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FILMS YOU WISH HAD A DIFFERENT SCORE is a topic which has been generating some lively discussion here on our Board, and I find it's stimulated me to post a topic of my own: SCORES YOU WISH HAD A DIFFERENT FILM. I'm not thinking only of those times when you've seen a movie you disliked but whose score you enjoyed, or those times when its score was the only thing you like about a particularly lousy picture. I'm also wondering about those poignant times when you fall in love with a film score you've only heard as pure music, on LP, CD or radio, but then when you finally see the movie for which it was written you're disappointed to discover that the movie possesses none or very few of the feelings or virtues you've found in its music. (THE EGYPTIAN, anyone?)
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Posted: |
Dec 7, 2022 - 12:06 AM
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By: |
Zoragoth
(Member)
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Well, call me an easy mark, but I like THE EGYPTIAN quite a bit. For a CinemaScope epic of the era it's quite a melancholy film, with an often feckless anti hero at its center, and a pretty downbeat ending. But I listened to that score for decades until I finally was able to see the Twilight Time blu-ray, and yes, I can't imagine the film that could have lived up to the atmosphere and romance generated by that amazing score.
OBSESSION is a similar case for me. I played that album to death, purchasing it as a teenager when the movie came out. It was one of my first Herrmann albums, and along with his London rerecordings and, of course, the Harryhausen scores, began a lifelong love affair with his music.
I didn't see the movie until the mid eighties, on VHS. I like it quite a bit - but it fell far short of the movie Herrmann's exquisite music suggested! How could it not? I had from my junior high years until shortly after I graduated from college to spin inchoate but abiding suggestions of a a far more impressive story in my imagination, thanks to regular musical infusions courtesy of Bernard Herrmann, who with this score resoundingly confirmed his unparalleled genius even at the very end!
Both these scores create elaborate and imaginative sound worlds of mood, poetry, and color - like spells cast, like dense evocative dreams ....
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Zoragoth, in fairness, I do enjoy some aspects of THE EGYPTIAN you cite, also Peter Ustinov, and the scene with grave robber John Carradine. (I hope you get to see it once on a big theater screen, with six stereo channels blasting the main title straight at the hairs on the back of your neck.) But ultimately, you said it best -- what movie ever could have come up to that score?
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In general, when you're dealing with the cream of the composer lot, and those guys and gals work prolifically, they're going to accept clunker films more often than not. Goldsmith worked on many, many scores for films I'll never see.
So here's two I've been thinking about lately:
John Barry's Howard the Duck. This is really such a marvelous score for such a dud film. The score is both textbook Barry (cool, jazzy late-night theme) and very uncharacteristic (his upbeat hero music is startlingly good and would have sunk more into the minds of moviegoers if attached to a popular film).
Lalo Schifrin's Che! The film is a Clunker, but the main theme is so haunting with its dirge tempo and high piercing flutes. The moment that gets me every time is the beginning of the bridge.
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Jerry Goldsmith's THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is one of the pinnacles of his career, easily the equal of Planet of the Apes, but rarely gets discussed because the film is so slight. It does come together well in this clip, though.
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7hgaOTyPw".
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Kev, although jerry had a sizeable chunk of good scores for stinker films and it is used as a stick to beat him with by Williams fans, the "winner" of this will be Ennio by a mile. You know why? Because he did another 250 films MORE than even high scorers like Jerry G. Plenty great films, Ennio did, its true, but lots of duds, many Italian, that he helped improve or gave them classy scores the films did not deserve
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