Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Miklos Rozsa

Film Noir: Shadows, Style, and Soundtracks

We haven’t even emerged from the midwinter holidays yet (tomorrow is Epiphany), but already, for my first show of the new year, the shadows are very long indeed.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we revisit the world of film noir, a genre notoriously slippery to define, but easy to know when you see it – with its long shadows and moral ambiguities; cock-eyed camera angles and snappy repartee; isolation and innuendo. It’s a genre where a pair of gams is an invitation to the gallows; where a man’s best friend – and sometimes his worst enemy – is his Colt .38; where only cigarettes and bourbon can ease the pain.

The labyrinthine mystery at the heart of “The Big Sleep” (1946) is so disorienting, even the book’s author, Raymond Chandler, couldn’t tell whodunit. Who cares? Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall get some more steamy dialogue to satisfy fans of “To Have and Have Not,” and there’s plenty of Bogey pounding the pavement and tossing off tart one-liners in pursuit of the truth. But my favorite scene involves Dorothy Malone, who runs the hottest bookstore in town. Whenever there are gallows to be built or gangsters to be beaten, Warner Brothers could be counted on to assign Max Steiner.

“Chinatown” (1974) is one of the best of the neo-noirs of the 1970s. This time, Jack Nicholson plays private dick J.J. Gittes, who takes on a seemingly routine case that begins to spiral out of control. When producer Robert Evans rejected Philip Lambro’s original score, Jerry Goldsmith stepped in as a last-minute replacement. The composer was hired with the understanding that he had only ten days to write and record new music. For his effort, Goldsmith received an Academy Award nomination.

The Coen Brothers clearly love noir, from their first feature, “Blood Simple,” to their Academy Award winners, “Fargo” and “No Country for Old Men,” to their unlikely and absurdly entertaining reimagining of “The Big Sleep,” “The Big Lebowski.” “Miller’s Crossing” (1990) was one of the more underappreciated of these. The film follows the well-worn device of an anti-hero playing two sides off of one another, until he is the last one standing – shades of Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest,” with a healthy dose of “The Glass Key” thrown in, for good measure. The Irish-inflected score is by Coen regular Carter Burwell.

Before he became stereotyped as a composer for epic films like “Ben-Hur,” “King of Kings,” and “El Cid,” Miklos Rozsa was the king of noir, providing scores for genre classics such as “Double Indemnity” and “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.” We’ll hear a suite assembled from three such projects: “Brute Force” (1947), a hard-hitting prison drama, starring Burt Lancaster as a desperate inmate and a contemptible Hume Cronyn as a sadistic guard; “The Killers” (1946), also starring Lancaster as a marked boxer; and “The Naked City” (1948), with Barry Fitzgerald leading a police investigation into the murder of a young model. The suite is titled “Background to Violence.”

Put on your rumpled linen suit, draw the Venetian blinds, and play the sap for nobody this week. It’s film noir in the gritty city, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

BTW – Have you heard I’ve got a new show? Check out “Sweetness and Light,” now entering its third week, Saturday mornings on KWAX. It’s music calculated to charm and to cheer (the very opposite of noir, in fact), and this week it’s all inspired by books. That brings my tally at KWAX to three. See below for air times.

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM ON THE EAST COAST)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM ON THE EAST COAST)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM ON THE EAST COAST)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Forget it, Jake; it’s Chinatown.

January 5, 2024
Sherlock Holmes Movie Music on Picture Perfect

The game is afoot! This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of music from movies inspired by the world’s greatest detective.

“Sherlock Holmes” (2009) features Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, in Michael Ritchie’s post-“Matrix” take on the master detective. While some of the film adaptations over the years may have glossed over the character’s physicality, Ritchie’s revisionist Holmes perhaps errs a mite too far in the other direction. Hans Zimmer wrote the music, he too going against received wisdom, and in the process coming up with one of his more interesting scores, if only for the quirky instrumentation, which includes a Hungarian cimbalom, accordion, fiddles, and a broken pub piano.

Perhaps it’s unfair to put Zimmer up against an old pro like Miklós Rózsa. Rózsa wrote the music for Billy Wilder’s melancholy portrait of the great detective, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” (1970). Wilder requested that the composer adapt his lovely Violin Concerto for the project, a recording of which the director had listened to repeatedly during the writing of the screenplay. Rózsa and Wilder had previously collaborated on “Double Indemnity” and “The Lost Weekend.”

The Sherlock Holmes comedy, “Without a Clue” (1988), represents a missed opportunity of sorts. The hope had been for Sean Connery to play Watson opposite Michael Caine’s Holmes, a longed-for reunion between the two who had worked so well together in “The Man Who Would Be King.” In the end, it was Ben Kingsley who assumed the role.

The fun conceit that sets “Without a Clue” apart is that Holmes is the fictional creation of mastermind Watson, who in reality is the gifted crime-solver. Through necessity, Watson hires a second-rate actor to play the role of Holmes. Of course, the actor turns out to be a bumbling idiot. Henry Mancini provides the British Light Music style score, with a nod to Edmund White’s “Puffin’ Billy” (familiar stateside as the theme to “Captain Kangaroo”).

Finally, the Steven Spielberg-produced “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1985) offers a conjectural origins story, including Holmes and Watson’s first meeting as teenagers (ignoring the particulars laid out by Arthur Conan Doyle in his stories, with Watson already a war veteran who had served in Afghanistan). It’s all for fun, though it’s unfortunate the filmmakers felt the need to interject ‘80s-style special effects, rather than simply trust in the inherent magic of the subject matter. “Young Sherlock Holmes” features the first photorealistic, fully computer-generated character (a stained glass knight). Also, some Indiana Jones B-movie antics involving an Egyptian cult seem especially out of place.

Interestingly, the film’s screenwriter, Chris Columbus, went on to direct the first two Harry Potter films. By my recollection, “Young Sherlock Holmes,” with its boarding school setting, has some of that same feel.

The music, by Bruce Broughton, is certainly buoyant and beautiful, in the best John Williams tradition. Broughton scored a handful of big screen hits, notably “Silverado” and “Tombstone,” though arguably it is in the medium of television that he’s made his greatest impact. Thus far, his work has been recognized with a record 10 Grammy Awards.

It’s elementary, my dear Watson. I hope you’ll join me for “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 29, 2023
Harryhausen on Herrmann Rózsa & Rejected Barry

This was shared yesterday on the Bernard Herrmann Society page. At the link, you’ll find a couple of letters written by special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, in which he comments on the various composers he had the privilege to work with. He has especially high praise for Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa.

Ray Harryhausen On Miklos Rozsa … Bernard Herrmann … And Max Steiner

Interestingly, on his last film, “Clash of the Titans,” Harryhausen apparently rejected a score-in-progress by Academy Award winning composer John Barry (composer of “Born Free,” “Out of Africa,” “Dances with Wolves,” and the James Bond franchise). In a later interview, Barry, who had been hired because Harryhausen was impressed by his score for “The Lion in Winter,” claimed not to remember much about the experience, beyond the fact that he had provided a few demos.

Some of the music can actually be heard in this installment of the Ray Harryhausen Podcast.

The composer’s fragmentary contributions begin at the following times:

• 6:48, “Heroic 1”

• 1:27:10, “Andromeda”

• 1:28:43, “Persius Growing Up”

• 1:30:49, “Scorpion”

Barry was replaced by Laurence Rosenthal (composer of “A Raisin in the Sun,” “The Miracle Worker,” “Becket,” “The Return of a Man Called Horse,” “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” and “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”).

But don’t shed any tears for Barry. He wound up doing just fine.

June 30, 2023
Miklós Rózsa: Golden Age Film Music

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.

One of my personal favorites, not in the medley, is “Lust for Life” (1956), in which Kirk Douglas plays Vincent Van Gogh. The composer softens up the edges of his brawny Hungarian sound by dipping into the hazy palette of the French Impressionists.

In a similar mold is this concert work, “The Vintner’s Daughter,” twelve variations inspired by a poem by Juste Olivier, in which a maiden drifts off to sleep in the sun at harvest time and dreams of the arrival of three Hungarian knights. Originally composed for piano in 1953, it was orchestrated two years later at the request of Eugene Ormandy.

The original piano version

For orchestra

Rózsa conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony in his most celebrated music, for “Ben-Hur” (1959)

Jascha Heifetz plays the Violin Concerto (1953; subsequently adapted for use in the 1970 film “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”)

They just don’t make ‘em like Miklós anymore.

PHOTOS: Rózsa and (top to bottom) “Ben-Hur,” “Lust for Life,” and preparing the Violin Concerto with Jascha Heifetz and Walter Hendl

April 18, 2023
Miklós Rózsa: Late Career Gems

Three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa left his stamp on dozens of classic films, including “The Thief of Bagdad” (1940), “The Jungle Book” (1942), “Double Indemnity” (1944), “The Lost Weekend” (1945), “Spellbound” (1945), “Quo Vadis?” (1951), “Lust for Life” (1956), “Ben-Hur” (1959), “King of Kings” (1961), and “El Cid” (1961).

Less well-known is his later work. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll sample selections from five of the composer’s last seven projects, including “Providence” (1977), “Fedora” (1978), “Last Embrace” (1979), “Eye of the Needle” (1981), and “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (1982).

Born in Budapest in 1907, Rózsa studied in Leipzig. He cut his teeth in Paris, where one his friends and associates was Arthur Honegger. Following a concert that had featured works by both composers, Rózsa asked Honegger how it was that he was able to make ends meet. Honegger confided that he supplemented his income by writing for film. Rózsa went to see “Les Misérables,” which Honegger had scored, and became enthralled by the possibilities.

It was following his move to London that he became associated with the Korda brothers and had his first opportunity to write for motion pictures. Rózsa immediately demonstrated what he could do in films like “Knight Without Armor” (1937) and “The Four Feathers” (1939). It was his involvement in the Kordas’ “The Thief of Bagdad” that brought him to Hollywood, since the project had to be moved mid-production as a result of the war. From there, the composer went on to work with many of the great directors, including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and William Wyler.

In a career that encompassed nearly 100 scores, Rózsa was recognized with Academy Awards for his contributions to Hitchcock’s “Spellbound,” the George Cukor thriller “A Double Life” (1947, starring Ronald Colman as an unhinged Shakespearean actor), and of course “Ben-Hur” – all the while keeping one foot in the world of concert music. He wrote important works for Jascha Heiftez, Gregor Piatigorsky, János Starker, Leonard Pennario and Pinchas Zukerman. His “Theme, Variations and Finale” featured in Leonard Bernstein’s legendary debut with the New York Philharmonic.

Rózsa was a towering figure of Hollywood’s golden age, but he lived through some pretty lean times, as emphasis in the industry began to shift away from a classic orchestral sound to what was perceived as a more lucrative, youth-oriented approach, reliant on popular trends. Fortunately, with the extraordinary success of John Williams, in films like “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” old school composers like Rózsa were given a new lease on life, and he was able to round out his career with a series of beautiful, wholly characteristic scores.

I hope you’ll join me in examining “Late-Career Rózsa,” on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Rózsa talks film music (and Bernard Herrmann) with André Previn and John Williams

From the same broadcast (“Previn and the Pittsburgh: The Music That Made the Movies,” PBS, 1978), Rózsa conducts “Ben-Hur”

PHOTO: Rózsa (right), with whippersnappers Williams and Previn

January 28, 2023

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