From the Terrace (love love love this score) The Scarlet Letter (unused score) Some Came Running Amazing Grace and Chuck To Kill a Mocking Bird Frankie Starlight The Bridge at Remagen Hawaii The Great Escape The Buccaneer The Journey of Natty Gann (unused score) Last 5 in no particular order.
After I thought about it, I could have added many more.
DOCTORS WIVES. The film is very, very soap opera-ish, running the gamut from infidelity, depression, lesbianism, drug use, hedonism... etc. In other words, all the usual ingredients. John Colicos makes for a truly awesome, smug, self-satisfied vilain.
The score is very short, but I would love a release.
No one could quite write a lilting tune like Elmer. Intoxicating. Here is the nifty, beautifully designed, title sequence.
From the Terrace (love love love this score) The Scarlet Letter (unused score) Some Came Running Amazing Grace and Chuck To Kill a Mocking Bird Frankie Starlight The Bridge at Remagen Hawaii The Great Escape The Buccaneer The Journey of Natty Gann (unused score) Last 5 in no particular order.
After I thought about it, I could have added many more.
Choose one, Edw, ONE!!! Fsmers and their insistence on lists. Lol.
It is funny no one has mentioned his only Oscar, Thoroughly Modern Millie. A really strange award in a career with so many masterpieces... Of course it is not my favorite Bernstein neither.
Some days ago, I chose The Age of Innocence. But, suddenly, The Man with the Golden Arm has come to my mind. Yes, that's the one! At least, today. Tomorrow, who knows...
Given the success and acclaim he secured throughout his lengthy career, my list of personal favourites would be a very long one.
One simple way of editing down the list would be to focus on those significant films that allowed Bernstein to function at the peak of his creative musical and dramatic powers.
For me, close to the top of the list would be "Some Came Running" (a rare example of where many find the film superior to the original novel, unlike, for example,the adaptation of "By Love Possessed"). The film obviously benefitted from having a genuinely gifted director, Vincente Minnelli who, like the composer, was also at the top of his game, and who was an outstandingly creative artist who had a clear and sympathetic understanding of how a great score could enhance the quality of a film. In addition, the impassioned relationships and sensuality portrayed in the film clearly appealed to Bernstein's instinctive sense of drama.
Bernstein always relished seeking out the emotional core of a film and the wide range of situations and emotions displayed on screen gave him ample scope for this, particularly in relation to the complexities of the three central 'amorous' relationships. An especially breathtaking highlight emerges in the closing sequences with the sublime transmutation of the mildly 'jazzy' and slightly 'sleazy' theme for Ginny into an utterly lovely, heartbreaking and poignant melodic statement for strings and woodwind, equaled only by some of the composer's inspired and touching string writing for "Kings Go Forth" in this same period.
Bernstein also delighted in finding the interior subtext of a scene and in "Some Came Running", there is a remarkable example closet o the beginning of the film where a restless Dave, in his hotel room, unpacks from his kitbag his small collection of Viking 'Portabls' anthologies of great American novelists and then jettisons temporarily his unfinished manuscript. The composer is pitch-perfect in sensitively and imaginatively 'catching' the changing moods of the sequence with a variety of musical colours and textures while unifying the disparate elements of the scene by pointing up the psychological turmoil of the character.
Apart from his motion picture legacy, Bernstein responded well to the potential opportunities offered by television. In this field, I would single out his achievement in generating a vast musical canvas for no fewer than 19 individually scored episodes of Season One of Riverboat" - the genesis for the classic Western film scores which were to follow. Just as he did in his work for "GE Theater" he approached each episode as if it were a cinema film (a similar approach to that adopted in his television work by Bernstein's early mentor at Columbia Pictures, the wonderful George Duning .
It is also worth noting the three David Wolper "Hollywood" specials where he provided a generous outpouring of memorable motifs and themes nostalgically redolent of the 'Golden Age' something he captured in his superb 'Overture' in " The Ten Commandments" Incidentally, one of these specials, "Hollywood: The Fabulous Era" contains a little gem of a lyrical Western motif which could have found a good home in one of his cinematic horse operas.
From the Terrace (love love love this score) The Scarlet Letter (unused score) Some Came Running Amazing Grace and Chuck To Kill a Mocking Bird Frankie Starlight The Bridge at Remagen Hawaii The Great Escape The Buccaneer The Journey of Natty Gann (unused score) Last 5 in no particular order.
After I thought about it, I could have added many more.
Choose one, Edw, ONE!!! Fsmers and their insistence on lists. Lol.
It's hard to choose Bill but I"ll try...From the Terrace. There, how's that?
