One of the best horror movie scores of the 1970s was for Hammer Film’s 1971 thriller, HANDS OF THE RIPPER. The film was a poignant story of a young woman possessed by the unwholesome spirit of her father – Jack the Ripper. The picture benefitted from a literate script, excellent direction, convincing performances, and fine…
Not only is the music for the recent INVADERS FROM MARS re-make entangled in strange circumstances, but the score for the original 1953 film is likewise surrounded by controversy. Credited to Raoul Kraushaar, a Paris-born composer who was educated in the United States and began working in films in 1928 as a musical assistant and…
In my previous articles about the music of QUO VADIS, IVANHOE and PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE I have expanded my theories about music written for historical films. Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR presented new problems. If it had been merely a historical film about Julius Caesar I would have undoubtedly tried a reconstruction or approximation of the Roman music…
Hollywood has not exactly achieved world fame for the historical accuracy of its film biographies, as the carefree manner in which it often juggles historical facts with sheer fantasy to suit its own dramatic purposes is its Achilles heel, where it can be - and usually is - attacked. LUST FOR LIFE, however, is a…
I have been composing music for the greater part of a lifetime, and although I must confess to having entertained secret hopes that someone would some day ask me to do the score for a film, I had never really expected that it would happen. The music chosen to accompany the vast majority of film…
NO SAD SONGS FOR ME is the story of a happily married woman, with a good husband and little daughter, who suddenly discovers that she is dying of cancer and has about eight or ten months to live. Being a woman of unusual fortitude, she does not tell her husband of the imposing tragedy but…
German-born Werner Heymann started out working for the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, until gaining employment as the assistant to the musical director at UF A, the German film company, in 1925. Heyman later became the company’s musical director, until emigrating to the USA in 1933, where he scored numerous Hollywood films for a variety of…
A motion picture with historical background always presents interesting problems to the composer. There have been innumerable other historical pictures produced before QUO VADIS, and they were all alike in their negligent attitude toward the stylistic accuracy of their music. It is interesting to note what; painstaking research is usually made to ascertain the year…
One of the most respected of Japanese films is Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 historical adventure film, SEVEN SAMURAI. A superb cinematic achievement in many ways, its affecting storyline and dynamic action sequences did not forsake Kurosawa’s penchant for delicate beauty and profound characterization. As a director noted for both his visual storytelling insight and his penchant…
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