 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Apr 19, 2014 - 6:52 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Zooba
(Member)
|
Watched the Twilight Time Blu-ray with my sister the other night.
She had never seen the film and I had seen most of it on an old VHS years ago. To start, the Blu-ray looks amazing in clarity. Some of it almost looks as though it was filmed on high def video, it is so clean. I always like Goldsmith's sweet, haunting score from this and was thrilled when it was released with THE MEPHISTO WALTZ back in the day. On this viewing here are my thoughts.
It's starts out very slow and really takes it's time with the story. At times I felt I was watching an extended Twilight Zone like creepy
Walton's episode, as it has the look of The Waltons and a somewhat Waltons feel slightly in the music. Go figure. I felt that the eiree main theme music alway set nicely with the atmosphere, but the more light "car traveling" music and happy playing of the theme just of felt out of place whenever it came on. Just too sweet to go along with the proceedings. However now, thinking about it more, these scenes were primarily scored scenes dominated by the Niles character and in contrast the more sinister playing of the theme was used more when Holland was around. I see what Goldsmith was doing. Knowing what we know at the end of the film and not giving away the secret, I felt all of the scenes with Holland and Niles sitting together in one shot and talking was sort of a cheat to the audience as it was filmed with such straight forwardness of two people having a conversation. No gimmicky or artistic camera work that would lead us to believe... well, you know what I mean. Why would we not take it for what it looks like is happening, just two brothers talking. As the story goes on we learn more about what is really going on. Uta Hagen is wonderful as Ada and yet her performance almost reaches the fine line of pushing it just a little much and might even boarder over acting. "The Game" and Flying Sequence is truly magical with Goldsmith's score. The two boys who play Niles and Holland are obviously amateur actors in their first and only movie. Especially Holland has trouble enunciating certain words and swallows a lot of his lines. My sister on numerous times asked me, "what did he say?" But that's just do to the fact that he wasn't a trained actor and the director just let it go. The film is sparsely scored by Goldsmith and for the most part this works well. The beauty of his score, especially in the scenes with Niles and his mother is unfortunately lost under dialogue and a mix that favors the dialogue. Listen to those scenes on the Isolated Track and you will definitely see and hear what I mean. The Carnival sequences reminded me of what Goldsmith did years later in THE RAGGEDY MAN within a similar frame work in similar scenes of an amusement park setting. Very similar calliope type music and feel. The wonderment/mystery music for the Circus Freaks was well done. Another brilliant piece of scoring that magically mixes with the film is Niles seeing Ada as the Angel in that big climatic scene.
The film has some very special moments that at times are most engaging, usually these scenes are the ones scored by Goldsmith. At times the film seems too slow and drags and we are just waiting for something to happen. Not a perfect film, but a film with it's moments and those choice moments are done well.
I noticed for the first time that in one scene with Ada and Niles, she actually sings one of the Themes of the movie to Niles as a Russian Folk song lullaby. It's "The Game" Theme. It has Russian Lyrics. Wonder if Goldsmith based it on a Russian Folk Song? Pretty cool.
Here at 34:48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEOsfxkxDkI
Also cool that Niles plays the Main Theme on his harmonica at least once. I wouldn't have minded an End Title featuring a vocal version of the Theme, which did have sheet music of it released at the time. End Titles have no music at all.
The Main Theme Jerry wrote is just beautiful. Would love to hear Rena and pianist do another more slow and more reflective take that is less Broadway belting in sound. But dang I just love looking at her doing it. She's a cutey!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpuY2WT6Ut8
Goldsmith definitely wrote a nice variety of music for the film from innocent childlike wonder and beauty to mystery and horror and a beautiful Mother theme. I think the director and producer got their monies worth from him. Do yourself a favor and listen to the beauty and magic of his scoring on the Isolated Track with the film. The CD Soundtrack is also a fun and nice listen away from the film.
Please share your thoughts on film and score.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Apr 20, 2014 - 2:59 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
DavidCorkum
(Member)
|
Here's what John Caps wrote about The Other in his excellent article "The Ascent of Jerry Goldsmith" from the Soundtrack Collector's Newsletter in 1980:
"Contrast Mephisto's horror with the innocent pastoral approach of his music for Tom Tryon's spook story, The Other. There, director Robert Mulligan showed us the family life on a small Connecticut farm before he got at all serious about the mysterious deaths that had plagued the people there. The concept of Goldsmith's music was to present first a simple, whistled theme that could be any child's lullaby except that there was a certain measure of guilt hidden in the edges of the tune and in the orchestration. As the mystery unraveled so slowly, we were distracted into the sunny farm country and the theme tune was heard in a number of shrewdly sunlit variations, each brief and lovely - strings in unison with a bassoon turning gently underneath while we watched back-lit cottenweed float in the air - piano plating the theme song while horns set up a repetitive background for a scene in town. Elsewhere, he wrote a fragile song for the disturbed mother which was so reluctant and demure that we could hardly hear it, yet it took the place of pages of script-matter in describing her.
Soon, as events revealed themselves, the theme tune dissipated, the orchestral idiom altered. We heard the same chord progression as had introduced the finale of Illustrated Man as the last sane member of the Connecticut household was done in. Goldsmith came at the job with an overall ideal. All the single musical cues, then, fell into place."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
