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One of the most stirring and heart felt montages I have ever seen is when Dana Andrews walks among the airplane graveyard in William Wyler's THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES with only the rows of planes and the solitary figure among them culminating with Andrews having a combat flashback.
Hugo Friedhofer's score speaks of the visual conflicts and fears of the characters in one of my all-time classic films.
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Posted: |
Oct 24, 2003 - 4:44 PM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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I think Slavko Vorkapich, working at RKO and MGM in the '30s, did more to develop the Hollywood montage than did Eisenstein. He was followed by Peter Ballbusch at MGM, James Leicester (and Don Siegel) at Warners, etc, probably culminating (as a departmental thing) with Saul Bass in the late '50s/'60s.
Most of the examples cited so far in this thread are wonderfully evocative and memorable, but many, I think, are also examples more of brilliantly-scored direct, nearly real-time, continuity action, rather than montages, which tend to use very disconnected individual images to convey a whole idea or story point.
But, if you're talking simply about movie sequences which tell their section of the story through images and music only, then most of the ones everyone has listed are really excellent.
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Posted: |
Oct 26, 2003 - 7:33 PM
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By: |
stan2
(Member)
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Some good selections there, Stan, but do you have any reasons as to why you think they're so good?
It has taken me a while to answer, but as I watch the smoke from one of the LA area fires I will give some reasons for my choices
1, 2 & 3) The Alexander Nevsky, Henry V, and Psycho choices are legendary and I can't add anything.
3) The Exodus scene from the 10 Commandments is less often thought of in this regard. perhaps one reason is that it may now look somewhat cliched. However, we ought to remember that it was DeMille who invented and/or popularized many of these cliches. DeMille starts off with dawn and a number of individual vignettes. Each vignette demonstrates what is happening at a personal level. It makes the events human-scale. Bernstein's music is constantly weaving in and out of these scenes giving us a sense of hustle and bustle that the sometimes static film, despite all the activity, does not always project. Finally, the start of the Exodus. (I had a friend who would start singing "From the halls of Montezuma..." when the march started.) This is an epic, slow scene. Bernstein's comments about what DeMille told him to do here are well known. And it works. There is grandeur, dignity, and happiness which are in no small measure due to Bernstein's music.
5) The Major (I made him a brevet colonel in my post) quarrels with his men who refuse to follow him near the end of The Big Country. He rides off himself to Gotterdammerung alone. The others left behind begin to join him until all are with him, including the foreman Steve. Moross' music for this conveys the sweep and energy of the scene. Almost without dialog the force of the Major's personality is clearly shown through the music and Charles Bickford's portrayal. I seem to recall that at the end of the scene the stony faced Major gives his foreman a trace of a smile. Moross's music, to me, is what makes the scene. Imagining it without music or with more ordinary music makes the the scene far less powerful.
6. The opening of the tournament in El Cid is a sweeping, spectacular scene. We are taken from (as I recall) from the narrow confines of a castle to the open vistas of a hillside. Rozsa's sweeping, dynamic music makes for a terrific transition. The music makes the scene exciting and dynamic. As with the other scenes I have described, the scene without the music would be more static and far less effective. The music and the camera do the work. The theme used here is from a Cantiga for Santa Maria of Compostela. Compostela was a famous medieval pilgrammage site. After a number of years of listening to the MGM El Cid soundtrack, I heard a recording of some of the cantigas and I immediately recognized the cantiga Rozsa used. What Rozsa did with it is nothing less than astounding.
7) The dawn and the start of the cattle drive from Red River is, as are the ones at the beginning, quite famous.
I hope that this gives some idea of why I chose these particular scenes.
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