This week on “Picture Perfect,” on this November 1st, the saints go marching in.
We’ll hear a suite from “The Song of Bernadette” (1943), one of Jennifer Jones’ finest hours. Jones was honored with an Academy Award for her performance. The film was nominated in 12 categories. Franz Werfel’s novel relates the story of Bernadette Soubirous, a Lourdes peasant prone to visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Igor Stravinsky made several attempts to break into Hollywood film scoring, but he couldn’t keep up with the relentless schedule. He took a crack at the “Apparition of the Virgin” scene, but then had second thoughts. The project went to Alfred Newman, who won his third of nine Oscars. Stravinsky’s music was recycled in the second movement of his “Symphony in Three Movements.”
The life of Joan of Arc has been translated to film many times. In the case of “Saint Joan” (1957), Otto Preminger adapted the play by George Bernard Shaw. Newcomer Jean Seberg was cast in the title role. Her inexperience brought her in for a sound critical drubbing. Even an old hand like screenwriter Graham Greene was not immune to critical barbs for the liberties he took in reworking Shaw’s play. Despite all that, the score, by Russian-born English composer Mischa Spoliansky, is lovely.
By contrast, the film of “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), after the play of Robert Bolt, was lavishly praised, especially Paul Scofield’s performance as Sir Thomas More, for which he received an Academy Award for Best Actor. The film was the recipient of six Oscars in all, including that for Best Picture. The period-inflected score is by Georges Delerue.
Henryk Sienkiewicz’s international bestseller, “Quo Vadis,” incorporates into its narrative Saints Peter and Paul, but the truly interesting characters are the cynical Petronius, who really knows how to throw a party, and the quite mad Nero, who plays the lyre, even as Rome burns.
Miklós Rózsa’s score has been much-lauded for its attempt at historical authenticity – allegedly it incorporates early Greek, Hebrew and Sicilian melodies – though its popularity has been eclipsed, somewhat, by Rózsa’s “Ben-Hur” and “King of Kings.” “Quo Vadis” is really the film in which Rózsa lays out the blueprint for a decade or more of big screen piety. Bernard Herrmann called it “the score of a lifetime.”
I hope you’ll join me for “Lives of the Saints,” on this All Saints’ Day, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Jennifer Jones and the Lourdes’ prayer
