Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Movie Music

Tall Ships Music from Classic Movies

Ahoy!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we give in to the impulse to run away to sea, with music from movies featuring tall ships.

Though Gregory Peck cuts a dashing figure as “Captain Horatio Hornblower” (1951), the movie itself is a bit episodic, adapted as it was from three of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower novels. Canadian-born master of British Light Music Robert Farnon wrote the music, lending another dimension to this nautical adventure.

Alan Ladd and James Mason engage in a battle of wills in “Botany Bay” (1953). Ladd plays a doctor, wrongly convicted of a crime, who is transported to a penal colony in New South Wales on a ship under the harsh command of Mason. In perhaps the film’s most memorable sequence, Mason has one of his charges keelhauled. Franz Waxman wrote the score.

If it all sounds a mite familiar, it’s because the story was by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, who also wrote the book that became the basis for “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962). The classic film version of “Bounty” dates from 1935, with Clark Gable butting up against Charles Laughton’s Captain Bligh. The ‘60s version bears a certain notoriety, mostly for Marlon Brando’s eccentric performance, which turns Fletcher Christian into a fop, and the fact that he 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.

(Interesting fact: the enlarged replica of the 1787 HMS Bounty, constructed specifically for the 1962 film, sank off the coast of North Carolina during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The ship had also been used in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.)

Finally, we’ll hear selections from “Windjammer” (1958), the only film shot using the Cinemiracle process. The film documents the round-trip, transatlantic journey of a Norwegian vessel from Oslo to the Caribbean to New York to Portsmouth, NH, and then back home again. Morton Gould wrote the evocative score, which alternates dance rhythms and sea shanties with a recurring melody suggestive of the sweeping romance of the high seas.

Join me for these tall ships recommissioned on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 13, 2018
Confidence Games & Movie Music

This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s the equivalent of a cinematic shell game. We’ll have musical selections from films about confidence games, charlatans and hucksters.

In “The Magician” (1958), also known as “The Face,” Ingmar Bergman explores the idea of theatre as both confidence game and beautiful mystery. Max von Sydow stars as a traveling illusionist whose troupe of strolling entertainers, The Magnetic Healing Theatre, is put to test before being granted permission to perform at the royal court. The score, by Erik Nordgren, is sparse, made up of a dozen very short pieces for harp and two guitars, some movements for brass band, and in the main title, the addition of percussion.

George C. Scott plays Mordecai Jones, a confidence man who defrauds the populace of the American South through various means, with a specialty in rigged punchboards, in “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967). The film, shot on location in Kentucky by director Irvin Kershner, features a gallery of colorful character actors, including Jack Albertson, Slim Pickens, Strother Martin and Harry Morgan. The happy-go-lucky score, by Jerry Goldsmith, makes use of harmonica, banjo, and freewheeling honky-tonk piano.

Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) is based on the real-life exploits of the chameleonic Frank Abagnale, who, before his 19th birthday, managed to successfully pull a series of cons worth millions of dollars. Along the way, he posed convincingly as a lawyer, a doctor, and a pilot. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Abagnale, and Tom Hanks, the bank fraud agent who develops an unusual relationship with him, as the light-hearted cat-and-mouse thriller unfolds. John Williams wrote the intimate and jazzy score, a throw-back to the musical syntax of caper films of the 1960s, but also to the composer’s own jazz roots (when he still went by “Johnny Williams”).

Finally, we’ll hear music from that classic of religious hucksterism, “Elmer Gantry” (1960). Burt Lancaster plays the hard-drinking, fast-talking salesman-turned-revivalist, in one of the great movie performances. Lancaster was recognized with a much-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor. Shirley Jones, of “The Partridge Family” fame, won Best Supporting Actress for playing one of Gantry’s shady ladies. The film’s brilliant score was by none other than André Previn.

You can listen with “confidence” to “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 22, 2018
Escape Abroad with Movie Music on WWFM

All aboard!

“Picture Perfect” follows the English abroad this week, with music from “Enchanted April” (Richard Rodney Bennett), “A Passage to India” (Maurice Jarre), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (Thomas Newman) and “Around the World in 80 Days” (Victor Young).

Bennett, quite the accomplished concert composer (and occasional torch song singer), provides a sensitive score for the 1991 Merchant/Ivory adaptation of Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel about four English ladies who spend an idyllic month at an Italian villa.

Jarre received his third Academy Award for his music to David Lean’s final film, the 1984 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel of repression and racial tension in colonial India.

Newman incorporates traditional Indian elements into his score for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the 2012 surprise hit about English pensioners reinventing themselves in their retirement abroad.

Young won his only Oscar (alas, posthumously bestowed) for “Around the World in 80 Days,” the star-studded, light-as-a-feather, though admittedly charming megawinner at the 1956 Academy Awards. It takes longer to watch the movie than it does to read Jules Verne’s novel – though it does provide a rare opportunity to see Ronald Colman in color.

The weekend’s coming, so pack your valise and join me for “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 6, 2018
Oscar Scores Webcast Your Movie Music Party

Due to its timely nature, my annual WWFM Oscar Party has been posted as webcast. I can’t promise you it’s the greatest thing ever (I didn’t eat lunch yesterday), but there’s plenty of enjoyable music from 18 films, including all five of this year’s nominees for Best Original Score (“Phantom Thread,” “Dunkirk,” “The Shape of Water,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”). Get yourself primed for the Oscars with three hours of classic and contemporary film scores. Follow the link, and crunch away.

http://wwfm.org/post/enjoy-picture-perfect-oscar-party-friday-afternoon

March 3, 2018
Movie Music Oscars Special on The Classical Network

“You see, this is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else. Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up!”

Join me (and Norma Desmond) this Friday afternoon on The Classical Network as we mark the 90th anniversary of the Academy Awards with a SPECIAL THREE-HOUR BROADCAST celebrating the history of music in the movies. Hear selections from all five of this year’s nominees for Best Original Score, alongside music from some of the best-loved and most-honored movies of all time – including “The Godfather,” “Star Wars,” “Titanic,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Ben-Hur,” and “Gone with the Wind.”

The music IS big; it’s the PICTURES that got small. The playlist will be positively cinematic, this Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 2, 2018

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS