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Hi! I put that "suspended drama" bit in the thread title to make it look more intelligent! But I just want to say that I've just listened to this great Jerry Goldsmith FSM release once more, and I'm absolutely blown away by the intensity of it. Goldsmith does so much with his ideas here, and a lot of it is just bare bones stuff. The clacking intensity of the building cues - it's amazing. What could be boring is made simply riveting by the changes in rhythm throughout. You've got coconut shells going slowly, then in the next track they pick up speed, and it all ends up tremendously exciting. I think that this is one of Goldsmith's best, from an era in which he hardly put a foot wrong.
To sum up, this is a score which just grabs my attention from beginning to end. It hasn't got the variety of THE SAND PEBBLES for example, but in its economy of means it's an absolute masterpiece.
Oh, the "suspended drama" bit was just a nod to scores that seem to do nothing but really do a lot!
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Hi! I put that "suspended drama" bit in the thread title to make it look more intelligent! But I just want to say that I've just listened to this great Jerry Goldsmith FSM release once more, and I'm absolutely blown away by the intensity of it. Goldsmith does so much with his ideas here, and a lot of it is just bare bones stuff. The clacking intensity of the building cues - it's amazing. What could be boring is made simply riveting by the changes in rhythm throughout. You've got coconut shells going slowly, then in the next track they pick up speed, and it all ends up tremendously exciting. I think that this is one of Goldsmith's best, from an era in which he hardly put a foot wrong.
To sum up, this is a score which just grabs my attention from beginning to end. It hasn't got the variety of THE SAND PEBBLES for example, but in its economy of means it's an absolute masterpiece.
Oh, the "suspended drama" bit was just a nod to scores that seem to do nothing but really do a lot!
Some are put off by the pace, but I find it too be a really interesting film that payoffs with th recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor on both a visual and emotional level.
The films I always suggest on this topic are This film, IN HARM'S WAY and MIDWAY.
They all look at the attack and aftermath in a very interesting manner.
And if you are a fan of the new version of GALACTICA, you have to see IN HARM'S WAY to see how much that film influenced Ron Moore's reboot.
Ford A. Thaxton
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I first watched Tora! Tora! Tora! when it was new at age 10 and was mesmerized. I have a copy on DVD, as well as the score on CD. I still find it a superb piece of film making.
There is a joke associated with this film. Fox wondered why the film was doing such boffo biz in Japan. Then they were told the Japanese had cut an hour from it and the film was retitled "Those Were the Happy Times."
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Some are put off by the pace, but I find it too be a really interesting film that payoffs with th recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor on both a visual and emotional level.
Ford A. Thaxton
I first watched Tora! Tora! Tora! when it was new at age 10 and was mesmerized. I have a copy on DVD, as well as the score on CD. I still find it a superb piece of film making.
There is a joke associated with this film. Fox wondered why the film was doing such boffo biz in Japan. Then they were told the Japanese had cut an hour from it and the film was retitled to "Those Were the Happy Times."
I've heard that joke before, and it's too out there not to be funny, but I kinda think that's an apocryphal story... and I am laughing now.
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"In Harm's Way" is a film so bad it does the impossible of making "Pearl Harbor" look good.
"Midway" I will always have a soft spot for since it got me interested in reading about the actual battle, though I can acknowledge its flaws.
Disagree with you about IHW, but I still have my copy of Gordon Prange's Miracle at Midway on my bookshelf all these years later, as well as the MacArthur bio, William Manchester's American Caesar. Those WWII films definitely influenced my reading habits as a child.
As for JG's score, I didn't like it as a stand-alone listen, but have come to appreciate it recently.
I just listened to it tonight what with this thread. It's subtly dynamic with echoplex, very non-thematic. There IS no conventional theme in it. If there was ever a Goldsmith "background score", this is it. Of course, I find it very listenable but I realize it will never be considered one of Goldsmith's finest scores in terms of indy presentation.
I saw the movie theatrically when I was 14 in 1970.
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Back to TTT for a minute - this must have been brought up before, but what's the photo on the CD tray? Looks a bit like Jerry Goldsmith. If it's him, what's he doing standing on top of a submarine, wearing a boiler suit and getting his hands all dirty? And if it isn't him, what's that photo doing there?
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Bumping this to the top, if for frivolous reasons. I don't know how to post pictures here (I'm a paper and pencil guy), but could anyone put up the picture of the lean gentleman with the sharply prominent nose and a crew-cut (from the TORA! TORA! TORA! CD tray) along with the photo of the 60s Goldsmith which is in the MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. CD booklet?
Either that, or just tell us if they are both the same bloke. Thanx!
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I like both the film and the score. Goldsmith virtually invented his own Oriental/post-impressionist American style for films like 'Chairman' and 'Tora , Tora, Tora'. The Japanese feel for the latter is so authentic, maybe simply because to modern Western ears, the Goldsmith sound itself inherently cries out 'authentic and never dated' and that's so in a Japanese modal style as much as in any other.
The film was well-paced, built up the tensions, and was more centred on the documentary feel (as in 'Longest Day' or 'Is Paris Burning?') than any showcase for character development or individual performance. Some of the the minor bit-players were a little wooden.
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There is a joke associated with this film. Fox wondered why the film was doing such boffo biz in Japan. Then they were told the Japanese had cut an hour from it and the film was retitled "Those Were the Happy Times."
That is really funny!
It reminds me of a story our tour guide told us on our class trip to Salzburg in high school.
Apparently, when THE SOUND OF MUSIC was originally released in Austria and West Germany in 1965, the last hour with the Nazis was chopped off and the film ended with the wedding.
When you think about it, it makes sense, most of the conflicts of the film are resolved with the wedding. The whole last hour, exciting as it is, is like next week's episode of the Von Trapp Family Adventures. Granted, everything that happens there deepens all the conflicts that came before, but still.. It doesn't sound impossible that they did this.
I'd be curious to hear from any Germans if this is actually true.
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There is a joke associated with this film. Fox wondered why the film was doing such boffo biz in Japan. Then they were told the Japanese had cut an hour from it and the film was retitled "Those Were the Happy Times."
That is really funny!
It reminds me of a story our tour guide told us on our class trip to Salzburg in high school.
Apparently, when THE SOUND OF MUSIC was originally released in Austria and West Germany in 1965, the last hour with the Nazis was chopped off and the film ended with the wedding.
When you think about it, it makes sense, most of the conflicts of the film are resolved with the wedding. The whole last hour, exciting as it is, is like next week's episode of the Von Trapp Family Adventures. Granted, everything that happens there deepens all the conflicts that came before, but still.. It doesn't sound impossible that they did this.
I'd be curious to hear from any Germans if this is actually true.
Somehow, I don't think that happened. It seems to me paying patrons might have been a little upset. Unless they still had Nazi ties with family or friends. And if they did, why would they see the damned thing to begin with?
20th Century Fox might have had a say in that possiblity as well. It would be like censoring IS PARIS BURNING? in France because it portrayed the Quisling like beings that folded up like whipped dogs to Germany as being in charge before we bailed their asses out.
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I'd be curious to hear from any Germans if this is actually true.
Somehow, I don't think that happened. It seems to me paying patrons might have been a little upset.
I think the idea was that the musical was unknown there, so they'd have no reason to be upset by the deletion of something they never expected in the first place.
As I understand it, the film is still relatively unknown there, I think it's a mostly American and Japanese phenomenon. Those were certainly the two nationalities I saw at all the locations our package tour went to.
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Posted: |
Nov 1, 2009 - 9:49 AM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....Somehow, I don't think that happened. It seems to me paying patrons might have been a little upset.
I think the idea was that the musical was unknown there, so they'd have no reason to be upset by the deletion of something they never expected in the first place.
As I understand it, the film is still relatively unknown there, I think it's a mostly American and Japanese phenomenon. Those were certainly the two nationalities I saw at all the locations our package tour went to.....
Well.....I was in the Army, stationed in Germany in 1965, and I saw THE SOUND OF MUSIC at the local theatre in a first-run engagement and it was intact as it is now, with no cuts.
It was called "Meine Lieder, Meine Traume" ("My Songs, My Dreams"). I even bought the original GERMAN soundtrack album on RCA Victor Records. The film, and the album, used the original Irwin Kostal orchestral soundtrack recordings, but the singing voices were re-dubbed by Germans---and quite excellently---in six-track stereo for the film and regular stereo for the album. It's a recording I listen to occasionally even today.
The 1965 film is primarily based, of course, on a German film of 1956, DIE TRAPPE-FAMILIE, with Ruth Leuwerik, which Fox bought for the US (partially to use for remake purposes, and partially to keep it from competing with their proposed production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC). Eventually they even released that here in the US, too, and I saw it as well. It's not a bad film at all and features many of the original songs sung by the Trapp family. I can see why Fox would want to have it under their control.
As an aside, I might point out that the film of MY FAIR LADY, also in the same general period,
had a release, with songs and dialog dubbed into stereo for the 70mm German engagements. There was also a nice German soundtrack album of that, too.
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Posted: |
Nov 1, 2009 - 10:01 AM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....I first watched Tora! Tora! Tora! when it was new at age 10 and was mesmerized. I have a copy on DVD, as well as the score on CD. I still find it a superb piece of film making.
There is a joke associated with this film. Fox wondered why the film was doing such boffo biz in Japan. Then they were told the Japanese had cut an hour from it and the film was retitled to "Those Were the Happy Times."
I've heard that joke before, and it's too out there not to be funny, but I kinda think that's an apocryphal story... and I am laughing now.....
Someone has elided two different films into one joke (perhaps an actual sardonic Fox studio executive), and I think no one here has yet pointed out the real basis for the reference which you really need to know to get the full gist of the humor:
The producers of the 1970 TORA, TORA, TORA, Twentieth Century-Fox, also produced the major financial failure, STAR, starring Julie Andrews as Gertrude Lawrence, in 1968.
When STAR didn't succeed in its first-run engagements, Fox severely cut the film for its general release and re-titled it. The general release title of STAR actually was THOSE WERE THE HAPPY TIMES!
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