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Remove the DUNKIRK score, and you also remove about 50% of the film's effective tension.
if the score is 50% of the tension, that the film itself is simply not that good
Well, apply that to It's Alive, First Knight, Joy in the Morning, Sodom and Gomorrah and you have plenty of validity to that statement.
I take that back re It's Alive, as that was a better movie than most of us thought. There's depth to that picture, and it's not just crazy entertainment imo.
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Remove the DUNKIRK score, and you also remove about 50% of the film's effective tension.
I disagree. I think the editing and pacing are more than enough to add effective tension. Spielberg didn't need Williams to add tension to the major battles in Saving Private Ryan.
-Erik-
I'll have to turn the volume down next time I watch that one.
Psycho begs the question. Hitchcock was going to make that one of his tv hours before Herrmann got ahold of it. And I know for a fact that movie was kind of mediocre without the score.
The Omen is another exception to consider. In fact, all three Omens.
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If a score is conceptualized with or without a score, it is indeed hard to imagine the alternative. Might make for an interesting experiment, though. . . . So these experiments will always be forced and "fake" (and the tempo of the scene will be off). It's never just a matter of optional score/no score.
Yes, but even filmmakers who try to conceptualize everything in advance -- Hitch being the supreme example -- sometimes realize that they really need music after all. PSYCHO is of course the most famous instance. Consider also the airplane graveyard climax of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. I don't imagine that Wyler "conceptualized" the scene for music. But he did eventually say to his composer, "I've taken this as far as I can. It's up to you now." [Or some such words.]
Hitch said similar things to Bernard. Some would dispute the latter's claim that 40% of Hitch's films were Bernard...in the case of Psycho, I think it's more like 60%, minimum.
Watch the Final Conflict's ending scene with the volume off.
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Jerry Goldsmith probably bailed out more films than any composer, at least moving them from bad to passable because of the score, and certainly he excelled at moving films from odd and tacky into scary or terrifying through his adept horror and suspense scoring.
Nolan lacks the confidence in his film to strip away the score, I think the idea of minimizing the score in his films terrifies him.
Zimmer is a prop for him.
Hitchcock is a greater director than Nolan, easily. But Hitch leaned heavily on his scores as well.
I would argue that Vertigo falls complete flat on it's face without the score, granted, I think it is easily his most overrated film.
Both Nolan and Tarantino wish they were Hitch (despite and probably enhanced by QT's lady-doth-protest-too-much stance). That much is obvious.
Vertigo works as a great work of art because of the music and movie together. The fact that Bernard wrote some of his best, most expressive music for that movie is why it holds up outside of the movie.
I don't see Vertigo as having been band-aided all to hell and back by Bernard's music as Psycho. In fact, the only problem I see with the former is the fundamentially holey plot. however, for folks who like to think while they watch movies, Vertigo is my first reccomendation. That's one of the reasons QT didn't like it, because QT runs into some serious problems when the bulk of his films are held up in an artistic spotlight (and this is coming from a QT fan).
Interestingly, QT's Hateful Eight is an example of a movie that...not JUST did the gore, violence, swearing and music hold up the movie, but pretty much defined the content. Imagine a PG rated version with a score by...oh, Elfman (a lesser disciple of both the big BH as well as EM imo). I probably wouldn't have finished the damn thing.
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Yup, there's a pretty hard divide in terms of the evaluation of the DUNKIRK score. I think it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
I just thought it was a bad movie with a disappointing score. But that's just me.
I was expecting something big and new to come out of Zimmer's (belated) leaving of superhero scores. I didn't get that with this, but to be fair the music does seem to fit the movie.
Hoping we see better from the HZ camp (and please keep in mind that I wrote that as somewhat of an HZ enthusiast: Rain man, Lion King, Interstellar, Man of Steel. Love them.
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First of all, Herrmann didn't "Band-Aid" Psycho. He wrote a score for the film Hitchcock made. Additionally, Hitchcock expressly didn't want music in the shower scene but Herrmann did it anyway, and Hitchcock understood instantly that Herrmann's music elevated that scene into something wholly other.
Re the YouTube clip of The Birds - well, no, because that music is so over the top and bombastic and the composer has not a clue as to how that scene should play musically. The fact is, I would love to have heard what Herrmann would have done with that scene and the rest of The Birds. I believe he would have scored up to the attack for sure, and perhaps even come up with something brilliant for the attack. I don't think he would have scored the big thing at the gas station. I do think he would have scored some of the early sections of the film and I think that would have helped, actually.
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First of all, Herrmann didn't "Band-Aid" Psycho. He wrote a score for the film Hitchcock made. Additionally, Hitchcock expressly didn't want music in the shower scene but Herrmann did it anyway, and Hitchcock understood instantly that Herrmann's music elevated that scene into something wholly other.
Re the YouTube clip of The Birds - well, no, because that music is so over the top and bombastic and the composer has not a clue as to how that scene should play musically. The fact is, I would love to have heard what Herrmann would have done with that scene and the rest of The Birds. I believe he would have scored up to the attack for sure, and perhaps even come up with something brilliant for the attack. I don't think he would have scored the big thing at the gas station. I do think he would have scored some of the early sections of the film and I think that would have helped, actually.
He might have scored the gas station...but only starting at the point when something actually blew up.
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Jerry Goldsmith probably bailed out more films than any composer, at least moving them from bad to passable because of the score, and certainly he excelled at moving films from odd and tacky into scary or terrifying through his adept horror and suspense scoring.
Nolan lacks the confidence in his film to strip away the score, I think the idea of minimizing the score in his films terrifies him.
Zimmer is a prop for him.
Hitchcock is a greater director than Nolan, easily. But Hitch leaned heavily on his scores as well.
I would argue that Vertigo falls complete flat on it's face without the score, granted, I think it is easily his most overrated film.
Bailed...is that for aka got fired? I think that John Barry holds that record..with Goldsmith in 2nd.
Hitchcock and Spielberg allowed their composers to compose. Even Jerry Goldsmith said Spielberg was there for his composing Poltergeist note for note.
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Remove the DUNKIRK score, and you also remove about 50% of the film's effective tension.
I disagree. I think the editing and pacing are more than enough to add effective tension. Spielberg didn't need Williams to add tension to the major battles in Saving Private Ryan.
-Erik-
That would say..That Saving Private Ryan was so much better in substance than Dunkirk. Which I would agree with..I am so damn glad there was zero heroic bombastic theme music..as the soillders charged up hill!
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It's a topic that's come up many times before. I love THE BIRDS as it is, but in this case if it HAD been conceived as having a "conventional" music score, then that YT clip indicates that it might have been quite effective.
Sorry for quoting myself, but I should add that I wrote the above comment without having watched the clip. I'd assumed it was the attack at the gas station scene, which I'd seen on YT before with some Herrmann (possibly from NORTH BY NORTHWEST?) tracked in, and very well done. The YT scene linked to in this thread makes THE BIRDS seem run of the mill. So I'm retracting my above statement - or at least where I said "that YT clip indicates that it might have been quite effective".
But it's only a partial retraction, because I was thinking about the gas station/Tippi Hedern in phone box scene, which actually DID work for me with the tracked Herrmann. I know that I sometimes come across as trying to sound like an expert and end up sounding like a nob, but in my ignorant opinion I think that Hitchcock was often very "up-front artificial", almost like he was doing a stylised ballet, and his films (or at least some scenes) NEEDED music. The shower scene in PSYCHO is a good example, but I also think that that particular "gas station-phone box" scene in THE BIRDS looks a little strange WITHOUT the music, and it's still my favourite Hitch film. It's so clear how the cutting matches the original storyboards. It's drawing attention to its very artificiality (look at the way the heads are positioned during the editing), so, to get back to the "ballet" idea once more, the scene works, but it's still a bit like Donald O'Connor running up the walls in silence - which he had every right to do.
More Hitch, cockish observations - TORN CURTAIN. I remember a bit where Paul Newman and Julie Andrews are arguing in silence on a very artificially-constructed and lit studio hilltop. It's all silent movie gestures, and I think the silence kills it. I know that Addison then comes in at the end to make it "all alright", but it's still a bit rubbishy.
More TORN CURTAIN Hitch, cockishness - I can't quite decide if I prefer the "death by garden spade and oven" scene with or without the music Herrmann wrote for it. In this case I think I prefer the silence. It works for me. They're not supposed to be making noises anyway.
Spielberg-Schmielberg - I think I prefer Robert Shaw's death in JAWS with the music Williams scored for that scene. Again, it papers over the artificiality of Bruce.
I know that I'm sidetracking things into specific examples of scenes, when the OP was making more general comments about films that he can't imagine with/without their scores. So I'll just say that for me it depends. Hollywood epics from the Golden Age wouldn't work without their Newmans and Rózsas. Pasolini's takes on the subject wouldn't have worked if scored that way. Musicals need music and songs. "Realistic" kitchen-sink dramas might not.
That is my thesis. Can I get my degree in film studies now?
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Dunkirk would have been a more tolerable film without Zimmer's obnoxious score.
BTW, I'm not here to start a Zimmer bashing thread. I love a good majority of Zimmer's work but his work on Dunkirk absolutely ruined that film for me. So much so that I never want to see that film again.
-Erik-
Hidebound reactionary.
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Yup, there's a pretty hard divide in terms of the evaluation of the DUNKIRK score. I think it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Yep, the same repetitive old comments from the same people. Including me.
And me.....
.blah
Blah
Blah
Hidebound reactionary. ....
Blah
Blah
Blah
Conservative. ....
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LIFEBOAT also had.no score.
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