I have long nursed a distaste for Hemingway and the silly cult of bearded, chest beating blowhards and the women who love them, that surrounds him. Yet whenever I re-read or watch films based on his books, I find his work more interesting then not, so perhaps it is the bearded cult I find most repulsive (and anyone called "Papa"). Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) is often mentioned as one of Franz Waxman's great scores (as well as one of his last), but the movie suffers from such flaws of its time (the terribly cold look of the film, with its intense over lighting) that the music seems somehow disassociated. The main title music is of the overture model from earlier times, with barely a nod to the picture, and certainly not to any of the kinetic energy being displayed by the young man of the title, and his dog, romping in the great outdoors. There is almost no relationship between the music and the voice-over introduction, but that often happens as the VO usually doesn't appear to the composer until the final dubbing process (or even worse, a producer/director records a place holding version). While this lack of music/image synchronicity can feel very "wrong" to my 2007 sensitivities, it wasn't as strange in 1962. But the orchestra seems poorly balanced, most particularly in the woodwind section, where one double reed seems either off mic, or is dumped into some strange reverb for its solos. A piccolo and high piano figure (piano played by Johnny Williams) towards the end of the titles is so piccolo heavy it is downright annoying. The rest of the score seems very mediocre, with many emotional cues, as pulled down in level as the lighting is pushed too high in the image. If I listen closely to those underplayed cues, they often sound too busy, perhaps a music re-editing happened, but the mixers were right to pull the music down for it was WRONG!!!!!!
So why all the praise from the film music crowd? I find most "film-music" fans are of a train spotting variety, about a third interested in the music, a third in the orchestra, and a third in the completionist's love of collecting, including record label and catalogue numbers. They rarely have much of an opinion, or even conception about how the music relates to the picture, many of them do not even consider the picture, the "sound-track" being the object of their fetish. I am a different kind of train spotter, so I can look down my nose at these fools, hah!
Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) is a completely different kettle of fish (now that's cinematic terminology!). I watched it as I had appreciated the first Jacques Rivette film I saw and wrote about a few posts ago. It is sans any non-diegetic music (underscore), although there are some musical scenes where the girls perform a kind of sensuous, comic, magic show, accompanied by a pianist. It is a several hour exercise in many aspects of cinema, and yet charming and worth watching (ooh la la, love that Juliet Berto). For us film music people, it is a great chance to see cinematic devices that normally depend on music to work (all kinds of shocking montage), without. If it wasn't an artistically moral no-no (besmirching the authors intentions doncha' know), I would suggest trying to score much of it as an exercise, not because it needs it, but because we normally think it needs it.
So why all the praise from the film music crowd? I find most "film-music" fans are of a train spotting variety, about a third interested in the music, a third in the orchestra, and a third in the completionist's love of collecting, including record label and catalogue numbers. They rarely have much of an opinion, or even conception about how the music relates to the picture, many of them do not even consider the picture, the "sound-track" being the object of their fetish. I am a different kind of train spotter, so I can look down my nose at these fools, hah!
Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) is a completely different kettle of fish (now that's cinematic terminology!). I watched it as I had appreciated the first Jacques Rivette film I saw and wrote about a few posts ago. It is sans any non-diegetic music (underscore), although there are some musical scenes where the girls perform a kind of sensuous, comic, magic show, accompanied by a pianist. It is a several hour exercise in many aspects of cinema, and yet charming and worth watching (ooh la la, love that Juliet Berto). For us film music people, it is a great chance to see cinematic devices that normally depend on music to work (all kinds of shocking montage), without. If it wasn't an artistically moral no-no (besmirching the authors intentions doncha' know), I would suggest trying to score much of it as an exercise, not because it needs it, but because we normally think it needs it.
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