Music For The Movies

Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann (58') [1992]:
explores the work of a composer who created music for over 50 films, collaborating with such diverse directors as Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, and Martin Scorsese. Best remembered for his twelve-year collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in such classics as Vertigo, North By Northwest, and the unforgettable Psycho, Herrmann pioneered many fundamental techniques of film scoring in the course of his 35-year career.



This fascinating program takes audiences behind the scenes in Hollywood to the mixing rooms and dubbing stages where music is put to picture. We follow Herrmann’s relationship with Hitchcock, examining the bitter breakup of one of the riches collaborations in Hollywood history over the score for the 1966 film Torn Curtain. He see Torn Curtain as it has never been seen before – accompanied by Herrmann’s brilliant score.

From Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver, Bernard Herrmann composed over 50 film scores. He is, however, best known for his fruitful collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock. Illustrated by film scenes and interviews with his friends and collaborators, this portrait helps us to better understand Bernard Herrmann's immense contribution to cinema.

Featuring interviews with directors Martin Scorsese and Claude Chabrol, composers David Raksin and Elmer Bernstein, film scholar Royal S. Brown, Herrmann’s first wife, musicians, film editors and sound mixers, as well as home movies, archival photos and interviews with Herrmann himself.

“Wisely, filmmaker Joshua Waletzky doesn't flinch from the harsher details of Herrmann's life and personality (composer David Raksin describes Herrmann as "not a sociable man" and "a virtuoso of non-specific anger"), serving up an even portrait of an ambitious but also temperamental genius. Highly recommended.” - Video Librarian

Extracts of Citizen Kane, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Psycho, On Dangerous Ground, The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, Torn Curtain, La mariée était en noir, Sisters.

The Hollywood Sound (85') [1995]:



The 2 main schools of Hollywood composers: The Europeans (Max Steiner and Franz Waxman) who drew heavily on Romanticism and their American counterparts (David Raskin, Jerome Moross and Alex North) influenced by jazz and folk music, illustrated by scenes from "Gone With the Wind', "Rebecca", "Big Country" and "A Streetcar Named Desire".

With a revived interest in the scores created for Hollywood films in the 1930's and 40's, "Music for the Movies: The Hollywood Sound" explores a segment of that legacy through composers like Max Steiner ("Gone With the Wind"), Franz Waxman ("Bride of Frankenstein") and Erich Korngold ("The Adventures of Robin Hood"), all of whom came from Europe. Steiner was a pupil of Ravel.

The American roster includes David Raksin ("Laura") and Alfred Newman ("The Hunchback of Notre Dame"). Host and narrator John Mauceri conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales against a backdrop of clips from the various movies.

“Warmly recommended, especially for film music buffs.”
- Video Librarian

This is a fascinating blend of archive and movie footage and a modern day recording session where the eminently qualified John Mauceri explores the importance of the music of the great filmusic composers Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin and Alfred Newman.

This presentation goes to the very roots of classical Hollywood movie scoring, its links with the scoring for silent movies and the developing technology which came as a result including, before music was added as an actual soundtrack on the movie itself, having the projectionist play records that were synchronized to the images on the screen.

Mauceri also conducts the orchestra in front of the cinema screen showing scenes from the various movies and analyses what the music was actually doing in and for the scene, something you are usually, and rightly, unaware of when watching the movie, notable examples featured are the late night scene between Bogart and Bergman in CASABLANCA, and the famous and fabulous final swordfight between Rathbone and Flynn in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, both of which cut back and forth from the screen to the musicians and their instruments.

Other films featured are BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, THE INFORMER, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, JOHNNY BELINDA, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, RED RIVER, and LAURA.

Interviews include veteran Fred Steiner and notably a large contribution from David Raksin, composer of LAURA, and who also restores his own music of 50 years ago and takes part in the recording session.

With so many scores of the American west being written by the Russian Dimitri Tiomkin, and the Viennese Erich Korngold practically inventing the swashbuckling hero for Hollywood, a style which persists to this day, and American born but descended from Ukrainian-Jewish émigrés Alfred Newman utilizing an Irish melody in a movie set in Wales (the list goes on), as John Mauceri states, if anything can be called ‘World Music’, it is the music of Hollywood.

Speaking of Korngold, David Raksin also comments that ‘Without such music I don’t think that he (Errol Flynn) would have been quite so brave.’

This is all wonderful stuff and a marvelous insight into the Hollywood industry of the 30s and 40s, the composers, their music, their legacy and their influence on the filmusic composers that would follow.

Director Joshua Waletzky’s Music for the Movies documentary on Bernard Herrmann was nominated for an Oscar in 1993.

Hosted and narrated by John Mauceri who conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales (Review by: Max Pemberton)

Plot keywords: Film Making | Narration | Behind The Scenes | Composer | Independent Film

Bonus: Biography of Bernard Herrmann - Discography of Bernard Hermann

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