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Posted: |
Dec 15, 2022 - 2:39 PM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Oh wow, I had no idea! That's hilarious. This piece will earn a place of honor on my forthcoming compilation album: "Whatever, F*** It -- Just Use The Same S*** Again: The Film Music Of Nino Rota."
But you know... the music is good, so I can deal wit it (also it's not actually in the movie, soooo...).
I would always freak out when Horner would get caught in a blatant reuse, but really a lot of Golden Age composers kind of recycled their own material, so I've learned to chill way out now that I'm in my 40s.
Still, the recent LLL release of Dr Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas reminded me of this bizarre moment where Horner appears to reuse a motif from Commando / Clear And Present Danger RIGHT as you look at low angle shot of the Grinch's crotch as he sits on a miniature car.
https://youtu.be/HzmpKFu6R8Q?t=174
I don’t think I’ve ever criticised James Horner for re-using his own work; just for passing off other composers’ music as his own. Likewise with Nino Rota, I bloody LOVE it when I hear overlaps in the scores of the Fellini films and The Godfathers. It’s not only that the music is exquisite (particularly have a thing for the Toby Dammit score) but it doesn’t remotely take me out of the film. In fact, it enhances the experience. The films are (for me) so much better than let’s say any of the films Horner wrote for, and in fact the vast majority of Hollywood output, that it doesn’t feel like a cheat when a common theme pops up. The Fellinis in particular are like episodes in a larger piece of work, so it isn’t a surprise, much less a disappointment, when a familiar piece is rearranged into a different score.
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Posted: |
Dec 18, 2022 - 11:38 AM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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Let me start with this: I love this release! I hope a ton of people are buying it!
It's a classic, and deservedly so. The themes are iconic. It sounds terrific (and boy, it didn't used to).
As the notes and other writings about this score point out, most of the music in the finished film seems to be representing the Corleones' cultural past reaching out to them in the present. The waltz just seems to exist in tandem with the characters, like it goes on and on forever in circles around them. Though the scoring hits the dramatic beats, it generally doesn't feel like it was scored with much concern for acknowledging cuts or specific moments.
But what's fascinating on an archeological level is what wasn't used in the film, which in many cases is quite different. All of the jazzy stuff we'd known from the unused "The Pickup" from the old LP (and yes, from Toby Dammit), suggestive of the pulp excitement of a crime, was cut from its various incarnations. Great films always feel inevitable, but of course, they are not. They become great through trial and error and honest assessments of the film in front of them. I can totally see why Coppola and Rota would guess that the film needed that sort of scoring, but fifty years on, it's clear that the film works better without it. The film is about characters trapped in an unending cycle of ambition and retribution that is both the Corleones' glory and their tragedy. It is not about the specifics of any one crime. The scoring in the film tells us that. The unused bits fight that.
The unused cue "Christmas / Prelude To Murder" lines up perfectly with the sequence in the film where Michael and Kay go Christmas shopping while Luca Brasi straps on guns and Don Corleone goes to buy fruit. This scoring is out of character with the rest of the film, hitting every beat a little too hard. The Christmas music is a bit too jolly, making the comparison to the ominous music a bit too obvious. Again, easy to say now, after half a century and a dozen viewings, but the film is better off without this music.
(Interestingly to me, Rota does score the "New Carpet" sequence in the first sequel in this way. When it works, it works, and you can't intellectualize it too much.)
In any event, thanks to everybody who put this album together! I hope Part II follows!
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Good news from early adopters. Can't wait!
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Gotta admit, I was not very familiar with the music aside from the famous Godfather theme but decided to grab this anyways. Glad I did. There’s so much more to this than just that theme. I’m really loving the upbeat, jazzy stuff. Sound quality is amazing too. Might take a crack at restoring some of it.
That would be awesome! (And could you also tackle Mancini’s Frenzy while you’re at it?  )
Yavar
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Posted: |
Jan 8, 2023 - 12:08 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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Okay so I know I said the wedding music must be correct because of the stereo recording, but after hard listening and going back and forth with the film and the CD... 2 out of 3 are not from the film. These are still unreleased.
I'm totally guessing here, but given that (Francis Ford) Coppola insisted on real musicians on screen to play (Carmine) Coppola's wedding music, it wouldn't surprise me that what we hear in the film may have been recorded on set and is forever married to wedding walla (the murmurs of a crowd as recorded for a film). This is not commonly done for obvious reasons, but there are rare exceptions and this sounds like it could have been one of them. It's also possible that what we hear in the film is a combination of pre-records and music recorded live on set, meaning it only exists in the film (and only cleanly on "Tarantella" in the twenty-two seconds you cite).
The full recordings on this set may have been pre-records for use in the film or simple audition recordings for the director's approval, or may have even been recorded afterward for use on a soundtrack (which they weren't) or simply because the director's father wanted to record them.
In any event, I wouldn't call what's on the set "incorrect" because I'm sure they put on this (great) set everything they could locate.
And as I stated before looks like the track "Everytime I Look In Your Eyes" didn't even make it the CD.
I had thought that "Ev'ry Time I Look Into Your Eyes" was original to Part II, but if you say otherwise, I believe you!
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Let me start with this: I love this release! I hope a ton of people are buying it!
Still waiting for mine but it will soon be here
not familiar with the music outside the film - but this is one of those releases that you need to have in your collection
Regards
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I know this is a leap, but if we had some audio of the guy and anybody else taking, maybe people here in-the-know would recognize the person and probably could point to where it may have been recorded.
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There's no documentation to share. We looked. I think it was recorded in the US because the tapes are all vocal slated in English by an American.
However, we have at least the testimony of Carlo Savina in the book "Ritratto di un compositore: Carlo Savina" (published in 2007). Savina had been interviewed in 2002 for an Italian TV programme and there he stated that the score had indeed been recorded in the US. These are his comments which can be read in the book in Italian language on page 112 (the English translation is by me):
"I was lucky enough to work in America when I went there to conduct the music for Coppola´s THE GODFATHER and I assure you that when I began to conduct the music for this film I was laughing a bit. There was this enormous hall of the 20th Century Fox studios and 3000 persons visited it... a whole audience of persons, actors who had come to listen to the music. The only one missing was the actual composer Nino Rota, as he had been afraid of travelling by plane and therefore had not come... and I thought...your fear is my luck. Thanks!"
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