Max Steiner - The Father of Film Music.

Few years before, I tried my hand in Guitar by enrolling in a music school. But it lasted for just two weeks in spite of my urge towards music. Then I learned an important lesson: passion alone is not a yardstick to grasp the basics of any instrument more than that music demands practise and perseverance - this applies to all art-forms though.Thereon I decided, its better to remain a mute spectator to music rather trying to learn an instrument.

The reason for this petty flashback is these days I search a lot looking for the books on film music. In particular, those books should be non-technical mainly tracing the origins of film music, briefing the nuances of great scores to a commoner, interesting trivia of composers, shedding more light on under-rated film scores.In fact, there are only few titles on film music for a newbie, out of which, I suppose, the below two books worth trying:

1. A History of Film Music - Mervyn Cooke

Probably, this might be the only attempt in detailing film score history from silent era to present day besides briefing comprehensive introduction to various film composers. It has also a section on world-cinema where film music of India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union are discussed.

2. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction.- Kathryn Kalinak

As the title suggests, this is a short introduction to understand the importance of film score.

Apart from these, there are biographies for Bernard Herrmann,Erich W Korngold. Max Steiner penned his autobiography but sadly it is yet to be published. Rest all are guides,technical understanding books.

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In the early days, film music was considered second-class - even now, to some extent - as most of the classical composers were reluctant to pursue film music as a full-time career. But occasionally, some breakthrough changed this notion a little. Let's look into some of those influential scores.

Interestingly, the first defining moment in the film score came outside Hollywood : 

• Metropolis (1927) - a silent, sci-fi, German movie, still remains as one of the most influential both in terms of film-making and score wise.Composer, Gottfried Huppertz, pulled off a remarkable score with a huge orchestra and proclaimed the grand arrival of film score.

Hollywood owes a lot to Hitler. Surprising ? Yes, it was during his reign, Hollywood started witnessing an influx of great Jewish composers who laid the foundation of film score by experimenting new ideas that influenced the next generation of film composers. Among them, were the two greats, Max Steiner and Erich.W.Korngold.

• King Kong (1933) - Max Steiner's score catapulted the film music into great heights as critics went on to say, a symphony written on a movie.

Max Steiner was the first prolific composer in Hollywood who scored for 100's of movies notably, Casablanca, Gone with the wind, King Kong. Besides these, he has share of many great scores as well. But unfortunately, they were overlooked because of those movies couldn't match up to Casablanca or Gone with the wind. Between those, three stunning scores deserves re-visiting.

• Parrish (1961) - This unknown gem surprised me altogether.Unlike his grand orchestration, this comes with minimal instruments: Starts with Harp and then by Violin section unfolds as smooth flow of melody with occasional cameos from Guitar,Clarinet and Piano.

 

• Adventures of Don Juan (1948) -  One of the most dynamic scores aptly composed for an adventure movie. The score has a central theme with many variations in-between to capture the sword fights,horse rides,thrill moments. The best part is the brilliant usage of Guitar. There are hardly few scores those days that come up with Guitar. I guess Max Steiner was the one who used Guitar beautifully in his scores. Subsequently, Guitar reached its peak during Ennio Morricone days.

I could feel the slight resemblance of Aayirathil Oruvan's (1965) BGM in 8.55-9.00.

John Paul Jones (1959) - Its a surprise that a grand orchestral marvel like this wasn't celebrated. Starts with a quirky whistle piece representing a march then taken over by the majestic orchestra. The same whistle theme comes in The Great Escape movie too if I am not wrong. The real beauty of this score comes when it turns into a waltz melody.

I've just listed some of my most favourites of Max Steiner.Still there are lots to explore in his treasure.


Next Post : Erich W Korngold.

Chhoti Si Baat - a slice of Nostalgia.

Chhoti Si Baat doesn't have a great story or an in-depth screenplay still works due to its gentle humour,music and interesting characterisations.How the hero succeeds in his love with a Colonel's help by overcoming his flaws ?

The movie starts with a voice-over introducing us to the characters,their families of the Jackson Tularam company - where our Hero, Amol Palekar works.A voice-over narration in a film that came 35 years back is something unconventional in film making.I don't remember any other mainstream film (during that period) has such a voice-over narration in the beginning of a movie.

Amol's Characterisation: He is one of us - shy,struggles to pick up a conversation with his girl;poor in sports;doesn't know to impress his lover while taking her for lunch - but fantasises often as an angry-young man.

Vidya, just like a girl-next-door is charming;so are her beautiful sarees.Scenes between Amol and Vidya in the buses and streets of Bombay are delight: Sparsely populated Bombay streets;jumbo red colored buses;employees following the test match commentary holding a pocket radio close to their ears;getting excited for a cup of chai;planning for a movie with much anticipation as though they are going to launch a satellite. How life was much simple then! 

However the show-stealer of the movie is Ashok Kumar.He comes as Colonel Julius Nagendranath Wilfred Singh and gives one of the best performance in his career.Ashok Kumar has a terrific screen presence thanks to his body language,brilliant dialog-delivery and his lovely smile.He carries the movie completely in the second half. The way Ashok Kumar is introduced in the movie speaks a lot to his character strength.When Amol comes to his house, he mistakenly opens one of the doors in verandah only to find hens scattering outside.But they retreat immediately on hearing Colonel's order.

Chhoti Si Baat has some memorable compositions from Salil Choudary. Esp - Two gems : Na jaane kyun hota hain zindagi ke saath and yeh din kya aaye lage phool hasne..

Na jaane kyun hooked me completely as I've been listening continuously since last month.It comes at the scenario where Vidya misses Amol terribly without knowing he has went to Khandala.Song starts off with a trumpet,closely followed by beautiful strumming of Guitar then emerges as soft-rock number with Lata rendering soulfully.This is one of the song much ahead-of-its-time in instrument arrangement and genre and a perfect number to sing in any event by strumming a Guitar.

Yeh din kya aaye lage phool hasne - An absolute wonder from Mukesh,even better than his previous Salilda number, Kai Bhar yuhi Dekha(Rajnigandha)

The Bernard Herrmann Experience.

Eleven Years before, my close friends and I, bunked the class and went to Thirunelveli(from Kovilpatti) to see Kadhal Kondein at Bombay Theatre - which was the new sensation at that time.Contrary to expectation, the movie failed to impress, but did impact profoundly by its amazing background score.Until that day, a film score never influenced beyond the movie.But in Kadhal Kondein I could feel the magic literally when the scenes were running.Post-Interval, when the theme music started all of a sudden, I went hysterical.The score stayed with me over a week and stressed the importance of a background score in a film.There began my passion and in search of film score collections.

My knowledge in film scores were minimal - I had listened just a few scores - Titanic,Jurassic Park.I believed John Williams is the greatest composer in Hollywood.Barring Williams, Horner and Morricone were the ones I've heard.I was ignorant of  great composers - Max Steiner,Erich W Korngold,Dimitri Tiomkin,Franz Waxman,Elmer Bernstein,Bernard Herrmann.As like Kadhal Kondein, Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver helped me to get deeper into film score history, particularly, the giant composer Bernard Herrmann.

Last December, after watching Taxi Driver the previous night, I listened to its score the next morning.The score started to grow on me slowly and after 2-3 days it became one of my most loved film scores ever.For the next full month I lived with that score.Sadly, it was Herrmann's last movie but his finest achievement since Psycho.

Taxi Driver deals with a man returning to New york back from Vietnam war and working as a cabbie during nights.The protagonist, a racist,struggles with loneliness,fails to impress the girl in dating,detests prostitution and street crime.Gradually, the character becomes violent and insane.Taxi driver is very special for its visual approach story-telling rather overwrought dialogs - the character mood changes are shown to us visually with Herrmann's alarming score in the background that forewarns the viewers from the beginning.

The moment the movie begins, we see a Taxi appears amidst fumes, with banging drums and when the Hero's eyes were shown in a close-up shot looking over the city pavements, nightclubs, the music changes into a sensuous Sax piece which beautifully reflects the mood and tone of the night.Whenever the taxi roams around the city music travels along with it.In a vital scene when the hero conveys to a cabbie that his thoughts are leading to bad ideas,his colleague assures everything would be fine.But at the end of that scene an eerie music brilliantly captures the mind of hero waiting to explode any time.

Though there are hell lot of good scores in the film history only some scores succeeds like Taxi Driver in matching the following standards:

• It should act as a substitute in conveying the soul of the scene which cannot be done either visually or through dialogs.
• It should further add the intensity to a scene.
• It should carry forward a story from one-point to another.

Addicted to Herrmann, I was desperate to listen his other film scores, if not, all.Stumbling on any of his score yielded rich aural experience.Subsequently, he became my most loved film composer in Hollywood.Almost daily, I started to Google, looking for his rare film scores/concertos/television/radio works or any other information.Yes, I did find a good biography of Herrmann written by Steven.C.Smith but very expensive in India.

As like many geniuses in arts, Herrmann was sensitive,uncompromising on his works.When his score was heavily edited by the studio in the movie "The Magnificent Ambersons", Herrman went furious and backed off from the project and demanded the studio to take off his name from the movie.He believed strongly, music is not just a supplement but an integral part to a movie just like cinematography or editing.

This attitude brought him laurels as well as criticisms.When Hitchcock was reluctant to add a score to the famous murder scene in Psycho, it was Herrmann who insisted and convinced him that the scene needs a scary score.After seeing the scene with Herrmann's score, Hitchcock was so happy and expressed his gratitude by putting Herrmann's name in the Title card just before his name.This was not only a great honour but also unusual for a composer to get equal credits with a director.

The striking feature of his career was his total number of films.Though he was one of the much-sought composer, all he did was mere 50 films in a prolonged 35 year career.Even among them, only 20+ movies could be termed as worth in content-wise with the rest just piggyback on Bernard Herrmann's music.Throughout his career he was deprived of good war/western/comedy scripts.He was typecast as Horror/thriller/noir composer.To say in Herrmann's words :

In California, they like to pigeonhole you. From the time I began working for Hitchcock [Alfred Hitchcock], they decided I was a big suspense man. On other occasions, I've had fantasies of bittersweet romantic stories. I think I'd enjoy writing a good comedy score, but I've never had the luck to be offered such films. Mancini [Henry Mancini] gets the cheerful ones.

In spite of that, Herrmann contributed a lot to film music  - he could just bring the terror of a murder with string section without the need of woodwind/percussion or just a sax plus some guitar/percussion could bring the New York's night life to your music room. His uncanny approach not only changed the way people look at film music but also influenced many contemporary composers from John Williams to Danny Elfman.

Best Scores of Bernard Herrmann.

Top 5

Citizen Kane.

North By North West.

Psycho.

Taxi Driver.

Vertigo.

Few more scores worth listening.

The 7th Voyage of Sindbad.

Mysterious Island.

The Ghost And Mrs. Muir(Bernard Herrmann rates this score as his most favourite)

The Day the Earth stood still.

Jane Eyre.

Jason and Argonauts.