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:
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 :
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.
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.
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.
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