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Hollywood Rhapsody: The Golden Age of Film Music in Hollywood

"Hollywood Rhapsody" By Alain Lacombe (written in french) After having read the oral history of Hollwyood, I woke up with a rabbid hunger for more Hollywood books and the good news is that I have a few ones waiting for me since quite a while. This one seems to be out of print so I'm glad I stumbled on it in a parisian bookstore some years ago.

This book is basically divided in two parts: - a history of music film in Hollywood - portraits of Hollwyood composers and directors (biographies, filmographies and discographies)

It has a LOT of information, way more than the trivia stuff I usually know about music film so it was another great enjoyable reading.

The one thing that gets me puzzled is the detailed level of knowledge behind this book as compared to the short bibliography (see below). The author, Alain Lacombe, must have forgotten to write a few ones which would be too bad cause the bibiography part is my personal favourite treasure hunt in a book. Still, I definitely want to read three of them (they're in bold):

Theodor Adorno & Hanns Eisler - La musique de film Irwin Balezon - Knowing the Score Henri Colpi - Défense et illustration de la musique de film Ermano Comuzio - Colonna sonora Ewen - All the years of American popular music Robert R. Faulkner - Hollywood studio musicians Robert R. Faulkner - Music on demand Roland Flamini - Le fabuleux tournage d'"Autant en emporte le vent" Kreuger - The movie musical Alain Lacombe et Claude Rocle - La musique de film Alain Lacombe et Claude Rocle - De Broadway à Hollywood James L. Limbacher - Keeping score Milton Lustig - Musci editing for motion pictures Roger Manvell & John Huntley - The technique of film music David Meeker - Jazz in the movies Vincente Minnelli - Tous en scène François Porcile - Présence de Musique à l'écran Miklos Rosza - Double life David O. Selznick - Memo Tony Thomas - Music for the movies

And to end this post, if you wonder, these are the artists presented: Daniele AMFITHEATROF George ANTHEIL William AXT Les BAXTER Gaylord CARTER & Lee ERWIN George DUNING Hugo FRIEDHOFER Joseph GERSHENSON Albert GLASSER John GREEN Bernard HERRMANN Bronislaw KAPER Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD Alfred NEWMAN Andé PREVIN David RASKIN Mikols ROSZA Hans J. SALTER Walter SCHARF Frank SKINNER Max STEINER Herbert STOTHART Dimitri TIOMKIN Franz WAXMAN Victor YOUNG

As usual, if you have any information about related books, I'd be glad to hear from you!

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Hollywood: The Oral History

Now that it's over, I can look back on it and be honest with myself: I just spent a few weeks in love with a book. This book. Thinking about it all day long. Waiting to be with it again. And fearing the moment when it would end. It's all over now but I'm grateful that I could live this and will always fondly remember those blessed days.

Where to start? The first thing is that I'm really fond of the Oral History format. I've read some music books written like that (about punk, Seattle, Merge Records, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nirvana etc.) and it's so enjoyable to just listen to what people have to say in their own words. I never get tired of it. Then what? I'm the regular french film geek you might imagine: I've mainly read books about/by directors and screenwriters. Other than that, I haven't explored much. I've read a few books about/by cinematographers, music composers, and editors but it's no more than 10 books, I'm pretty sure about it. So, with all these Hollywood professionals interviewed (including producers, continuity supervisors, production designers, makeup artists, costume designers and more) I was fullfilled. It was like seeing missing pieces of a puzzle come to life.

Personal bangs There is a huge part of my head that is stuffed with credit films names that are disembodied. I see them everywhere, they're in many of my fave films but I know litterally nothing about them. Arthur Freed, Stanley Cortez, Edith Head, Pandro Berman, Cedric Gibbons, James Wong Howe, Hal Wallis, Hal Mohr, I.A.L. Diamond, William Tuttle, Bronislaw Kaper, you name it. To be able to hear them, to see that they're more than a name on the opening credits, it's a miracle (and eventually knowing how Mamoulian and Cukor landed in Hollwyood is priceless).

Thanks First of all, thanks to the American Film Institute for having interviewed all these people during all those years <3 Then, thanks to the "authors" (editors?) of the book, Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson, for the smooth storytelling that gave a shape to all those sources. The 700+ pages are so easy to read, so interesting, I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to get to that point. Humble Request to the kind people of AFI There were a few moments when Billy Wilder and long-time friend and screenwriter collaborator I.A.L Diamond seemed to talk on the same topic, I guess they were interviewed together. Please make a book out of it. Please do it. Or a short written piece if there isn't much material. They seemed to be so well-rounded together (with some as-usual incredible punchlines from Billy Wilder) that it just makes you want more.

And you, friendly lonely reader that landed here, if you have more readings like this one, please let me know!

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Thanks to Thelma Schoonmaker and La Cinémathèque française

The venerable and revered Cinémathèque française offered us what might be called love in the afternoon this saturday.

First of all, we got to watch an incredible high quality Technicolor copy of The Red Shoes (1948) during their Michael Powell retrospective. It was a treat to rewatch it like that, as beautiful and dark as always.

And then, we had a little more than an hour with the venerable, revered and fascinating Thelma Schoonmaker. There were a lot of insights about movies, Martin Scorsese and Michael Powell of course. It was a delight.

I came back home with two questions that I can barely hold back: - when will the Michael Powell diaries she's working on will be finished? I can't wait to read that! (the only "diary" I read so far was from Charles Brackett's "It's the pictures that got small" and it was super exciting to live his exciting 9-to-5 job through his unexcited eyes) - In the movie family, is the the Boris Lermontov character somehow like a director? Or more like a producer? On one side, it seems parts of Michael Powell's personnality were used for Lermontov. On the other side, I couldn't help thinking of him as the Kirk Douglas character in The Bad and The Beautiful. (same kind of "attractive brute" to me...)

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To Have Casablanca

After “The Sicilian Cercle”, here comes a new chapter of “One plot, one actor, two movies”. It’s called “To Have Casablanca”.

Humphrey Bogart plays a man that doesn't want to pick side between the french Resistance and Collaboration with the Nazis but the arrival of a girl might change it all.

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The Sicilian Cercle

After “The Four Horsemen of Casablanca”, here comes a new chapter of “One plot, one actor, two movies”. It’s called “The Sicilian Cercle”.

Alain Delon plays a criminal who steals jewels based on information obtained in prison.

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The Four Horsemen of Casablanca

After “The Widow Joy House”, here comes a new chapter of “One plot, one actor, two movies”. It’s called “The Four Horsemen of Casablanca”.

Paul Henreid plays a Resistance leader whose beautiful wife seems to prefer more neutral characters.

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The Widow Joy House

After “Any Swimming Pool Can Win”, here comes a new chapter of “One plot, one actor, two movies”. It’s called “The Widow Joy House”.

Alain Delon plays a young man fleeing his past into the arms of a widow who employs him

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Any Swimming Pool Can Win

After "Primal Fear Club", here comes a new chapter of "One plot, one actor, two movies". It's called "Any Swimming Pool Can Win".

Alain Delon plays a young man that loses control when he's around a swimming pool.

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True Best Movie: Vincente Minnelli

After Howard Hawks' TBM, hop on for Vincente Minnelli's!

Usual Best Movie: An American in Paris (or The Band Wagon) True Best Movie: The Bad and the Beautiful

This one is an odd director I thought I knew well by having watched more than twenty of his movies. Until I read his memoirs ("I Remember it well"). Almost all his movies dealed with creative characters struggling in a world that is not made for them. And I thought that such a consistent body of work spread over more than thirty years of movie directing in Hollywood meant it was a huge topic for him. Well, no. Not at all. As far as I recall, the man started as a costume and set designer in Broadway and he'd rather spend pages in describing the set of his movies better than talking about the actual plots and what they meant to him. Too bad but still, the depth and weight of his movies remain and that's what I like the most about his work. So don't be astonished if I discard his musicals. I think they're pretty good but his "heavy" movies move me even more (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Tea and Sympathy for instance).

That being said, nothing gets me started as much as a movie that deals about the process of making movies. I can relate to the problems that, let's say, a painter or a stage director has to face but I just can't resist to see a screenwriter or a director struggling to get a movie done. It's a neverending pleasure and, in that specific range of movies that tickle me, The Bad and The Beautiful is one of the most incredible I'll ever seen.

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Primal Fear Club

After "The Caddyshack Day", here comes a new chapter of "One plot, one actor, two movies". It's called "Primal Fear Club".

Edward Norton plays a twisted young man in a twisted movie.

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The Caddyshack Day

After "Touch of Psycho", here comes a new chapter of "One plot, one actor, two movies". It's called "The Caddyshack Day".

Bill Murray plays a man obsessed with a rodent.

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Touch of Psycho

Assuming you know what "One plot, one actor, two movies" means, after "The Frantic Fugitive", here comes "Touch of Psycho".

Janet Leigh plays a woman alone in a motel run by a disturbed young man.

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One plot, one actor, two movies

This is a short and recurring silly way of thinking I tend to have when it comes to certain movies.

If the casts allow me to do so, I try to merge two movies in a one-sentence plot as much as I can.

So here goes "The Frantic Fugitive":

Harrison Ford plays a doctor called Richard who loses his wife and founds himself forced to lead the investigation to understand what happened.

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True Best Movie: Howard Hawks

After Franju's TBM, let’s go for Howard Hawks.

Usual Best Movie: Rio Bravo True Best Movie: Ball Of Fire

This kind of director is intimidating. The range of movies he's made is so wide that it almost makes no sense to highlight one movie rather than another. It is something true for any director in general (it hasn't stopped me from trying though ^_^) and for Hawks in particular.

Comedies, westerns, dramas, noir, gangster, peplum, war, sci-fi horror, musical... He's' pretty much done it all. I can't think of another director that has covered so many different genres with so much talent. Even Billy Wilder, probably my all-time fav, seems a bit short (no peplum and no sci-fi horror as far as I can tell).

Still, this freak game I've created, this TBM game I'm playing at, demands an answer.

As always, nothing to say to the UBM: Rio Bravo is the masterpiece everyone says it is and it's probably even better that what people usually say it is (I'll probably say more in another post).

But I guess I can't resist to Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Gregg Toland's photography, and the Wilder-Brackett script's wit combined. It's so perfectly funny, it says so much between the lines that you don't even need to laugh it loud to enjoy it. It's telepathic amusement.

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True Best Movie: Georges Franju

After Chaplin's TBM, let's go for Georges Franju.

Usual Best Movie: Les Yeux sans visage True Best Movie: Judex

I'm really fond of Les Yeux sans visage. It's always mentioned as a classic and it's a well deserved honour. It's a beautiful way to turn a scary movie into strange emotions with a quiet pace. Besides that, the story around the movie making is great. No epic shooting. No earthquake, no tornado or actor going mental. Just the way Franju talks about the story itself. He's a great movie-making storyteller*.

Despite all that, Judex seems more important to me. First of all, the impulse to make a movie about a 1916 serial in the sixties and being serious about it is a really humble tribute. I love and respect that (if you've watched the somehow vintage funny sixties movies about Fantomas, you know what I mean). And now, the uppercut. No matter how strong you disagree with me regarding the best Franju movie, this scene from Judex ends any discussion (by the way, this music from Maurice Jarre is absolutely the best original motion picture soundtrack I've ever heard).

* If you speak french and are curious: among other things, consider reading the Oral History of Les yeux sans visage by Delphine Simon-Marsaud and published on the website of the Cinémathèque Française.

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True Best Movie: Charlie Chaplin

After Billy Wilder's TBM, here comes Chaplin :)

Usual Best Movie: Modern Times (or The Great Dictator) True Best Movie: City Lights

I totally understand the importance of Modern Times and The Great Dictator. They are such an iconic way to frame key chapters of the 20th century history that it's hard not to look at them.

But City Lights is a far better story in my opinion. There is certainly less commitment and political stance in it but it's full of incredible ideas. And the end of the movie is one of the most moving that I've ever seen...

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True Best Movie: Billy Wilder

After Orson Welles' TBM last week, let’s go for Billy Wilder now…

Usual Best Movie: The Apartment (or Sunset Boulevard or Double Indemnity or Some Like It Hot) True Best Movie: Kiss Me Stupid

I think he's one of the few classic Hollywood directors that I've 'completed'. Meaning I've seen it all. Including the french one. Including the WWII gloomy documentary. Out of respect, admiration and love, I've taken the time to see everything he directed. I haven't seen everything he's scripted yet but I'm on my way...

In Dino, his biography of Dean Martin, Nick Tosches says the idea behind Kiss Me Stupid is the most sordid ever written for a comedy. He also called it frankly creepy and added that sex and cupidity were at the heart of every one of its salacious jokes (he probably didn't use those specific words, I've read the book in french and my translation skills are not that high...). He's certainly right. For a 1964 movie, that's exactly what the movie is.

But underneath that challenge to morale that Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond wrote, behind all that jokes and embarrassing situations, there's one thing that I deeply love about this movie. It has a sour happy ending. At the end of the movie, every single character gets what he/she wanted in the first place. And yet, you can tell that in any other movie, or in real life if there is such a thing, this can't possibly be a happy ending.

In my opinion, that's when Wilder is at his best (think how badly Joe Gillis wanted a pool and eventually got it...).