Music in cinema is such a daunting topic, and these two branches of art have such a symbiotic relation that I can hardly find the way to pull one thread from the whole ball of yarn.
Haven´t you ever found yourself happily whistling in the shower popular and classic melodies like `Singin´ in the Rain´ (1952), `Supercalifragilisticespilalidocious´ (Mary Poppins, 1964) or any of the very many famous songs of the well-known musical movies we all enjoyed as kids or teenagers: `Saturday Night Fever´(1977), `The Sound of Music´(1965), `My Fair Lady´(1964), and so on?
Music is an important feature in almost every movie. The soundtrack of these creations is often as relevant as the plot, the photography, the wardrobe, the production or the performances of actors and actresses. Sometimes it’s even one of the strong points of a film – not to mention when we talk about musicals -, and it’s not infrequent to hear people that declare that they didn´t like this or that movie too much (sometimes because it’s too childish or conventional), but that they love its music. Do you remember, for instance, the song `Hakuna Matata´ from the film `The Lion King´ (1994)?
Personally, I can´t forget some of the songs from my own favourites: Dooley Wilson’s `As Time Goes By´ from Casablanca (1942) with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, some of Liza Minnelli´s catchy songs in the film `Cabaret´ (1972), like `Money, Money´, or even the very mainstream pop romantic song `I Will Always Love You´, sung by Whitney Houston in the movie `The Bodyguard´ (1992).
But what about music specifically composed for the cinema? A lot of great musicians have dedicated themselves to making appealing soundtracks.
Famous composers like Leonard Bernstein have focused their classical backgrounds into great films such as `West Side Story´(1961), while other famous pop stars like the duo Simon and Garfunkel directly have taken part in prominent films such as `The Graduate´(1960), as have New Age performers like Vangelis in `Blade Runner´(1982). And how can one forget the music composed by Max Steiner for the film `Gone with the Wind´ (1939)?
To my taste, I would choose as one of my favourite movie composers, recognized worldwide for his mastery, that man of genius Ennio Morricone. It is enough to say that this octogenarian Italian orchestrator has already written music for more than five hundred motion pictures, of which forty of them have won awards. Two anecdotes from his long life are that he began his a musical career playing the trumpet as a very young man, and that he was a very close childhood friend of Sergio Leone, the great director of brilliant films like `Once Upon a Time in America´(1984) or `For a Few Dollars More´(1965).
But Morricone´s long list of works includes so many more fascinating movies: ‘Days of Heaven´(1978), `The Untouchables´(1987), `Cinema Paradiso´(1988), `Bugsy´(1991) and many others. One of his masterpieces, in my opinion, is his score for Roland Joffé´s British film `The Mission´ (1986) starring Robert de Niro and Jeremy Irons: its music was inspired by a combination of Spanish classical liturgical pieces and Guaranian indigenous instruments, featuring some remarkable flute compositions and oboe solos.
Classic music has been present in many different kinds of movies: from Richard Strauss´s `Ode to the Sun´ of `Also Sprach Zarathustra´ in the Stanley Kubrick film `A Space Odyssey´(2001) to Richard Wagner´s `Ride of the Valkyries´ in Francis Coppola´s `Apocalypse Now´(1979); from the Mendelssohn pieces in Woody Allen’s `A Midsummer Night´s Sex Comedy´(1982) to Brahms´ `Hungarian Dance Number 5´ in Charles Chaplin’s `The Great Dictator´(1940), from the Donizetti arias in John Huston’s `Prizzi´s Honor´(1985) to the duet `La ci darem la mano´ from the Mozart opera `Don Giovanni´ in Gabriel Axel´s film `Babette’s Feast´(1987).
But one film I really enjoyed both as a film fan and as a music taster was `Amadeus´ (Milos Forman, 1984).
The plot of the film is not the usual biopic story. The point of view of the main character, who is obviously Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is perceived by the mind of one of his contemporaries: Antonio Salieri. This man, Salieri, suffers from one of the thorniest deadly sins: envy.
The film begins with Salieri confessing to a priest at an Austrian lunatic asylum in the early nineteenth century. There he remembers his suicide attempt and a life lived in the shadow of the genius Wolfgang Amadeus.
The story, apparently quite faithful to historical facts, extends a psychological analysis to both of them. It includes Mozart’s relationship with his father Leopold, with his wife Constanze, with the Emperor Joseph II and of course the troubled love/hate feelings of Antonio Salieri towards him. Mozart is drawn as quite a petulant, willful, proud but exceptionally gifted young man. Salieri is portrayed as a resentful, bitter, ordinary man that loves Amadeus´ music and would like to have been the author of all those wonderful gems.
The story is a very suggestive and entertaining one, but the music is simply great and very enjoyable. All the events are flecked with a summarized itinerary of Mozart’s entire musical production: the first movement of the Twenty-fifth Symphony, the Concerto for Two Pianos K.365, the Concertante Symphony K.364, parts of the operas The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, the Mass in C minor K.427, and of course, the Requiem, at the most dramatic moments and the ending of the film.
In my opinion, it is difficult to really enjoy cinema if you don´t enjoy music, maybe if you only watch silent movies, and even in then I doubt it.
The Thanksgiving Turkey
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