Hollywood Spectator (Apr-May 1939)

“flash-back” by relating the scene current on the screen with a scene or dialogue seen or heard earlier in the picture. Thus it may be “motivating” music. Too, it can express premeditation and foretell or foreshadow what may be said or may happen. Victor Young has applied these various principles. What makes this score significant is that he has not written a prescription for himself and dosed himself time and again. He has analyzed, scene by scene, I would judge, and then diagnosed whether he needed paralleling action music, or music of portentous character, whatever this portent. Campfire Not Moonlight There is a danger of expecting some metaphorical nightingale to go into some belcanto by way of some properly sweetened violins or flutes. In Man of Conquest the heroine, when chided by her mother over the dish-pan that her friend still had a wife living somewhere, goes out to him and tells him of her love and of her loyalty in defiance of all what the “nice girl” of that tightlylaced period would not do. “Now I have said it,” she punctuates and underlines her disregard of convention. And he, still afraid to claim her until he had established his claim to a new existence, fights within himself, not to smother her and hold her with all that is yearning in him for her. Perhaps there should have been music, a kind of music far different from Moonlight and Roses, of course. Trying It Either Way <| It would have had to be music compounded of every dramatic psychological motif, stirring and restraining the two lovers. Could it be done in this brief campfire scene with its brief crescendo of action and deliberate speech? Are the subsequent scenes such as to compose through them in that vein without underlaying a background music quite alien to them? Having witnessed Man of Conquest once only, I cannot go beyond speculating. Most times, one can only (attempt to) judge what one has heard. What one wishes to hear is another matter, and if by some miracle one’s wishes were fulfilled in a film musical laboratory, then still the test of audition might go against one’s wishes. I have just seen again You Can’t Take It With You. I believe more could have been done with it musically than actually was done. One scene, however, impressed me as effective without “benefit of music.” I am referring to the park scene, when the two inarticulate lovers sit on a bench and a little waterfall in the background furnishes sufficient urgency of action and sound. No “Caro Nome” of any kind could have added proof that these two young things are dumbly crazy about each other and will go through with it. No Sausages, Please <5 Of course, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that while the beautifully low dialogue of the two sweethearts in You Can’t Take It With You is in its present form a sort of verbal song of their hearts, the Man of Conquest declaration of love could have been strengthened by music. I mean that music should have commenced possibly prior to the dishwashing scene and that scenes following the campfire episode should have been transferred or transposed so that Young could have composed through them without distorting their mood. That would imply the composer’s presence when the script is put together, when the action is photographed and when the film is assembled, cut and edited. I will be told that this would mean paying the composer for six days’ or six weeks' more or less hectic efforts. I will be told that this would make music too heavy an item in the budget. As Composers View It The better composers in Hollywood today, I believe, would rather go on a weekly salary of moderate size and have the same creative time privileges accorded other artists in the film world, than be compelled to perform some legerdemain at a speed which is bound to limit some of the best in them. The trouble is that producers too often still think of music as electrically speeded sausage machines. I have no intention of applying this remark to the producer of Man of Conquest, for I understand Republic studios believe in ample scores. On the whole, however, Hollywood producers and directors underestimate the function of music in relation to films. They are unaware of the “script difficulties” of a composer, script difficulties far more complex and subtle t han those of writers and directors because the composer must fit his script to that of the screen playwright and director. It might cost studios a little more to put a composer on a weekly salary basis from the script stage on, than hand him a flat sum for writing a score, yet the difference would be worth the increased calibre of the film by virtue of a filmically finer score. I venture to say that the better composers would be willing to sit in during the script stage before their weekly stipend period commences, just for the sake of producing something more artistic. One reason for the number of musical blowouts are prevailing racetrack tempi in making scores. Within Spirit of Time If Victor Young has conceived a score for Man of Conquest which keeps within the spirit of the times. It was not wb one aid ca; 1 an “instrumental” time. The use of singing voices in the main i.itle and the closing sequence is a thoughtful touch and, used in both places, seems to frame the picture like the fore and end page decorations of a book. Patriotic and folk songs are drawn on. I stress “drawn on” because Young adapts sometimes not more than the characteristic melodic turn out of which he evolves his own themes. Doing this, he has avoided everything which would give the score the smattering of an American medley of the old style band music style, while nevertheless setting atmosphere and aiming at a heart response which lives in everyone to whom this story of Tennessee and Texas means more than dead and dusty history. Use of a little reed organ only in the wedding scene was better than anything elaborate Young could have chosen, for this is the story of a plain man, though nevertheless the story of a man of strong feelings and strong determination. Fine Sense of Proportion <1 Young has never tried to glorify Sam Houston or make scenes bigger beyond their actual significance. In this score he reminds me of the man who illuminates with a touch of color, and with gold at times, the large initials at the top of a chapter page or paragraph. The result is that sometimes the text itself has been left black and white, as it were, at seemingly long stretches. He has not used his colors gaudily either. Houston "stewing” in his river boat cabin, brooding over the desertion of his wife could not have been painted a lonelier figure than by the sound of a mouth organ. Actually trick-muted violins. The simple fiddle tune in the camp scene again demonstrates a fine sense of proportion without being an attempt at realism. Time and again, I was surprised at the absence of music, yet the use of the delicate little tune Come to the Rower as a riding-fighting tune when Houston’s Texans charge the Mexican army, is a brilliant touch in its winsome simplicity. In the battle scene, too. Young does not make grandiloquent war music. He treats it as drama of great suspense to his characters and to a man to whom Texas means future life and love. Thematic Development By no means do I wish to give the impression that Young has played purely the miniaturist. It is lithographic music rather than color printing most of the time. There is real seething in the oil fire sequence, but the slowly dragging, winding theme for the retreat, the curiously, sweltering suspense music before the battle are curiously graphic in their discard of everything superfluously coloristic. Young’s musical Amer APRIL 29, 1939 PAGE FIFTEEN