Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Metropolis

Labor Day Movie Music Working Stiff Cinema

Heigh-ho! This week on “Picture Perfect,” we celebrate Labor Day with music from movies about the working stiff.

“The Molly Maguires” (1970), set in and around the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, illustrates the unfair labor practices imposed on immigrant workers there, which triggered violent strikes and acts of sabotage. Sean Connery is the ringleader and Richard Harris the Pinkerton detective brought in to infiltrate the gang.

The film was directed by Martin Ritt, a number of whose projects deal with labor, corruption, and intimidation, and his own experiences living through the era of the Hollywood blacklist – among these, “Edge of the City,” “The Front,” and “Norma Rae.”

The music is by Henry Mancini, a far cry from his work on “The Pink Panther,” “Peter Gunn,” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” with a decidedly Celtic lilt.

Charlie Chaplin was a brilliant comedian, of course, but his perfectionism often resulted in uncomfortably close supervision over every aspect of his films. The young David Raksin found this out the hard way, when he accepted the job of assisting Chaplin in the writing of the score to “Modern Times” (1936).

Chaplin, a violinist and cellist himself, would whistle tunes and then stand over Raksin’s shoulder as he figured out how to make them fit the action. Alfred Newman, a much more seasoned hand, resented the micromanagement and stormed out of the film’s recording sessions. Raksin was actually fired once, after only a week and a half, but he was quickly rehired. Despite the creative friction, Chaplin and Raksin became friends, and Raksin recollected his work on “Modern Times” as some of the happiest days of his life.

The film begins with an iconic factory scene, Chaplin working an assembly line at an increasingly hectic pace, literally being put through the gears of the machinery. He suffers a breakdown, goes berserk, and throws the entire mechanized dystopia into chaos.

Speaking of dystopias, few can match the OSHA-flouting nightmare of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927). One of the landmarks of silent cinema, “Metropolis,” unfortunately, is eerily prescient of a world divided between the haves and the have-nots. Once seen, the subterranean hell of the workers’ hive is not soon to be forgotten.

Lang’s vision continues to resonate in more ways than one, with its iconography shamelessly recycled by dewy-eyed fans and film students down the generations. Similarly, Gottfried Huppertz’s influential, Straussian score led the way for the opulent symphonic canvases of Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and John Williams.

Finally, we’ll accept a helping hand – as well as claw, tail, beak, and tongue – from the benevolent woodland creatures of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). Frank Churchill and Larry Morey’s songs are justifiably immortal.

The “picks” are all “mine” for Labor Day. Whistle while you weekend, on “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 EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 30, 2024
Dystopian Visions in Film Scores

If you think the world is in rough shape now, consider tomorrow.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” gaze into the crystal ball for an hour of dystopian visions – glimpses of a bleak future rendered hopeful, in large part, through music.

“Fahrenheit 451” (1966), based on the Ray Bradbury novel, presents a society in which books are outlawed by the state and burned as a means to control the masses. The title refers to the temperature at which paper will ignite. Oskar Werner and Julie Christie star in this Francois Truffaut-directed film. Composer Bernard Herrmann finds the heart at fire’s center.

A robot is left behind to clean up a long-abandoned Planet Earth, in “WALL-E” (2008), one of Pixar’s finely-crafted entertainments. This one has a serious subtext, about rampant consumerism and its impact on an earth made uninhabitable by the sheer volume of garbage. But there’s also a love story, as WALL-E pursues another robot into outer space, with fate-changing consequences. The inventive score is by Thomas Newman.

As dystopias go, Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (2001) is a little more unpleasant than most. “A.I.” grew out of an incomplete project of Stanley Kubrick. Based on Brian Aldiss’s short story, “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long,” the film stars Haley Joel Osment as a child-like android programmed to love, only to be rejected by his adopted family. Abrasive blood sport, unpleasant visions of a debauched city, and human extinction ensue. A great time is had by all!

Also, the film doesn’t know when to end. Oh, how I hate this movie.

That said, John Williams gives it his usual best. The voice of soprano Barbara Bonney graces the admittedly gorgeous soundtrack.

One of the landmarks of silent cinema, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927) is an eerily prescient vision of a world divided between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Once seen, the subterranean hell of the workers “hive” is not soon to be forgotten. So much of the film continues to resonate, even as its iconography is shamelessly recycled.

Gottfried Huppertz’s original score already adheres to the Straussian model of Golden Age film scores, with leitmotifs representing the characters and ideas. It’s a concept that became associated with Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and which has had an enormous influence on film composers down through the decades, all the way to John Williams and beyond.

Learn more about the challenges of writing such a complex score – which was performed live, with orchestra, at showings of the movie, even as the film was still being edited right up until its premiere – when listening to tonight’s show.

In the meantime, hang on to your humanity! Join me for these cautionary tales about totalitarian government, corporate control, and technology gone awry, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

January 14, 2023
Labor Day Movie Music on Picture Perfect

It’s nice to be able to look forward to a three-day weekend, when nobody expects you to get your butt in gear. Unless you’re Charlie Chaplin, that is.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from films about the working stiff, for Labor Day.

“The Molly Maguires” (1970), set in and around the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, illustrates the unfair labor practices imposed on immigrant workers there, which led to violent strikes and acts of sabotage. Sean Connery is the ringleader and Richard Harris the Pinkerton detective brought on to infiltrate the gang.

The film was directed by Martin Ritt, a number of whose projects deal with labor, intimidation, and corruption, and his own experiences living through the era of the Hollywood blacklist – among these, “Edge of the City,” “The Front,” and “Norma Rae.”

The music is by Henry Mancini, a far cry from his work on “The Pink Panther,” “Peter Gunn,” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” with a decidedly Celtic lilt.

Charlie Chaplin was a brilliant comedian, of course, but his perfectionism could manifest itself in uncomfortably close supervision over every aspect of his films. The young David Raksin found this out the hard way, when he accepted the job of assisting Chaplin in the writing of the score to “Modern Times” (1936).

Chaplin, a violinist and cellist himself, would whistle tunes and then stand over Raksin’s shoulder as he figured out how to make them fit the action. Alfred Newman, a much more seasoned hand, stormed out of the recording sessions. Raksin was actually fired once, after only a week and a half, though he was quickly rehired. Despite the creative friction, the two men became friends, and Raksin recollected his work on “Modern Times” as some of the happiest days of his life.

The film begins with an iconic factory scene, with Chaplin working an assembly line at an increasingly hectic pace, finally being put through the gears of the machinery. He suffers a breakdown, goes berserk, and throws the entire mechanized dystopia into chaos.

Speaking of dystopias, few can match the OSHA-flouting nightmare of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927). One of the landmarks of silent cinema, “Metropolis,” unfortunately, is eerily prescient of a world divided between the haves and the have-nots. Once seen, the subterranean hell of the workers’ hive is not soon to be forgotten.

Lang’s vision continues to resonate in more ways than one, with its iconography shamelessly recycled by dew-eyed fans and film students down the generations. Similarly, Gottfried Huppertz’s influential, Straussian score led the way for the opulent symphonic canvases of Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and John Williams.

Finally, we’ll accept a helping hand – as well as claw, tail, beak, and tongue – from the benevolent woodland creatures of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). Frank Churchill and Larry Morey’s songs are justifiably immortal.

Whistle while you work, even as you look forward to a long weekend, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 30, 2019

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