Warm, Soothing Movie Music

[David]

Do you remember with nostalgia favorite movie scenes like the meeting of Jennifer Jones & William Holden in LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING? The awesome desert journeys in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA? The plantation dance in GONE WITH THE WIND? The tingling, suspenseful moments of LAURA? Such music brings back many wonderful memories -- warm, soothing memories.

I think the effect we get from warm, soothing music in the movies is equivalent to the soothing warmth the Elizabethans experienced at masques, which were performed to music in the days of Milton & Marlowe.

Hugo Friedhofer said, "I feel that the composer should regard the visual element as a cantus firmus [fixed song or constant song] accompanied by two counterpoints, i.e., dialog & sound effects. It is his [the film composer's] problem to invent a third counterpoint which will complement the texture already in existence."

Ary Barroso's song "Baia" was the stunning background music used in the luau sequence of the 1948 film THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. In the movie, the millionaire Everett Sloane throws an elaborate party for his wife, a woman of intrigue, & watches the development of a romance between her & an idealistic Irish knockabout in his employ. The music uses wordless chorus with strings, hollow logs, Indian drums, & gongs.

Henry Mancini wrote the title song & background music for CHARADE (1964). Mancini's score began the modern trend toward lean, sparse orchestration behind mystery & spy pictures. His musical economy & the use of a rough sound (a mixture of bass clarinet, guitar, piano, harp, vibraphone, & cellos) became the trademark of films of this genre.

One of the screen's most hard-boiled heroines was played by Ida Lupino in ROAD HOUSE (1948). Who can forget the scene in which Ida, as a whiskey-voiced sophisticate from the big city, has her opening night at Jefty's? Everyone expects her to flop but she walks into the spotlight, defiantly places her cigarette on the small piano, &, with no voice at all, makes her audience dreamy-eyed over a performance of "One for My Baby."

Bette Davis won her second Academy Award for the 1938 film JEZEBEL, which established her as one of Hollywood's greatest actresses, once & for all. One ingredient in the artistic & commercial success of the film was Max Steiner's opulent score -- his finest, for my money. The theme for the headstrong southern belle, Julie, was used as a love theme & also as a waltz in the famous ball scene in which she creates a scandal by wearing a red evening gown rather than the customary
white gown of the debutante.




____
Some find sexual excitation in eating poopoo; but
I myself am squarely repulsed by the very idea.

-- Beethoven, letter to von Gleichenstein, 1807