Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Movie Music

Great Artists on Screen Movie Music and Drama

How to translate visual art to the big screen? Generally, by focusing on the drama in the artists’ lives, that’s how.

And what drama!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” expand your palette with music from movies about the great artists. “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965), based on the novel of Irving Stone, dramatizes the friction between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and his benefactor, Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), over the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For his part, Michelangelo would have been perfectly content to stick to sculpture. Alex North’s score is an Early Music banquet, with allusions to – and sometimes outright quotations of – music of the Renaissance.

Stone had another bestseller in “Lust for Life” (1956), about the tormented Vincent van Gogh. This time Kirk Douglas plays one of his most sympathetic roles – and looks remarkably like the artist. Anthony Quinn turns up as his “frenemy,” the painter Paul Gaugin, and earns an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The great Miklós Rózsa wrote the music, softening up the edges of his brawny Hungarian sound with ethereal suggestions of the French Impressionists.

John Huston brought Pierre La Mure’s novel about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to the big screen as “Moulin Rouge” (1952) – not to be confused with the more recent Baz Luhrmann spectacle starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, which relegated the artist to a supporting role. José Ferrer dominates the earlier version, spending most of the film walking through off-camera trenches and shuffling along on his knees. Georges Auric, one of the composers of Les Six (the loose collective that also included Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud), captures the spirit of the titular cabaret. The score became one of Auric’s best-known, thanks to the waltz, which yielded the popular hit “Where is Your Heart?”

“The Picasso Summer” (1969) is a departure from the usual formula of focusing on the artist himself. Instead, a young couple (Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux), admirers of Picasso’s work, take off on a European adventure in an attempt to track him down. Originally Picasso had agreed to appear, but he was driven off by some off-screen drama involving a matador friend and Yul Brynner’s wife! The film was based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury hated the adaptation, as did the studio, and “The Picasso Summer,” after being heavily cut and patched with new footage, was never released theatrically in the United States. The film is striking for its extended animation sequences inspired by Picasso’s paintings, and for its score by Michel Legrand.

I hope you’ll join me for brushes with the great artists, 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 16, 2024
City Mouse Country Mouse Movie Music

There are, of course, a great many movies about “city mice” and “country mice” – those from the city displaced to a rural setting, and those from the country dazzled by the city. These often take the form of fish-out-of-water comedies. But a trip the country can also be restorative, or even have redemptive qualities. Though in the end, more often than not, the central characters return to their place of origin.

“Witness” (1985) employs elements of both “city mouse” and “country mouse.” The plot is set in motion with the witness of a murder by an Amish boy at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. The investigation reveals a vein of corruption in the Philadelphia Police Department, forcing a wounded detective, John Book (played by Harrison Ford), to lay low among the Amish. There are certainly comic elements, but also fascinating dramatic possibilities, in throwing together these figures from two very different cultures.

The music was by Maurice Jarre. Jarre is best known for his scores rendered on large orchestral canvases, for films like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Dr. Zhivago.” But by the 1980s, he was experimenting with electronic music in films like “The Year of Living Dangerously,” “The Mosquito Coast,” and “Dead Poets Society.” The approach worked particularly well in “Witness.”

Another police thriller, “On Dangerous Ground” (1952), throws together a detective with definite anger management issues (played Robert Ryan) with the backwoods father of a murder victim (played by Ward Bond) for a wild mountain manhunt. Ryan finds redemption through his interactions with the suspect’s blind sister, played by Ida Lupino. Bernard Herrmann wrote the music. If you find yourself trying to identify the solo string instrument, it’s actually a viola d’amore, an instrument rarely heard outside of the Baroque.

“George Washington Slept Here” (1942), based on the play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, is a “fixer-up” comedy, kind of a precursor to “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” and “The Money Pit,” with perhaps a touch of “Green Acres” thrown into the mix. Jack Benny and Ann Sheridan play a Manhattan couple fed up with city living. They transport their family to a dilapidated Bucks County farmhouse, with predictably disastrous results.

The somewhat cartoonish music is by English-born composer Adolph Deutsch, one of the less remembered names of Hollywood’s Golden Age, although he scored such high-profile films as “The Maltese Falcon” and “Some Like It Hot.” His is an old-fashioned approach – at any moment you might expect to hear a “sad trombone” – but it’s wholly appropriate in a film that features abundant pratfalls.

Finally, the Billy Crystal comedy “City Slickers” (1991) is built on the premise of three middle-aged Manhattanites who find renewal and purpose at a kind of cowboy fantasy camp. Jack Palance gives an Oscar-winning performance as the intimidating trail boss. The music is by Marc Shaiman. Shaiman has also written for Broadway. He may be best known for his scores for the musicals “Hairspray” and “The Book of Mormon.”

Whether you’re on the lam or on the lamb, the fresh air will do you good, as “city mice” go to the country this week, 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 9, 2024
Tyrannical Sea Captains Movie Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” taste the lash and prepare to be keelhauled! We’ll have music from movies featuring tyrannical sea captains.

Tyranny and sadism are common ingredients in nautical adventure films, where hard-bitten sea captains find it “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

At least that’s the mantra of Wolf Larsen, who does his best to uphold the philosophy of Milton’s Satan, in Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” (1941). Larsen is a tough Norwegian sea captain who presides over his ship, the Ghost, with strength and brutality.

Edward G. Robinson plays Larsen. John Garfield is the working class seaman who opposes him. And Ida Lupino is the castaway with a past, with whom he falls in love in spite of himself. The score is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who also provided the music for the seafaring adventures of Errol Flynn.

Captain Ahab requires little introduction. Everyone knows his ivory leg and his obsessive quest for the White Whale. Gregory Peck plays him in a film version of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” (1956), which was adapted by Ray Bradbury and directed by John Huston. The score is by English composer Philip Sainton.

Humphrey Bogart was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Lieutenant Commander Phillip Francis Queeg, in a big screen adaptation of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” (1954). Queeg, in charge of a U.S. Navy destroyer-minesweeper, is pushed over the edge by his obsession with strawberries pilfered from the officers’ mess. Max Steiner’s upbeat, patriotic theme provides a nice counterpoint to the interpersonal turmoil aboard the Caine.

Finally, the most iconic of tyrannical sea captains, Captain Bligh, is represented by “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962). Historical novelists Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall make hay from the 1789 insurrection aboard the HMS Bounty.

The classic film version from 1935 starred Charles Laughton as Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. The remake featured Trevor Howard as Bligh, with Marlon Brando, envisioning Christian as a kind of high seas dandy.

It’s said that Brando essentially directed all his own scenes himself. The film was colossal failure, earning back only $13 million of its $19 million budget. Nonetheless, it managed to inspire Bronislau Kaper to compose one of his most monumental scores.

Take a bucket of salt water with your stripes, you dog! Then join me for tyrannical sea captains 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/

CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS (clockwise from left): Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, Edward G. Robinson as Wolf Larsen, Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg, and Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh

August 2, 2024
Arabian Nights Cinematic Delights & Movie Music

Open sesame! It’s an Aladdin’s Cave of cinematic delights.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus is on tales from “The Arabian Nights.”

These traditional folk stories from the Orient have come down to us filtered through the sensibilities of Western translators. Further translation was required to get the stories from page to screen; so it’s hardly surprising to find Sinbad, for instance, fighting a giant walrus at the North Pole.

The film versions are often showcases for the work of production designers and special effects artists, but composers have certainly gotten in on the act with suitably imaginative scores.

Bernard Herrmann lent plenty of color and wit to the skeleton duel in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” (1958) by employing a battery of castanets, xylophone, and brass. Stop motion artist Ray Harryhausen was responsible for the memorable effects. “Sinbad” proved to be a dry run for the climax of “Jason and the Argonauts,” in which Harryhausen outdid himself by animating not one, but seven skeletons, and again, Herrmann supplied the music.

Harryhausen animated two further Sinbad adventures – “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1974) and “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977). Over the course of the three “Sinbad” films, audiences were treated to fantastic encounters with, in addition to the skeleton, a Cyclops, a roc, a dragon, a statue of the goddess Kali, a centaur, a giant walrus, and a saber-tooth tiger, among others.

“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” was scored by Roy Budd. Budd’s reputation was largely that of a jazz musician and composer. He wrote scores for over 50 films, including “Get Carter” and “The Wild Geese,” before his early death of a brain hemorrhage, at the age of 46, in 1993.

Walt Disney created a modern classic in “Aladdin” (1992). The music was by Alan Menken, with lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. “Aladdin” won Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“A Whole New World”). Menken has a whole shelf full of Oscars for his work for Disney. Need I say, Robin Williams was the voice of the manic, freewheeling Genie?

Rex Ingram’s Genie steals the show in “The Thief of Bagdad” (1940). Ingram emerges from his magic lamp and looms over a cowering Sabu, whom he addresses as “Little Master of the Universe.” The beach resounds with his maniacal laughter. There was an earlier, justly celebrated, silent version of “Thief,” with Douglas Fairbanks. The remake splits the thief and the prince into two separate characters. Sabu plays the incorrigible Abu (the thief), and Conrad Veidt is his nemesis, the treacherous vizier Jaffar.

The score is by three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa. Rózsa was in London, in the employ of Alexander Korda, when the lavish Technicolor production was moved to Hollywood on account of the Blitz. Rózsa would go on to become one of Hollywood’s greatest composers. His music for “Ben-Hur” alone has earned him a place in the film music pantheon. He never wrote a more charming score, however, than he did for this.

I hope you’ll join me for an hour of cinematic enchantments. That’s “A Thousand and One Nights at the Movies,” on “Picture Perfect,” 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/

July 19, 2024
Father’s Day Movie Music Entitled Birds

Sure, sure, sure. This weekend is Father’s Day. But I did movies about fathers last year.

This year, I’m broadening the focus to “entitled birds.” It allows me to program music from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with Gregory Peck playing one of the great fathers on film, but also to diversify.

The hour will open with a suite from “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). Humphrey Bogart plays private dick Sam Spade, in John Huston’s adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel (not incidentally, full of avian symbols and similes). Mary Astor is the dangerous dame, and the first-rate cast supporting includes Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, and Elisha Cook, Jr.

The music is by Adolph Deutsch, who in the 1950s became associated with musicals (he won Oscars for his work on “Oklahoma,” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” and “Annie Get Your Gun,” and was nominated for “The Band Wagon” and “Showboat”), but in the 1940s, he was as noir as that closet song-and-dance man, George Raft, some of whose crime films he scored.
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Then it’s on to the most overt Father’s Day association of the hour and the aforementioned “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), based on Harper Lee’s beautiful coming-of-age novel. Gregory Peck plays one of his most memorable roles – defense attorney and model father Atticus Finch (his surname yet another bird). The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1962. Elmer Bernstein received his only Oscar for his work on “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” of all things. “Mockingbird” remains one of his most memorable and moving scores.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull” (1973) flies alone on the program as the only film in which the title refers to an actual bird, though the context is a fabulous one, based on Richard Bach’s bestselling parable. James Franciscus supplies a superimposed human voice. The score is by songwriter Neil Diamond, ably assisted by composer Lee Holdridge (who turned 80 on March 3). We’ll hear Holdridge’s music from the film’s “The Other World” sequence.

Finally, Errol Flynn plays Geoffrey Thorpe, captain of the “Albatross” (yet another bird), who defends England on the eve of the Spanish Armada in “The Sea Hawk” (1940). The music, perhaps the greatest pirate score ever written, is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. If I had kids, I would be perfectly content on Father’s Day if they left me alone to watch “The Sea Hawk.” As my grandfather used to say, “You can help me by standing over there.”

I hope you’ll join me for “Entitled Birds,” 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/

June 14, 2024

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