The score from TRUE GRIT (just watched it for the first time) by Elmer Bernstein was the typical sweeping lush music of that era, the kind we came to associate with Westerns and wide-screen films. Every note seems familiar although I never saw the movie before last night. The only vocals come from Glen Campbell in the title song.
Now I am fairly sure with the new version in December the music will be very different. It will probably feature country music from that era. More authentic but perhaps not as evocative.
Do scores from composers like Bernstein still evoke the West to you? Or will a score full of fiddles, church music, tinny pianos and mandolins bring Arkansas home?
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19 comments:
Great choice. Elmer was THE talent and his theme for the The Man With The Golden Arm is one of the best.
In the trailer for the new version, the music sounds more in the orchestral tradition, though I'd be surprised if it turns out to be as heavy-handed as Elmer Bernstein.
Saw some of a film recently from the UK with music by the London Symphony Orchestra. I swear, they must have been paid by the decibel.
But it does take you back to those days of big music directing us. It may not be authentic by any stretch of imagination but if you've heard it enough, it reminds you of mountains, prairies, streams and men in chaps.
Yes. Elmer Bernstein did a lot of memorable work, from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and THE GREAT ESCAPE all the way to ANIMAL HOUSE and beyond.
Jeff M.
To my mind (and ear) there are no greater western soundtracks than Elmer Bernstein's for THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and Jerome Moross for THE BIG COUNTRY. For me, especially as a kid sitting in the theater (I played hooky from school to see THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN at the Loew's Canal in NYC)the GRANDEUR of the west deserved HUGE GRAND music. I thought so then. I still think so. ;)
It made your heart swell, but I am not sure of its effects on audiences today.
Your post sent me to YouTube where a music fan has posted his/her sampling of 20-some great Western themes. And you know, you'll know them all. Number one is Hang 'Em High. My personal pick, "The Magnificent Seven" is somewhere in the top ten. I would post a link but I've managed to lose it.
The Magnificent Seven theme.
Jeff M.
Magnificent Seven theme is certainly the most familiar.
Rick Robinson, Guru of Soundtracks, should weigh in on this issue. I'd like to hear Elmer Bernstein on a movie soundtrack than Garth Brooks.
Some do evoke the West. The splendid theme from The Big Country does. Red River's theme, by the great Dimitri Tiompkin does. Follow the River, from Night Passage, does. Stagecoach's theme does.
I'll take the opportunity to note here my favorite observation of how much such western soundtrack music owes to the Jupiter movement of Holst's THE PLANETS.
Quite true but I like the music more with a movie playing in front of it than at a concert hall.
And it's been quite some time since Arkansas was the West, certainly before the post-Civil War era of most 'classic' westerns...I find the use of 1960s prog-rock as theme of BOARDWALK EMPIRE much more unweildy than any of the common approaches to western scoring, from Tiomkin to Bernstein to Morricone (even with his electric guitars) to the contemporary midwest sounds of the likes of WINTER'S BONE.
Ah, well, the Holst is exuberant. More fun than, say, Copland's efforts in that direction.
I need a movie in front of most music, nothing against Holst.
I am terribly disappointed in BOardwalk so far.
I thought the first episode of BOARDWALK EMPIRE was pretty good but it's been downhill since, with last week's show being a real snoozer.
It's no DEADWOOD, that's for sure.
Jeff M.
Same here. I think Buscemi was a mistake but not the only one.
Anything that leans on Michael Pitt for anything is already doomed. I'm particularly amused by the notion of Pitt's mother being Gretchen Mol, but just maybe, given her position in society. Certainly my maternal grandmother was pregnant with her first by the time she was fifteen.
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