This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from movies based on girls’ literary classics. Of course readers of either gender have enjoyed these books, but with female protagonists and female authors, they have proved great favorites among generations of female readers. All of them have been adapted for film numerous times.
We’ll hear selections from a 1993 version of “The Secret Garden.” Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel tells of an ill-tempered child who loses her neglectful parents in India, only to blossom at the discovery of the titular garden on her uncle’s otherwise gloomy estate on the Yorkshire moors. Agnieszka Holland directed. The film was released through Francis Ford Coppola’s independent studio, American Zoetrope. Its music was by Zbigniew Preisner.
Another popular novel by the same author, from 1905, is “A Little Princess.” Alfonso Cuarón directed his adaptation in 1995. In his version, a well-bred English girl, again brought up in India, is placed in a boarding school in New York. Her fortunes change when her father goes missing in action during World War I. The girl entertains her fellow students by reciting tales from the Hindu epic, “The Ramayana.” Her Indian connection is reflected in Patrick Doyle’s score.
“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott, follows the lives of four sisters of the March family, as they pass from childhood to adulthood in Concord, Massachusetts, during and after the American Civil War. A sensation on its publication in 1868, the book remains one of the most beloved of all time. In 1994, it received its fifth adaptation for the big screen, with Winona Ryder as Jo and Susan Sarandon as Marmee. Thomas Newman, one of the sons of famed film composer Alfred Newman, and the cousin of Randy Newman, wrote the music.
Finally, “Heidi,” by the Swiss writer Johanna Spyri, recounts the events in the life of a young girl who shares a home with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. There have been roughly 20 film or television productions of “Heidi” to date. This one, from 1968, starred Jennifer Edwards, daughter of Blake Edwards and stepdaughter of Julie Andrews. Maximilian Schell, Jean Simmons and Michael Redgrave were in the supporting cast. The music was written by an up-and-coming composer then known as “Johnny Williams.” And there’s plenty in the score to indicate great things to come.
I hope you’ll make “Picture Perfect” your secret garden tonight. It comes your way at 7:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
