Cinema Concerto Website

by Marc Harwood

Last Monday I invited fellow film music webmasters to submit introductions and excerpts of their site for use here on the FSM site. Marc Harwood took me up on the offer -- which still stands! Here's his intro and preview of Cinema Concerto (http://members.aol.com/marcgothic).

Incidentally, it's by no means a requirement that you submit something pertaining to FSM! Marc just happened to include an All About Eve CD review but we did not solicit this. Here's Mark: --Lukas K.

SLEEPY HOLLOW

Music Composed by Danny Elfman

Hollywood Records HR-62262-2

19 Tracks - 68:00

The year is 1799. A full moon shines down upon the Hudson Valley. The leaves of fall are scattered all over the ground. There is the sound of footsteps. These are the running footsteps of an anguished villager. The villager is in frenzied terror. Not terror from man nor beast but from a hideous demon from hell bent on doing another nights work. There is the sound of hooves galloping toward the hapless victim. A black demon of a horse with a rider who has no head. There is the sound of a blade coming out of its scabbard and then the woosh as the ghost rider claims another prize. Another victim for the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Such is the story line of Tim Burton's SLEEPY HOLLOW. The original short story by Washington Irving is a pure American classic. Yes this new version takes some liberties; but one must remember that Irving's short story couldn't pad out a 2 hour feature film. Just as the Roger Corman- Vincent Price-Edgar Allan Poe pictures were loose adaptations. The spirit of Poe just as the spirit of Irving is there. This is what a gothic horror film should be like. True to Tim Burton's word, this picture has the spirit of the Hammer films and then some. And for once an original monster based on a classic story (basically untouched or at least almost untouched material). Special thanks must go to Francis Ford Coppola who has directed or produced quite a few gothic horror films (he is executive producer on SLEEPY HOLLOW) during this decade. He has kept this genre alive. Johnny Depp is wonderful as Ichabod Crane; a police constable sent by Christopher Lee's high magistrate to the little village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate the unexplained beheadings of some of the local citizens.

Adding to all of this lovely mayhem is the truly brilliant score by Danny Elfman. None of this synthesized atonal dissonant music here. He has written the kind of score we usually have to wait 30 or 40 years to materialize; like the Hammer scores or Bernard Herrmann's scores for the Ray Harryhausen fantasies. This isn't just another bombastic horror movie score. It becomes very much a part of the proceedings and adds the right touch to the terror. The score is practically in chronological order on the CD so it surely brings to mind the sequences in the film. Elfman uses a four note theme for the horseman and sometimes answers to this with a six note counterpoint. The theme at times is used to represent, in a gentler way, the love theme of Ichabod and Katrina. A haunting use of chorus is used when Ichabod dreams back about his mother. For me, these scenes don't add much to the film; just superfluous fluff; although we get to see the beautiful Lisa Marie in the role of Ichabod's bewitched mother. The Church Battle is a tour'deforce of scoring; the terrified villagers inside looking out the window at the horrifying horseman trying to get in. Here Elfman makes the terror mount just as James Bernard did in those Hammer horrors (to me James Bernard wrote the book on horror movie scoring - something that most composers, except Danny Elfman, don't acknowledge in their writing). This cue ends with the terrifying horseman theme.

A chorus is used to very good effect for the Headless Horseman's scenes too. A lot of composers use choruses these days, but that doesn't necessarily bring any substance to their scores. Danny Elfman used a chorus to good effect in Tim Burton's much labored Mars Attacks. In fact that was the best thing in the film. But here orchestra, chorus and picture all come together and blend perfectly with one another. The last cues; The Windmill (ode to Brides of Dracula), The Chase and The Final Confrontation (oh that Final Confrontation can be found on many a Danny Elfman soundtrack album) will leave you breathless.

This is the picture I've been waiting for Tim Burton to make for years and this is the score that makes me want to listen again and again. Just one word of warning. If you happen to be walking through the real Sleepy Hollow as I did recently, and you hear the galloping of a horse, don't think that it might be the ghost of a Hessian soldier looking for a trophy. Just get out of there as fast as you can . . . after all Heads Will Roll!!

--Marc Harwood

Composed and conducted by Alfred Newman

Film Score Monthly

Volume 2, No.7

33 Tracks - 44:23

"Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night", Bette Davis as Margo Channing, bellows this foreboding warning at a dinner party. She is aware of Eve and is not very happy about the woman she took into her life. Nine Time Academy Award winner Alfred Newman wrote some of the best music for female heroines on the screen: Cathy in WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Berndette in THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, and THE DIARY OF ANN FRANK. Two further examples of his soft but firm treatment of women is apparent in two scores Newman wrote at 20th Century Fox during his tenure as Music Director:ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) and LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945), as featured on the most current release from Film Score Monthly.

ALL ABOUT EVE is a film masterpiece; directed, produced and written by by Joseph L. Mankiewitz. The film stars Bette Davis, who had just left Warner Brothers after many years at this studio. It is a film about life in the theater, the superstar actors who are on top, and the little people who want to drive them off their Olympian pedestal so they can take their place. The film received six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The lush, sweet Newman strings are used to their full effect in Eve: the longing theme for Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) a woman who plans to topple leading actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis) from her highest perch, and will stop at nothing to do so. Newman writes a theme of longing for Margo, but this is a longing for things past. Margo is past her prime, and she realizes it.

The longing themes of Margo and Eve interconnect where they almost become one. What is also interesting in the final sequence, All The Eves , in which Eve finds a woman who snuck into her room and wants to become Eve's protÈgÈ (we see the same thing that Eve put Margo through will now happen to Eve), the longing theme of Eve and the Margo theme, plus the theater theme become one strong statement.

Newman wrote a piece for piano to be played at Bill's (Gary Merrill) birthday party, where Margo gets drunk and really lets her feelings be known. Source music by Franz Liszt (Liebestraum)and Claude Debussy (Beau Soir)are used for Margo's party (and later in a car, where Bette Davis utters another classic line, "I hate cheap sentiment"). The Debussy is used as music heard on the radio, and allows Margo to explore the fact that she is getting older and time does not stand still.

As a special bonus, the epilogue and end title to Eve are repeated in stereo, so you get to hear both the mono and stereo versions of these two tracks.

The remaining seven tracks are from the 1945 John Stahl thriller, Leave Her To Heaven. Gene Tierney is a woman who stops at nothing to keep Cornel Wilde in love with her. Newman creates an effect in the prelude and throughout of a cortege macabre or demonic procession. Tierney's character is not one to fool around with in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

Of all the Academy Awards reaped upon ALL ABOUT EVE, Newman surprisingly did not win for best score (Franz Waxman took the honors that year for SUNSET BOULEVARD). What is also interesting is that of the nine Academy Awards which Newman did receive throughout his career, only one was granted to him for scoring (THE SONG OF BERNADETTE in 1943), one for LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDID THING and the others were for music adaptation.

This CD is another wonderfully produced masterpiece of film music from the ubermenches at Film Score Monthly. Executive Producer Lukas Kendall and Producer Nick Redman should once again be commended for releasing to the public two wonderful scores by Maestro Newman. This is becoming a wonderful habit!

--Philip Harwood

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