Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Miklos Rozsa

WWII Film Scores for Memorial Day

While you’re sitting in traffic heading into your three-day weekend, take a moment to consider that you’ve got it easy compared to what Allied soldiers went through in Europe, the Pacific and North Africa to keep the world free from tyranny.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from two films of the World War II era that exemplify Hollywood’s morale-boosting approach. “Sahara” (1943) pits Humphrey Bogart as a tank commander who defends a watering hole against a superior force of parched Nazis. “Objective: Burma!” (1945) drops Errol Flynn behind enemy lines to take out a Japanese radar station.

Neither film shuns the reality that war is hell (with some particularly suggestive gruesomeness in the latter), yet the filmmakers rose above the kind of nihilistic edge that underscores so many movies made today. When all was said and done, war movies in the 1940s sold America on hope and sacrifice and the promise of final victory.

The conflict cast a long shadow, and in the 1950s and ‘60s Hollywood continued to churn out WWII films at an impressive rate, selling tickets to the generation that had “been there.” “The Guns of Navarone” (1961) features Gregory Peck (exempt from service during the actual war because Martha Graham injured his back), David Niven (Lieutenant Colonel in the British Commandos at Normandy) and Anthony Quinn (born in Mexico and not naturalized until 1947) as a special unit of Allied military specialists on a mission to blow up some big Nazi guns trained over the Aegean Sea.

Efforts to get “Patton” (1970) off the ground had been in motion since 1953! The filmmakers wanted access to Patton’s diaries, but displayed horrible timing in approaching the late general’s family the day after the death of his widow. Not surprisingly, the family was completely turned off and withheld its cooperation. In the end Franklin J. Schaffner directed from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North. Patton’s colleague, Omar Bradley, served as an advisor on the film. (He’s played on screen by Karl Malden.)

“Patton” likely would have been a knockout on any level (Rod Steiger turned down the lead, much to his later regret), but it is really George C. Scott that pushes it over the top. And how much more over the top can it get than that opening monologue, assembled from Patton’s speech to the Third Army, delivered in front of an enormous American flag? Only a larger-than-life actor such as Scott could have done it justice and not been dwarfed by both the subject and the iconography. Scott won a much-deserved Academy Award for his performance – which he famously refused to accept.

I hope you can join me for equally outsized music by Miklós Rózsa (“Sahara”), Franz Waxman (“Objective: Burma!”), Dimitri Tiomkin (“The Guns of Navarone”) and Jerry Goldsmith (“Patton”), as we look forward to Memorial Day with classic films set during World War II, this Friday evening at 6 EDT, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

May 27, 2016
Jungle Book & Wild Film Scores

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with the box office success of the most recent incarnation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” I thought it might be fun to revisit music from the 1942 Korda Brothers’ version. The film starred the charismatic Sabu as Mowgli (for the record, Kipling pronounced “Mowgli” so that the first syllable rhymes with “cow”), and Miklós Rózsa wrote the enchanting score.

We’ll also hear selections from John Barry’s music for “Born Free” (1966), based on Joy Adamson’s memoir about the raising of Elsa, an orphaned lion cub who grows to adulthood and is eventually released into the Kenyan wilderness. The music proved a double Academy Award winner for Barry, who was recognized for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

Jerome Moross, best known for his music to “The Big Country,” had such a strong personality that his immediately recognizable sound extended even to his work on the National Geographic special, “Grizzly!” (1967), a documentary about a pair of ecologists studying North American bears. “Grizzly!” sports an energetic Americana score that is cut very much from the same cloth.

And I can’t get through the hour without playing Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk,” from “Hatari!” (So many exclamation points in these wilderness titles.) The film was directed by Howard Hawks and starred John Wayne. In case you’re wondering, “Hatari!” is Swahili for “Danger!”

No danger in treating yourself to this cinematic carnival of the animals. We’re going wild this week on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6 EDT, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

May 13, 2016
Golden Age Film Scores Return to Trenton

There’s a moment in the Billy Wilder classic “Sunset Boulevard” when Gloria Swanson, as a faded silent movie actress, remarks, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Much the same could be said, setting aside the delusions of grandeur, of the great composers who worked during Hollywood’s golden age. It’s ironic that in the current era of vertiginous CGI that so many of our movies seem to lack dimension. There was a time when music with a strong profile was regarded as an essential element of the moviemaking process. It was a way of creating 3-D without the necessity of special glasses.

On May 14, the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra will remind us of what’s been missing, to great extent, from the movie-going experience in recent years. The program “Cinematic Classics” will be presented at Patriots Theater in the Trenton War Memorial. Works by composers Miklós Rózsa, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann and William Walton prove what can be achieved by a skilled musician with a gift for melody, an innate sense of drama, and good old-fashioned musical know-how.

For those of you who believe that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, this concert is highly recommendable. You can read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/05/classical_music_njcp_performin_1.html

May 6, 2016
Miklós Rózsa Film Score Celebration

Happy birthday, Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995)!

Can you spare ten minutes to soak up some Golden Age greatness? Check out this wonderful medley of some of his classic film scores.

I had a blast picking out the films without looking at the images. I own recordings of all of them, of course. (What? No “Lust for Life???”)

Rózsa conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony in a suite from “Ben-Hur”:

They don’t make ‘em like Miklós anymore.

April 18, 2016
Film Composers Beyond the Screen

If after about three hours you find yourself getting played out on the Academy Awards– once Ennio Morricone finally wins his first competitive Oscar, that is (fingers crossed) – you might consider tuning in to “The Lost Chord.” We’ll both complement and enjoy counterprogramming to the ceremony by listening to concert works by composers better known for their work in film.

Franz Waxman was a two-time Academy Award winner, honored with back-to-back Oscars, in 1950 and 1951, for his work on “Sunset Boulevard” and “A Place in the Sun.” Some of his other classic scores include those for “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Rebecca,” “Rear Window,” “Peyton Place” and “The Nun’s Story.”

In 1955, he was traveling from California to Zurich to conduct a new piece commissioned by Rolf Liebermann. When Waxman reached New York he was met with a request from Lieberman’s office for program notes for the impending premiere. Waxman was forced to admit he hadn’t yet begun work on the piece, which he had planned to write during the ocean voyage. Fortunately, he was accustomed from his experience in Hollywood to write very quickly. The result was his “Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and Timpani.”

Five-time Academy Award winner John Williams – whose 50th nominated score, for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” is in contention tonight – is of course very well-known for his collaborations with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Over the years, he’s also accrued an impressive quantity of concertos. One of the more immediately attractive of these is his Tuba Concerto of 1985, written for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Pops.

Finally, we’ll turn to three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa, honored for his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” in 1945, the Ronald Colman thriller “A Double Life” in 1947, and “Ben-Hur” in 1959. He also composed quite a bit of concert music, including concertos for Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Leonard Pennario and Pinchas Zukerman.

Rózsa, Hungarian by birth, turned to film after a period of struggle as a young artist in Paris, where he learned from Arthur Honegger that he was able to pay the rent by supplementing his concert music with cinematic efforts. Rózsa’s “Theme, Variations and Finale,” Op. 13, of 1933, preceded the start of his film career by a few years. He revised the piece in 1943, by which time he had already completed his classic fantasy scores for Alexander Korda’s “The Thief of Bagdad” and “Jungle Book,” and was on the verge of becoming a leading composer of film noir.

“Theme, Variations and Finale” received performances by Charles Munch, Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, and Eugene Ormandy. It was also one of the works that featured on the legendary concert that launched Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, on November 14, 1943, when the young assistant conductor substituted at the last minute for an ailing Bruno Walter.

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of concert music by composers better known for their work in film – “Against Type” on “The Lost Chord” – this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Has anyone here seen Kelly? (Clockwise from left) John Williams wins the Oscar for “Star Wars;” Franz Waxman and Miklós Rózsa receive their awards from the hands of Gene Kelly

February 28, 2016

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