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REALLY COUNTED
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Twelve movies where music
was a strong story point
of TheColumnists.com
While preparing a lecture I'm giving this week on "Music in the Movies," I kept stumbling across classic examples of extremely innovative ways directors used music to make a major story point in a film.
Naturally, whenever I use the term "innovative," I think first of the movie director I admire most--the late Alfred Hitchcock. Let me start with some examples of films where Hitch's innovative use of music really counted:
1. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934 & 1955)
In both his 1934 original and his 1955 remake of this spy thriller, the most dramatic moment came during a symphony concert in a jam-packed music hall. There's an assassin ready to shoot a dignitary who's seated in a special box above the concert stage. He plans to fire his gun just at the point in the concert when the cymbals clash and it would be hard for anyone to hear the shot or tell where it came from. Hitch builds the suspense as the camera tracks across the musical score toward the cymbal clash and the hero rushes to stop the assassin.
In the 1955 version, Hitchcock added even more special significance to the sequence in the Royal Albert Hall by commissioning his then favorite movie composer, Bernard Hermann, to compose a special musical piece to be played in the concert hall scene, then hired Hermann to play the role of the orchestra conductor.
2. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1955)
In another very special scene in the 1955 remake, the little boy of hero James Stewart and his wife, played by Doris Day, has been kidnapped and is being held hostage in the palatial home of the film's arch villain. Stewart and Day are invited to the hosue for a party that's loaded with dignitaries and the hosts persuade Day, whose character is a popular singer, to sing a song for the party crowd. The song she picks is "Que Sera, Sera," the favorite song of her little boy. In his room upstairs where the little boy is being held, he hears his mother singing and raises a ruckus that precipitates his rescue.
Ironically, Doris Day was quite unhappy with the only song she was given to sing in the movie because she considered it a silly children's song. The song, of course, became a huge hit, won the Academy Award as Best Song of the Year and turned out to be her all-time biggest record seller.
3. THE LADY VANISHES (1938)
The film is all about the efforts of Nazi-like spies to kidnap an elderly English lady who's riding on a train that's leaving what appears to be Bavaria. Since she seems to be just a harmless old nanny who's going home to England, it's puzzling to figure out why foreign spies are willing to kill to keep her from reaching England. As it turns out, she is carrying secret information that's "hidden" in the words of a silly tune that we finally hear sung at the climax of the movie.
4, REAR WINDOW (1954)
In this film, photographer James Stewart, who is recuperating
from a broken leg, uses binoculars and his long photo lens to
get to know the people living in the apartment wing across from
him. One of the people he "spies" on is a composer
who's frustratingly struggling to finish a new piece of music.
By the end of the film, he finishes it and we finally hear it
played all the way through. Curiously, HItchcock cast reall-life
pop music composer Ross Bagdasarian as the composer in the movie.
Bagdasarian had written "Come On-a My House," one of
Rosemary Clooney's biggest pop hits, and later became famous
as "David Seville" who created and recorded The Chipmunks
for all their novelty hits.
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comes to attention before Japanese prison camp authorities, his men still defiantly whistling the "Col. Bogey March." Guinness earned the Best Actor Academy Award. |
5, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)
Early in this World War II film, captured British Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and his tired, bedraggled regiment of British POWs are marched into the prison camp commanded by Japanese Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). It is extremely important to Nicholson to make Saito know that he and his men are proud warriors who have not surrendered their spirit, too. We in the audience learn this even before we see Nicholcon striding with head high into the prison compound because we first hear the men in the distance as they gaily whistle the "Col. Bogey March," which they continue whistling defiantly all the way to Saito's doorstep. It is one of the most powerful musical moments in movie history--and, of course, the instrumental version of "Col. Bogey March" landed on the pop Hit Parade and today immediately conjures up the image of those proud soldiers who built the bridge on the River Kwai.
6. DELIVERANCE (1972)
This harrowing adventure film, adapted for the screen by James Dickey from his own novel, is about four Atlanta businessmen who take a rafting cruise down a wild river in the remote Appalachians. As they prepare to launch their rafts, one of them--played by actor Ronny Cox in his film debut--is plucking out chords on his guitar when a weird-looking, possibly mentally-deficient backwoods boy begins to "answer" his chords with chords of his own on his own guitar. Soon the two are engaging in a rapid back and forth competition that results in a joyful moment between them. The famous musical interlude, known as "Duelling Banjoes," even though Cox is playing a guitar, not a banjo, became a pop instrumental hit. It also seemed to be a cinematic metaphor showing how two men from radically different cultural backgrounds could find common ground--in a film where the country vs. city clashes soon escalate to nightmare proportions.
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falls in love with Leslie Howard, the concert violinist, she serves as both accompanist and as music teacher for his children. |
7. INTERMEZZO (1938)
Ingrid Bergman made her U.S. film debut in this remake of an acclaimed 1936 Swedish film in which she played the same role--a pianist who falls in love with a married man (Leslie Howard), a violinist who's one of the world's great concert performers. In musical terms, an intermezzo is a brief movement that connects the main sections of a musical composition--and the star-crossed love affair between Bergman and Howard is a symbolic "intermezzo" in his married life. In a very moving scene, Bergman expresses all her pent-up feeling about the affair in a violent piano interlude in which she seems to be pounding out her frustration on the piano keys.
8. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
In this bold science fiction film about first contact between humans and extra-terrestrials, the aliens and earthlings finally begin communicating by using five musical notes played in a certain pattern. Director Steven Spielberg utilizes those five notes in one innovative sequence after another, but perhaps the most breathtaking example is when the NASA contact team journeys to India and comes upon a great mass of thousands of people chanting the five notes as a mantra. Composer John Williams incorporates those five notes throughout his magnificent score.
9. HIGH NOON (1952)
Writer Carl Foreman and director Fred Zinnemann open this taut western with the 1930s singing cowboy Tex Ritter warbling the whole story of the movie in the song played behind the opening credits. The song by famous film composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington, called "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling," functions like a Greek chorus in the developing drama of frontier lawman Gary Cooper, who has agreed to give up his badge when he marries a Quaker girl (Grace Kelly), but then discovers four outlaws have come to kill him on his wedding day. The song became a huge Hit Parade favorite when recorded by pop star Frankie Laine--and it also won the Oscar as Best Song of 1952.
10. BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955)
Director Richard Brooks needed a piece of music that was both arresting and contemporary for this hard-hitting film about an urban high school that had lost control over the delinquent youths in its classrooms. In 1954, when the music was picked, the very dawn of a musical revolution was taking place and when audiences heard Bill Haley and the Comets storm their way through "Rock Around the Clock" behind the opening credits, it was as if a rockabilly Gabriel had just blown his horn. The song had already been on the charts, but its showcasing in this extremely popular film has given it wide recognition as the official anthem of the new Rock generation.
11. NASHVILLE (1975)
Director Robert Altman was never a conventional
filmmaker, but he really took some big chances when he made this
sprawling, episodic film about the capitol of country music in
the 1970s. His biggest daredevil act was requiring all the actors
playing country singers to write their own songs to sing in the
movie. The songs they came up with were uniformly good, but Keith
Carradine, who had never done anything remotely like this before,
composed a haunting ballad called "I'm Easy" which
was the hit of the movie and won Carradine an Academy Award for
Best Song, an award he'd never even dreamed of winning before.
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cheerleading squad by singing a heartfelt rendition of The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand." It's a breathtakingly imaginative re-thinking of the iconic rock tune in Julie Taymor's 2007 musical "Across the Universe." |
12. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007)
This amazing, original, innovative musical by Julie Taymor takes dozens of songs from The Beatles catalog and uses them to help tell a story about an English boy and American girl who fall in love during the era of Beatles pop chart dominance. In my favorite sequence, young T.V. Carpio plays "Prudence," a gay high school girl who has fallen in love with a beautiful cheerleader and reveals her true feelings to the movie audience by singing "I Want To Hold Your Hand," which gets a whole new layer of special meaning.
©2009 by Ron Miller.
The photo from "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is courtesy
of Universal Studios. The photo from "Bridge on the River
Kwai" is courtesy of Columbia Pictures. The photo from "Intermezzo"
is courtesy of MGM Home Entertainment. The photo from "Across
the Universe" is courtesy of Revolution Studios. This column
first posted Aug. 31, 2009.
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