Tuesday Minute
No. 48 | March 9, 2010

What’s the Score?

Our theme this week (theme introduction)
Unforgettable film scores of the 1960s

Featured this week
Monday         —   Bernard Herrmann:  “Psycho” (1960)

Elmer Bernstein:  “The Magnificent Seven” (1960)

About Elmer Bernstein

• American, 1922-2004; active in film 1951-2004
• Educated at the Walden School and New York University
• Was friends with, but not related to, composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein
• A versatile composer, his work ranged from orchestral to jazz to light comedic scores
• The score for The Magnificent Seven, probably his best-known work, was used for Marlboro TV commercials in the 1960s

Honors

• Academy Awards:  1 Oscar, 14 nominations (the only person to be nominated in each of six decades, from the 1950s to 2000s)
• National Board of Review:  Career Achievement Award
• ASCAP Film & Television Music Awards:  Lifetime Achievement Award, ASCAP Founders Award
• Two scores among the top 25 American film scores chosen by the AFI in 2005 (The Magnificent Seven, #8; To Kill a Mockingbird, #17)

Select list of film credits

• Sudden Fear (1952)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
• The Ten Commandments (1956)
• Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
• The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
• Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
• The Great Escape (1963)
• Return of the Seven (1966)
• Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967)
• True Grit (1969)
• The Trial of Billy Jack (1974)
• The Great Santini (1979)
• Ghostbusters (1984)
• My Left Foot (1989)
• The Grifters (1990)
• Cape Fear (1991)
• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
• Far from Heaven (2002)

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The Magnificent Seven
John Sturges, director
Charles Lang, cinematographer

 

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Movie Lexicon
Foley Artist:  A crew member who creates sound effects during a film’s post-production.  The foley artist uses a wide variety of props to mimic the sound of the action.  Often, the source of the sound effect is unrelated to what’s onscreen.  For example, the sound of thunder can be created from flapping an aluminum sheet, or the sound of breaking bone from snapping a celery stalk.  The name foley artist comes from Jack Foley, one of Hollywood’s early sound effects specialists.

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Monday Minute
No. 47 | March 8, 2010

What’s the Score?

Have you heard any good movies lately? 

Film is much more than a visual medium.  Many movies we cannot think of without hearing their unforgettable scores.  Some of the greatest musicians of our time compose for film, and this week, let’s hear from them.  With a vast selection to choose from, we’ll focus on scores spanning just a few short years, a time when the film music, it seems to me, was in its golden age.

I’ll be keeping my comments to a minimum this week.  Let’s listen to music.

Our theme this week
Unforgettable film scores of the 1960s

Bernard Herrmann:  “Psycho” (1960)

About Bernard Herrmann

• American, 1911-1975; active in film 1941-1975
• Educated at New York University and the Juilliard School
• Best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock during the 1950s and ’60s (he famously changed Hitchcock’s mind about the shower scene in Psycho, for which the director originally intended to have no music)
• One of the most original and innovative of film composers (his experimentations included the Theremin in the score for The Day the Earth Stood Still)

Honors

• Academy Awards:  1 Oscar, 5 nominations
• Two scores among the top 25 American film scores chosen by the AFI in 2005 (Psycho, #4; Vertigo, #12)

Select list of film credits

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
• Anna and the King of Siam (1946)
• Portrait of Jennie (1948)
• On Dangerous Ground (1951)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
• The Trouble with Harry (1955)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
• The Wrong Man (1956)
• Vertigo (1958)
• North by Northwest (1959)
• Psycho (1960)
• Cape Fear (1962)
• Marnie (1964)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
• Taxi Driver (1976)

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Psycho (1960)
Bernard Herrmann, composer

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Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock, director
John L. Russell, director of photography

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Quote of Note
Man:  “It’s the end of the world.”  Thus sayeth the Lord God.  “Unto the mountains and the hills, and the rivers and the valleys.  Behold I, even I shall bring a sword upon ye.  And I will devastate your high places.”  Ezekiel, chapter six.
Waitress:  Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink.
Man:  Isaiah, chapter five.  It’s the end of the world.
Mrs. Bundy:  I hardly think a few birds are going to bring about the end of the world.
—Man at Bar (Bill Quinn), Waitress (Darlene Conley), Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies), The Birds (1963)

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Friday Minute
No. 46 | March 5, 2010

Oscar Déjà Vu

Our theme this week (theme introduction)
Film titles with two Oscar nominations for Best Picture

Featured this week
Monday         —   Moulin Rouge (1952, 2001)
Tuesday         —   Cleopatra (1934, 1963)
Wednesday    —   Heaven Can Wait (1943, 1978)
Thursday        —   Romeo and Juliet (1936, 1968)

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, 1962)

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Director:  Frank Lloyd
Writers:  Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson; based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff, James Norman Hall
Cast:  Charles Laughton (William Bligh), Clark Gable (Fletcher Christian), Franchot Tone (Roger Byam), Movita (Tehani), Mamo Clark (Maimiti)
Oscar Summary:  8 nominations, including Picture, Director, Actor (Laughton, Gable, Tone), Adapted Screenplay; 1 win (Picture)

The essentials
The math says 1962 is much closer to 1935 (27 years) than to 2010 (48 years), but the look of the later production feels closer to something from our era of moviemaking than it does to the earlier film.  In part that’s a result of the widescreen color photography, the spare-no-expense budget, and the three-hour length.  But the performances also make a difference, with a cast led by Marlon Brando offering a more naturalistic, less hammy, rendering of the story.  That’s not to say the newer version is a better film; I rather enjoyed 1935 film.  (These days, we’re not likely to see another Mutiny on the Bounty made.  Now, they’d change the ship to a spaceship and those nature-loving Tahitians to the Na’vi; they wouldn’t film it in Panavision, but 3-D, and they’d shorten the title too.  Avatar fans may want to note, for the record, the ship sent a year later to search for the missing Bounty was the HMS Pandora.) 

The 1962 film took more liberties with the truth, though both films were based on the 1932 book Mutiny on the Bounty, which itself is a historical novel, not a history, of the real-life mutiny that took place in 1789.  William Bligh was the commanding officer of the Bounty during its fateful voyage of the South Pacific.  After a stop in Tahiti, a group led by Fletcher Christian took command in a bloodless mutiny, sending Bligh out to sea in a small boat with a few of his loyalists.  Bligh lived to return to England.  The mutineers settled in Tahiti and Pitcairn Island, where some of their descendents live today.  The mutiny, and the cruelty of Bligh toward his crew that led to it, is the stuff of legend.  The tale’s been told in poetry and prose (among the storytellers:  Lord Byron, Mark Twain, and Jules Verne), and at least half a dozen films. 

Beyond the final credits
Of the ten Best Picture nominees featured this week, the 1935 release of Mutiny of the Bounty was the only one to win the prize.  The film was the first ever to have three acting nominations, and the only one to have three nominations for Best Actor—Laughton, a great actor here chewing the scenery, Gable, minus his mustache, and Tone, as the true hero of the story.

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Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Frank Lloyd, director
Trailer

 

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Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Lewis Milestone, director
Trailer

 

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Quote of Note
Greenwald:  And now we come to the man who should have stood trial.  The Caine’s favorite author.  The Shakespeare whose testimony nearly sunk us all.  Tell ‘em, Keefer.
Keefer:  No, you go ahead.  You’re telling it better.
Greenwald:  You ought to read his testimony.  He never even heard of Captain Queeg!
Maryk:  Let’s forget it, Barney.
Greenwald:  Queeg was sick, he couldn’t help himself.  But you, you’re real healthy.  Only you didn’t have one-tenth the guts that he had.
Keefer:  Except I never fooled myself, Mr. Greenwald.
Greenwald:  I wanna drink a toast to you, Mr. Keefer.  From the beginning you hated the Navy.  And then you thought up this whole idea and you managed to keep your skirts nice and starched and clean, even in the court martial.  Steve Maryk will always be remembered as a mutineer.  But you, you’ll publish your novel, you’ll make a million bucks, you’ll marry a big movie star, and for the rest of your life you’ll live with your conscience, if you have any.  Here’s to the real author of the Caine mutiny.  Here’s to you, Mr. Keefer.  [Greenwald throws wine in Keefer's face]  If you wanna do anything about it, I’ll be outside.  I’m a lot drunker than you are—so it’ll be a fair fight.”
—Lt. Barney Greenwald (José Ferrer), Lt. Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray), Lt. Steve Maryk (Van Johnson), The Caine Mutiny (1954)

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Thursday Minute
No. 45 | March 4, 2010

Oscar Déjà Vu

Our theme this week (theme introduction)
Film titles with two Oscar nominations for Best Picture

Featured this week
Monday         —   Moulin Rouge (1952, 2001)
Tuesday         —   Cleopatra (1934, 1963)
Wednesday    —   Heaven Can Wait (1943, 1978)

Romeo and Juliet (1936, 1968)

Romeo and Juliet (1936)
Director:  George Cukor
Writer:  Talbot Jennings; based on the play by William Shakespeare
Cast:  Norma Shearer (Juliet), Leslie Howard (Romeo), John Barrymore (Mercutio), Basil Rathbone (Tybalt), Edna May Oliver (The Nurse)
Oscar Summary:  4 nominations, including Picture, Actress (Shearer), Supporting Actor (Rathbone); no wins

 

Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Director:  Franco Zeffirelli
Writers:  Franco Brusati, Masolino D’Amico, Franco Zeffirelli; based on the play by William Shakespeare
Cast:  Leonard Whiting (Romeo), Olivia Hussey (Juliet), John McEnery (Mercutio), Milo O’Shea (Friar Lawrence), Michael York (Tybalt)
Oscar Summary:  4 nominations, including Picture, Director; 2 wins (Cinematography, Costume Design)

 

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

The Juliet of this tale is Norma Shearer, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars going back to the silent era.  Her husband, for nearly a decade, was the legendary producer Irving Thalberg.  Thalberg made Romeo and Juliet for MGM, spending double the original budget, and further straining his already-deteriorated friendship with studio boss Louis B. Mayer.  Thalberg had earned his nickname the Boy Wonder for his uncanny talent for making box office hits, but this was not one of them.  His film about the pair of star-cross’d lovers went on to lose a million dollars, and Hollywood shied away from Shakespeare for several years afterward.  Shearer did earn an Oscar nomination, as did the picture, but the film was an especially sad landmark in her life.  On the day the film had its premiere in Los Angeles, Thalberg died of pneumonia, at the age of 37.

Shearer was 33 when she made the film.  Her co-star, Leslie Howard, was 42.  That’s probably not the casting that Shakespeare had in mind.  In the play, Juliet is 13.  Romeo’s age is never stated, but he’s young (”Upon whose tender chin, as yet, no manlike beard there grew”).  Even by Hollywood standards, the Shearer-Howard leads were a stretch.

Franco Zeffirelli cast two young actors whose combined age was about that of Shearer’s alone.  Olivia Hussey was 15, Leonard Whiting 17 (give or take a year, depending on the source).  Romeo and Juliet is the pinnacle of Zeffirelli’s film career.  He got his start during the late ’40s as an assistant to Luchino Visconti on La Terra Trema, and his career has been one classy production after another—some of it Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet), much of it opera (La Traviata, Otello), and a notable TV miniseries (Jesus of Nazareth, with Hussey as Mary).  His 1968 film won raves at the time and is one of the most highly regarded and popular screen adaptations of Shakespeare.  Much of the credit goes to the young actors, who seem just right for their parts, natural fits for those lovers of Verona of long ago.  The focus in the Zeffirelli film is the passion between Romeo and Juliet (not necessarily the case with other adaptations; see Baz Luhrmann).  It’s a beautiful film to look at and listen to—one for the ages.

 

Beyond the final credits
She isn’t as well-remembered as some others from her time, but Norma Shearer was a huge star.  Soon after she came to Hollywood, she co-starred with Lon Chaney in the first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, He Who Gets Slapped (1924).  By 1925 she was making $1,000 a week, and a lot more soon after that.  She made the transition to talkies with The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), and won an Oscar for The Divorcee (one of her six nominations).  Her other notable films include A Free Soul (1931), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Marie Antoinette (1938), Idiot’s Delight (1939), and The Women (1939).  She was the inspiration for one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, “Crazy Sunday.”  For his final, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald based the character of movie mogul Monroe Stahr on Shearer’s husband, Irving Thalberg.  Shearer retired from movies when she remarried in 1942.

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Movie Legends:  Norma Shearer (Mrs. Irving Thalberg)

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Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Franco Zeffirelli, director

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Award Spotlight
Perspective from Academy Award Winners

“The only way to find the best actor would be to let everybody play Hamlet and let the best man win.”
—Humphrey Bogart (1951)

“If there’s one thing that actors know, other than that there weren’t any WMDs, it’s that there is no such thing as best in acting.”
—Sean Penn (2004)

“What does the Academy Award mean?  I don’t think it means much of anything.”
—Sally Field (1980)

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Wednesday Minute
No. 44 | March 3, 2010

Oscar Déjà Vu

Our theme this week (theme introduction)
Film titles with two Oscar nominations for Best Picture

Featured this week
Monday         —   Moulin Rouge (1952, 2001)
Tuesday         —   Cleopatra (1934, 1963)

Heaven Can Wait (1943, 1978)

Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Director:  Ernst Lubitsch
Writer:  Samson Raphaelson; based on the play Birthday by Leslie Bush-Fekete
Cast:  Don Ameche (Henry Van Cleve), Gene Tierney (Martha), Charles Coburn (Hugo Van Cleve), His Excellency (Laird Cregar)
Oscar Summary:  3 nominations, including Picture, Director; no wins

 

 

The essentials
Of all the twice-nominated titles this week, the Heaven Can Wait connection is the loopiest.  The Warren Beatty-Buck Henry comedy is a remake of an early-1940s movie, but not the 1943 Ernst Lubitsch comedy of the same name.  The 1976 film is a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, of 1941, which is based on a play called Heaven Can Wait.  The 1943 film is based a play called Birthday.  So the two films are not related, except this:  the plot hooks for the two stories are nearly flip sides of each other.  The earlier film has a dead man petitioning Satan to be admitted into hell.  The later one has a dead man who wants to go back to his life on Earth.

Ernst Lubitsch was a master of Hollywood’s golden age, and Heaven Can Wait was one of his later films.  Don Ameche is a playboy who expects to go to hell on the day that he dies.  Greeted by the always-courteous His Excellency (i.e., Satan), he must recount his sins to gain admission.  The film is a look back at the events of his life, especially the trouble he caused for his wife.  Across the decades he had his share of flirtations and indulgences, though they were mostly harmless.  The question is whether he was bad enough for Hades.  The film may not rank with Ninotchka or The Shop Around the Corner or Trouble in Paradise as the best of Lubitsch, but that’s a high standard to meet.  Lubitsch didn’t know how to make a bad film, and as always, this one’s a classy production, delivering some good laughs along the way.

The later Heaven Can Wait is an enjoyable movie from Warren Beatty and company.  It’s one of two films (along with Reds) for which Beatty received four Oscar nominations (as actor, director, writer, and producer).  He plays L.A. Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton, who dies before the Super Bowl.  Joe gets a reprieve, however, when his angel fumbles the assignment, and he returns to the living in the body of a murdered millionaire.  Getting back in the game is no easy task, as he faces skeptics about his identity and a wife who tries to kill him again.  Meanwhile, he falls for a British ecologist played by Julie Christie.  The movie’s got charm, mischief, satire, and one funny cast.

Beyond the final credits
Here Comes Mr. Jordan, the 1941 film, was about a boxer who’s taken to heaven before his time.  Warren Beatty first wanted the remake to be about a boxer, starring Muhammed Ali.  Those plans didn’t work out, so the boxer was changed to a football player and Beatty played the role himself.  Another remake of the story, Down to Earth (2001), starred Chris Rock as a comedian who dies before his time.

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Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Ernst Lubitsch, director

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Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Warren Beatty, Buck Henry, James Mason

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Quote of Note
Daniel Miller:  Is this heaven?
Bob Diamond:  No, it isn’t heaven.
Daniel Miller:  Is it hell?
Bob Diamond:  Nope, it isn’t hell either.  Actually, there is no hell.  Although I hear Los Angeles is getting pretty close.
—Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks), Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), Defending Your Life (1991)

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