“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a phrase that’s often been associated with P.T. Barnum (who likely never said it). From our perspective in November 2024, we know there couldn’t possibly be that many gullible people. Could there?
All the same, this week on “Picture Perfect,” I stand to make a bundle with an hour of cinematic shell-games. We’ll hear musical selections from films about confidence men, charlatans, and hucksters.
In “The Magician” (1958), also known as “The Face,” Ingmar Bergman explores the idea of theatre as both confidence game and beautiful mystery. Max von Sydow stars as a traveling illusionist whose troupe of strolling entertainers, The Magnetic Healing Theatre, is put to test before being granted permission to perform at the royal court. The score, by Erik Nordgren, is sparse, made up of a dozen very short pieces for harp and two guitars, some movements for brass band, and in the main title, the addition of percussion.
George C. Scott plays Mordecai Jones, a confidence man who defrauds the populace of the American South through various means, with a specialty in rigged punchboards, in “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967). The film, shot on location in Kentucky by director Irvin Kershner, features a gallery of colorful character actors, including Jack Albertson, Slim Pickens, Strother Martin and Harry Morgan. The happy-go-lucky score, by Jerry Goldsmith, makes use of harmonica, banjo, and freewheeling honky-tonk piano.
Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) is based on the real-life exploits of the chameleonic Frank Abagnale, who, before his 19th birthday, manages to successfully pull a series of cons worth millions of dollars. Along the way, he poses convincingly as a lawyer, a doctor, and a pilot. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Abagnale, and Tom Hanks, the bank fraud agent who develops an unusual relationship with him, as the light-hearted cat-and-mouse thriller unfolds. John Williams wrote the intimate and jazzy score, a throwback to the musical syntax of caper films of the 1960s, but also to the composer’s own jazz roots (when he still went by “Johnny Williams”).
Finally, we’ll hear music from that classic of religious hucksterism, “Elmer Gantry” (1960). Burt Lancaster plays the hard-drinking, fast-talking salesman-turned-revivalist, in one of the great movie performances. Lancaster was recognized with a much-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor. Shirley Jones, of “The Partridge Family” fame, won Best Supporting Actress for playing one of Gantry’s shady ladies. The film’s brilliant score was by none other than André Previn.
You can listen with “confidence” to “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
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 – ALL NEW! – 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!
