Critic Flashback

By Bruno David Ussher

Special thanks to G.D. Hamann for locating and providing this film music-related example from Mr. Ussher's 1930s newspaper column.

Music telling of "love that is stronger than time, still sobbing for its unlived days and unbeaten bread" throbs and threads its way through the film Wuthering Heights. This background score, by no means as unrelieved in mood as the above lines spoken by one of the characters would imply, confers exceptional distinction on the composer, Alfred Newman, music director at Goldwyn's.

Newman has distinguished himself before in the field of cinematographic music. Wuthering Heights, the film, has been markedly benefitted by the music, although I doubt whether Newman was given either sufficient time or film footage to add music where long scenes remain without such supplementation. On occasions, too, the thematic material could have been elaborated more, although the casual listener to this poignant score must not take recurrence of melodies as mere reiterations. Newman has really given his leit-motifs a variety of pointed implications. His melodies are so hauntingly strong in their tender and stark meaning that the original statement remains with the beholder.

Wuthering Heights' music is simple and eloquent of the ardent and tragic longings of Charlotte Bronte's characters. The orchestra is exceptionally lovely. Instrumentation never goes beyond purpose, to serve the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic implications of Newman's fundamental ideas. And Newman, who has directed the recordings himself, has endowed them with a reality of feeling which remains fresh and freshly appealing to me after the preview, although I have sat through two full length recordings and had opportunity to wear down the appeal of these, often long and, of course, related fragments which constitute the background music as a whole. I think Newman could well shape this music into a short tone poem. In concert form, without aid of the screen, this music still would tell of love and price, of longing and cruel regrets which make the characters of this old novel so immediate and modern.

This is finely realistic music, humanly direct, folksong like. The story calls for simplicity and Newman never permits his skill to run away with genuineness of mood. The title music already indicates this. The stark, grand theme of the spell binding beauty of those desolate, rock crested moors is heard for the second time when the "Foreward" flashes on the screen. In short, timing is excellent.

While much of the quality and "speaking likeness" of background music depends on the ability of the man who conducts the orchestra for the recordings, the purity, clarity and vividness of such music depends on the man at the microphone controls. Paul Neal, an old timer at the dials, was in charge for this part of the production.

Neal got his start nearly 20 years ago in New York, I believe, when radio was young. He was brought to Hollywood when the screen began to talk, and to this day he records almost every important production at United Artists, dialogue as well as music. He was at the controls, too, for the Wanger produced Stagecoach in which music, conversation and the combination of both were of outstanding excellence.

In this connection I must mention Earl Mounce, who sat in the sound booth at RKO when the made Gunga Din, where the simultaneous occurrence of music and battle noises constituted a difficult problem. It was solved splendidly, as I pointed out when discussing that Alfred Newman score. Mounce is a well practiced symphony musician. He sat for nine years in the first violin section of the Cincinnati Symphony and knows how to blend the different instrumental choirs of a recording orchestra.

While Mounce prefers to follow the music with a copy of the music while twisting the dials, Neals listens to Newman rehearse and thus familiarizes himself with contents and interpretation. He prefers to keep his eyes on volume indicators and relies on his memory for detail while watching Newman's baton for certain shadings. And there is a wide range of them in the music of Wuthering Heights.

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