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Jack Black, playing a film score composer, takes Kate Winslet on a musical tour of the video store in The Holiday.
Back in the days when VCRs had gone from being the latest expensive electronic gadget to something commonplace in American households, some enterprising folks decided to put old silent movies on video tape, and sell them cheaply. So we bought a copy of the 1924 Thief of Bagdad with Douglas Fairbanks (senior), and one Saturday afternoon sat down to watch it — but by 20 minutes in, my attention was wandering. The print quality was poor, blurry and lurching, and there was no sound. A completely silent movie.
‘Silent Film’ is actually not an accurate term. While there was no one speaking in these movies, they were never intended to be shown without music. The bigger budget productions had sheet music of actual scores that were sent out with the cans of film, but even the cheapest movies, shot on sets with walls that rippled when someone closed a door, were accompanied by a pianist. There was thrilling music for chases, love tunes for romantic scenes, ominous music for the entrance of the villain, and so on.
That Saturday afternoon we solved the problem with Thief of Bagdad by putting on a record (yes, we still had records then) of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. About 90% of the time, the music fit perfectly, and even when it wasn’t quite in sync with a scene, it suited the style of the film so well that it carried you on to the next point where it meshed again. The poor quality of the print stopped mattering, and we were treated to a bravura performance by Fairbanks that showed why he had been such a huge international star in the 1920s.
Great music can make a bad movie seem better than it is — Aaron Copeland’s score for The Red Pony immediately comes to mind.
Music can make a mediocre film memorable, and great films even greater. Conversely, bad music hurts even a very good movie. LadyHawke, a mythic medieval tale of cursed lovers helped by an engaging young thief, had a completely 1980s electronic rock score, which grated on my nerves then, and sounds even worse now that it’s hopelessly outdated — one reviewer said the opening music sounded like a track from MacGyver.
It’s when you combine the right music with the right movie that you get a classic: The Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn), Lost Horizons (the Capra film, not the horrible remake — talk about bad music!), Laura, Fahrenheit 451, North By Northwest, Lawrence of Arabia,Schindler’s List . . .
Or one of my all-time favorites, To Kill a Mockingbird. The film starts in silence, then an unseen little girl is humming tunelessly. The score almost sneaks up on you, with such simplicity, just so right for the time, the place, and the people. It’s magic.
G’Morning MOTlies!
Which movies do you think have the best music?
