rendered in music that is by turns tender, buoyant, and touching. The score earned Williams a much-deserved fourth Academy Award. “E.T.” may very well be Williams’ masterpiece, and Spielberg’s too.

The “friendly” alien of “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951), Klaatu, may come in peace, but it is a message delivered with tough love. If mankind refuses to abide, his giant robot, Gort, will destroy the planet. At a time when Martians invariably meant trouble, this was actually progressive. Bernard Herrmann’s score is one of his best, and certainly one of his most interesting. Always an eccentric orchestrator, Herrmann’s concept of extra-terrestrial music incorporates violin, cello, electric bass, two theremins, two Hammond organs, a large studio electric organ, three vibraphones, two glockenspiels, two pianos, two harps, three trumpets, three trombones and four tubas. Overdubbing and tape-reversal techniques were also employed.

Finally, Ron Howard’s “Cocoon” (1985) is one of the more worthwhile of the seemingly endless procession of extra-terrestrial films to be released in the wake of “E.T.” At least this one took a different approach by bringing alien forces into contact with a Florida retirement community with the unexpected result of rejuvenating its inhabitants. A modern take on the fabled Fountain of Youth, the film is a showcase for veteran actors Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Jack Gilford and Don Ameche (who won an Academy Award). James Horner’s score is much sought after by collectors.

Klaatu barada nikto! Join me for the touchdown of friendly alien films, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

November 3, 2017
War of the Worlds & Martian Movie Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Halloween only days away, my thoughts turn to Grover’s Mill, the community located not far outside of Princeton, NJ, that became the focal point of Orson Welles’ notorious radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds.”

On October 30, 1938, Welles’ Mercury Theatre presented the classic’s dramatization after the manner of “breaking news,” with simulated live reports interrupting a program of regularly scheduled dance music. What the alleged reports described was chilling – a Martian invasion of rural America by hostile aliens bearing fiery weapons and poisonous gas. The whole story was authenticated, in real time, by a “Professor Richard Pierson of Princeton Observatory.”

Those who tuned in late or were only half-listening completely freaked out, and reacted in a manner unimaginable in an era of social media. Panicked mobs choked the streets, phone lines were jammed, and police flooded CBS Studios. Welles had dropped the biggest firecracker right in the middle of a United States already on edge, thanks to widespread access to radio reports of mounting tensions in Europe.

You might say Welles’ (and Wells’) fame skyrocketed. Orson Welles would match his early notoriety a few years later with his Hollywood debut, as producer, director, co-writer, and star of “Citizen Kane,” which inflamed William Randolph Hearst, while H.G. Wells’ novel has remained his most popular, the work having been adapted to film several times.

We’ll hear music from the classic 1953 version, produced by George Pal, with music by Leith Stevens; then the Steven Spielberg blockbuster, from 2005 (titled, simply, “War of the Worlds”), with music by John Williams.

After that, we’ll take it to the Red Planet, when an American astronaut is stranded with his test monkey, in 1964’s “Robinson Crusoe on Mars,” with music by Van Cleave.

Finally, we’ll turn to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter. Why Disney dropped “of Mars” from the title – something that would have actually said something about the subject matter – is anybody’s guess. The belated 2012 adaptation came 100 years after the character was introduced. Unfortunately, the intervening decades robbed Burroughs’ creation of much of its freshness, with dozens, if not hundreds, of science fiction novels and movies having plundered the author’s pulp treasure trove. “John Carter” was less striking than it might have been, but the film was certainly not the train wreck the press made it out to be. Michael Giacchino’s score ends the hour on a romantic note, a welcome relief after dodging so many Martian heat rays.

I hope you’ll join me for an interplanetary exchange program (though, granted, not always a peaceful one), with music from movies about visitors to and from Mars, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

WWFM is the classical music station located closest to the site of Welles’ projected Martian invasion. In the interest of galactic harmony, please support us online or at 1-888-232-1212.

October 27, 2017
Close Encounters Returns to Theaters

“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is back in theaters this weekend in a new, digital restoration. In anticipation of the 40th anniversary of the film’s release on November 16th, a unique screening will take place tonight at the base of Devils Tower, the national monument that plays such an important part in the Steven Spielberg classic. Watching “Close Encounters” for the first time was a watershed moment in my movie-going experience. If you’ve only seen it on TV, you have not really seen it. This is a film that definitely deserves to be experienced in a theater. Say what you will about Richard Dreyfuss’ sideburns, for me this will always be one of Spielberg’s best films, with a transcendent score by John Williams. Do yourself a favor, and check your local listings.

September 2, 2017

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