Chapter 6: Switched-on Electronica
I did wonder if there would be anything I would like in this chapter. But there was. Starting with Anna Meredith's "startling electronic accompaniment" for Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade (2018). Meredith comes from a classical background and is a composer-in-residence for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. She composed a brand new piece for the Last Night of the Proms. We hear about her background and early influences. Mark name-checks more composers using synthetic music, most of whom are women.
A part about the use of the theremin was less interesting. Can you call it an instrument without touching and just waving your hands in the air? We then hear about Bernard Herrmann's use of electronic and acoustic instruments for The Day the Earth Stood Still. Then a long introduction to The Forbidden Planet (1956) and the electronic soundtrack by Bebe and Louis Barron. (Hands up anyone who has heard of them). It may be a favourite film of Mark's, but not me. He calls it "the silver screen's first all-electronic feature score" and missing an Oscar nomination, as it was "electronic tonalities" and not music. They were also not a member of the musician's union!
Alan Parker's Midnight Express (1978) did win the Oscar for Georgio Moroder's electronic score. We hear all about this composer, but not his Together in Electric Dreams. There is then a tedious part about Tangerine Dream and their scores for films of which I had never heard. And more boring stuff about the composers Walter/Wendy Carlos and Benjamin John Power.
Soundtrack Selection: Blade Runner (1982)
Mark says that it is "hard to overstate the significance of Vangelis's score" for this film. " Composed, arranged, produced and performed" by just this one man. He had won the Oscar for best original score for Chariots of Fire. We hear all about his background as well as all the different synths he employs. Apparently there was no release of the soundtrack until ten years later when the Director's Cut was put out. Mark says, "For many, this soundtrack is the sound of science fiction." One of my favourite films, and this has reminded me of what we heard.
Chapter 7: Play through the action
"I would hate to be stuck in the action picture thing." So said Hans Zimmer in the early nineties before he went on to do just that. He composed the music for so many blockbusters. Mark does give us some history of early action movies, starting with 1903's The Great Train Robbery. It was Miklós Rózsa who composed the score for Ben Hur (1959), the world's most expensive picture at that time. He composed three hours of music, of which two and a half were used. Amazing. Using the hundred-strong MGM Symphony Orchestra, they spent seventy-two hours in the studio.
We then hear the advantages of using silence in films, such as the iconic scene in North by Northwest and the crop duster plane attack. Mark tells us about all those composers for the Mission Impossible films. Next comes Lorne Balfe and all the action movies he scored before a mention for Jerry Goldsmith and all his films. He used to tell his students "to score the emotion, not the visuals".
But the best part of this chapter was about Laura Karpman (no, I hadn't heard of her). She "started writing music at the age of seven", so definitely a child prodigy. She attended Juilliard for a doctorate in musical composition and (eventually) made it to scoring a film. She was nominated for an Oscar for her score for American Fiction (2023; see post 15th March 2024) and co-founded the Alliance of Women Film Composers. There is a lovely story about her work on The Marvels movies.
Sound designers who worked on the Christopher Nolan films get a mention, some of it a bit too technical for me! Composer David Arnold talks about volume: "When the music is loud, a lot of the effects and the bits and pieces are redundant in a way."
Soundtrack Selection: Crash (1996)
Mark tells us his favourite score of 1996 was for David Cronenberg's Crash, composed by Howard Shore. Apparently, the Cannes jury president Francis Ford Coppola vetoed the film for the Palme d'Or and refused to present the jury prize it won. Even the Evening Standard called the film "beyond the bounds of depravity". It was banned in some cinemas. Mark refers to "the fetishised eroticism of car crashes".
With "brittle-edged electric guitars to the fore", Shore says his score came out of his for Madame Butterfly (1993), a three part harp piece developed for electric guitars: "jagged and abrasive" for those car crashes. Mark thinks it "sounds pretty much perfect to me". But I'm not sure.
Chapter 8: Pop goes the Movies
Now I thought this might be the best chapter, but how wrong I was. Maybe because this was about making pop songs into the score. Was it director Richard Brooks who started it all? He put a Bill Haley B-side into the opening credits of "Blackboard Jungle". This was Rock Around The Clock (1955) that got cinema audiences dancing in the aisles and not the A-side, Thirteen Women. (Who knew?) We hear all about the history of its inclusion. Then we go back to a long and equally boring piece about the film St Louis Blues (1929), then pages and pages about more early movies. Mark has gone off piste to talk about the films themselves. But there is a mention for The Girl Can't Help It (1956) with its line-up of pop royalty, and then all those Elvis films and, of course, The Beatles.
George Lucas it was who directed American Graffiti (1973) and what Mark calls "the finest jukebox movie" that had over forty songs on the soundtrack. (See my post of 7th October 2021; even the list of songs makes me go all nostalgic). But why, oh why, do we have to read about Pirates (2021), which ripped off the previous film, or Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979)? Then a section on films set in the Vietnam war such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Good Morning Vietnam. This section finishes with pages and pages of the most obscure movies as Mark goes on and on.
Soundtrack Selection: Never Let Me Go (2010)
We hear all about the disappointing reviews for this film. It lost money, as not many went to see it. I was not surprised, as it is such a harrowing story. The book is saved by the sheer brilliance of the author, Kazuo Ishiguro. I called it "compelling and shattering". Who thought it would be successful on the big screen when it becomes so much more visual? My post on the film of the 5th of June 2011 described "the sadness of the character's predicament and the horror of what put them there". Back to Mark, and it's Rachel Portman's score that did rather better than the movie. Mark says it's "one of my favourite film scores of all time. He feels it's a passion project. She conducted a forty-eight-piece orchestra.
Chapter 9: A Frightful Noise
Yes, it's about music for horror films. Mark starts with William Friedkin's The Exorcist, but there is so much about the film itself that is all so familiar. Somehow it's all for an introduction to composer Bernard Herrman, who Friedkin wanted for the music. But that didn't happen. Instead we hear Friedkin's story and all the films he scored. These all lead to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, another film Mark describes in detail, especially that opening chord.
We hear about another composer that Friedkin rejected, Lalo Schifrin, before we are told about those existing compositions that were used. These included Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells Part 1. (But what I didn't know was that the narrator of this music was Vivian Stanshall who I had seen live fronting the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band at Sussex University.) On to Rosemary's Baby and the score composed by Krzysztof Komeda.
Then, of course, there's Don't Look Now starring Donald Sutherland and the wonderful Julie Christie. (See my post on 9th December 2022). Directed by Nicolas Roeg, Mark says it is "now considered to be one of the greatest British movies ever made." I said in my post that it was more of a "psychological thriller" than a horror movie. The film is "worth watching just for Julie Christie: beautiful, fragile and vulnerable." The haunting score was written and partly performed by one Pinot Donaggio with a "superb use of strings" and a "perfect synthesis of dread and horror". Mark and the director go into detail about how the score was envisaged. "The top-line melody revolves around five notes that can be played by the right hand hardly moving, starting with the little finger on the perfect fifth top note , then moving down to the root note on the thumb, and back up, step by step, finger by finger – to the fifth, back to the little finger. Meanwhile ...." it goes on and on. I have no idea what they are talking about.
Then we are back to Tubular Bells and two more pages of huge detail. Better is "John Carpenter's self-penned theme to Halloween" and another long discussion about the notes and time signature. which is all beyond me.
Soundtrack Selection: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
David Lynch's "misunderstood masterpiece" (according to Mark) was trashed by most critics and failed miserably at the box office. (I'm not surprised, as this was the only film among Mark's Soundtrack Selections that I had not seen). Mark goes on, "A great horror movie" and "boasted the finest soundtrack of the year". Then there's "one of the great film scores of the decade, composed by Lynch's long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti".
But it sounds to me as though Mark also thought the film was poor as he was very critical of the dialogue. He only appreciated the music. The composer also worked with the director on Wild at Heart and Lost Highway. Mark then tells us that the "main theme is built upon suspended chords". No idea what these are. But "Badalamenti's subtly provocative music provides the emotional backbone." Mark finishes with "the film is now recognised as a lost classic". I'm not sure.
End Titles
We hear all about those screening rooms in one part of London: "the square mile of Soho's district". Then how "movie soundtracks went mainstream" and now on CD's and "streamed at will". There are now "limited edition remastered or extended scores". With LaLaLand records at the forefront. Mark finishes with how film scores are now played live with an orchestra in a concert hall. They have really come a long way.
Notes and Sources
Twelve pages of invaluable references and a thirtysix page index. A book to revisit in time.
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