Film Scores

[MichaelB]

Pärt also wrote original film scores, with Pilot Pirx's Experiment (1979) being particularly striking, as it was composed after his tintinnabular style had first become internationally recognised. So it's distinctively his work, but he was enough of a professional to make sure that it fully fitted the sci-fi genre as well.

And to support what you've been saying, I'm afraid I found the final act of The Artist pretty much unwatchable because its recycling of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score didn't make sense to me on any level - artistically, historically, stylistically, you name it - and so it was a constantly jarring distraction at a time when the film and its score should have been at their most intimately and emotionally intertwined.

But on the subject of music becoming clichéd through overfamiliarity, I always felt rather sorry for Maurice Pialat, who made memorable use of a then pretty much totally unknown piece of Polish choral music in Police (1985) - which nearly a decade later became one of the unlikeliest chart hits of all time. (I suspect I don't even need to identify it; how many other Polish choral pieces would qualify?)

[colinr0380]

Hearing about that addition of a music cue from Vertigo to The Artist on the forum back in the day was actually the thing that made me entirely avoid the film, as that was either going to be too distracting or even worse too parodically obvious a choice (whether intentional or not) that I could only presume that it would make whatever action it was playing over inadvertently comical.

I am probably biased since I am using the film as my avatar, but I think the best use of Gorecki came in the Challenger section of The Atrocity Exhibition, but that's the exception that proves the rule where the music was afforded as much power as the imagery was being given and felt as if it was consciously chosen for its effect. But yes, the other issue that once that association becomes 'iconic' to the viewer (even if it does not become 'sacrosanct' in the culture at large), hearing it recycled again in a different context in another film can be extremely jarring. Which is why its a dangerous game to go for the obvious choice unless you are really certain it is the correct one to make.

[Michael Kerpan]

Pärt also wrote original film scores, with Pilot Pirx's Experiment (1979) being particularly striking...

Is this film available on subbed DVD/BRD?

[MichaelB]

My DVD's from a long-OOP box set of Polish sci-fi films, but there appears to be a copy on YouTube and with what look like bona fide English subtitles - only it's in dubbed Russian.

But given that it was an international co-production to begin with, I wouldn't be minded to be a linguistic purist, especially not if you're watching it for the music.

[J Wilson]

Pärt also wrote original film scores, with Pilot Pirx's Experiment (1979) being particularly striking...

Is this film available on subbed DVD/BRD?

I was curious about this myself, and a search indicates that a German blu-ray is coming out on May 19 that includes English subs, along with German, Polish, and Russian audio.

[MichaelB]

Ooh, that's very tempting indeed - thanks!

(I wouldn't even mind it not having English subs, as I have the technical wherewithal to rip them from the Polish DVD.)

Interesting to see the language options - the Polish DVD is Polish-only, but given that it's an international co-production I suspect the German and Russian audio is equally legitimate, and that there may not be a single version original. Dipping into that YouTube version, I was quite struck by how convincing the Russian lip-sync was, although I daresay it helps that Polish and Russian are both Slavic languages - and there are quite a few Russians in the cast, including Aleksandr Kaidanovsky of Stalker fame (in fact, he'd have made it not long before this).

[flyonthewall2983]

Rick Beato interviewing Thomas Newman, a really fascinating look into his process and how he works with orchestration.

[Beloved Aunt]

Calling John Barry a hack is certainly... a bold opinion.

Not to egotistically resurrect this thread for not much of a reason, except that's exactly what I'm doing, but: really? I find it a little odd, actually, that a no doubt discerning film fan like yourself would single out John Barry of the three composers I mentioned as the least deserving of "hack" epithet. (Presumably, that's what you meant? Don't want to put words in your mouth). Speaking for myself, I am very enthusiastic about Barry's score for Body Heat, his best, Midnight Cowboy is also lovely if perhaps in some aspects a bit too similar to the Body Heat score, Barry's James Bond scores, at least the early ones (esp. Goldfinger and You Only LIve Twice) are terrific, and Chaplin and, a bit better, Enigma, are quite decent conventional work. But everything else I've heard, and I've sampled Barry's stuff very extensivley, is absolutely noxious, tenth-rate, chintzy ersatz junk. Howard Shore and Miklos Rozsa I rate pretty equal to each other: they both are taken so seriously at least in large part because they take themselves so seriously, but while they've both done a great deal of workmanlike composing for film, even their best decidedly doesn't rise above the middle, or perhaps even the bottom, of "pretty good" (I credit Ornette Coleman for elevating the Naked Lunch score into something better than that). Barry is excessively unpretentious, while Shore and Rozsa are, accompiished as I admit they are, very pretentious indeed.

Then you get an idiot like Max Steiner, who aside from the genuinely lovely score for A Summer Place, and perhaps decent work on Now, Voyager and maybe a small handful of other films (would have to refresh my memory to be sure), never comes across as anything more than a baby having a musical tantrum, and his work has actively hurt seemingly quite a number of films. And don't even get me started on James Newton Howard...

[Lowry_Sam]

Composer John Williams says he ‘never liked film music very much’

“I never liked film music very much,” he confessed in a rare interview for a forthcoming biography.

He added: “Film music, however good it can be – and it usually isn’t, other than maybe an eight-minute stretch here and there … I just think the music isn’t there. That, what we think of as this precious great film music is … we’re remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way …

“Just the idea that film music has the same place in the concert hall as the best music in the canon is a mistaken notion, I think.”

[hearthesilence]

Composer John Williams says he ‘never liked film music very much’

“I never liked film music very much,” he confessed in a rare interview for a forthcoming biography.

He added: “Film music, however good it can be – and it usually isn’t, other than maybe an eight-minute stretch here and there … I just think the music isn’t there. That, what we think of as this precious great film music is … we’re remembering it in some kind of nostalgic way …

“Just the idea that film music has the same place in the concert hall as the best music in the canon is a mistaken notion, I think.”

Harsh, but his interviewer, Tim Greiving, has a pretty solid rationale, and his explanation is generally how I feel about film music too - no matter how great its merit, it's functional. For a brief time (like two years in high school), I did listen to soundtracks frequently, but unless they're compilations or made up of songs intended to stand up on their own (the Beatles, Prince, etc.), they felt too reliant on conjuring up memories of how they played under a film scene, and eventually they grew more and more dissatisfying to hear without the context they were intended for. It doesn't make composing music for films some kind of substandard form of art, but it is at the service of a greater whole.

[zedz]

I thought I'd posted about this already, but apparently not.

Harry Allouche's fabulous score for the Chilean post-colonial western The Settlers is available on iTunes (and probably elsewhere). It's expensive for such a short soundtrack, so maybe you just want to look for it on streaming. Very Morricone, with ominous drones, nerve-jangling strings and big drums. You can hear an incoherent sampling of it in the trailer:
Los Colonos

[swo17]

I actually just watched that, and the score is certainly a highlight

[Lowry_Sam]

There is a range of film music though & my guess is that he is talking about that which is most like his own music. My mom loved John Williams' music and would go to a concert of his music, whereas I found most of those type of scores to alternate between bombastic & banal and begin to wear on the listener after a while. Most of the scores I love are no less iconic, but stray from the standard Hollywood formula: Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (Miles Davis), TGTATU (Ennio Morricone), Koyaanisqatsi (Philip Glass), The Double Life Of Veronique (Zbigniew Preisner), 8 1/2 (Nino Rota), Children Of Nature (Hilmar Hilmarsson), Eternity And A Day (Eleni Karaindrou). I would say that any of these would be just fine in a concert setting. Some composers might be a bit trying for some audiences, but I would thoroughly enjoy in a concert: Toru Takemitsu, Bernard Herman, Michael Nyman. But I think I would agree with Williams' sentiments for many of the big name Hollywood composers from the 40s to the 80s.

[flyonthewall2983]

My favorite Williams score is also my favorite Spielberg film, Munich. It feels way more invested in the characters the way some of his more other famous scores are invested in the spectacle. Absolutely nothing wrong with that approach but there needs to be a respectable balance between both to make the music interesting to me.

One which comes to mind, and is more otherwise heavily invested in the spectacle is Highlander. Queen’s song “Who Wants to Live Forever” underpins the dramatic conflict of the lead character’s emotional dilemma in a way that almost expresses, and Michael Kamen’s orchestration is the bridge between the song’s heart and the more fanciful points in the score including the main theme which is one of his best.

[cantinflas]

One which comes to mind, and is more otherwise heavily invested in the spectacle is Highlander. Queen’s song “Who Wants to Live Forever” underpins the dramatic conflict of the lead character’s emotional dilemma in a way that almost expresses, and Michael Kamen’s orchestration is the bridge between the song’s heart and the more fanciful points in the score including the main theme which is one of his best.

And now it's been remixed for Stranger Things

If there's one thing that stands out about The Smashing Machine it's Nala Sinephro's intoxicating soundtrack, especially with the way Safdie uses it in this constantly swirling way to keep you situated in a delirious headspace of tenderness and OCD. Just listening to it on its own and it still works beautifully even without the images.

I've also been playing her Endlessness album from last year which I find pushes further into some kind of acid realm. Quite stunning pieces of work.

[flyonthewall2983]

Ennio Morricone’s score for Salo, released the first time anywhere next month.