Hollywood Spectator (Apr-May 1939)

^)h o and jftA tftakerA Are We Deaf’ •1 Once more it proves difficult to do justice to a picture in which music is not only highly important, as in the feature-length Gulliver’s Travels (produced by the Fleischer brothers for Paramount), but when Victor Young’s music emphasized the mood so definitely by means of tone color. A review is rendered difficult because of that stupid custom of playing preview performances as if they took place in an asylum for the deaf. This happened for the second time within three days at the Westwood Village Theatre. Really it is high time the music-makers of Hollywood should do something about this crude way of trying to impress a preview audience. Are they afraid individually to protest? Perhaps they are only prudent. But they should and could do something collectively, I fancy, through the Academy. This unintelligent practice of playing by far the largest part of the film noisily repeatedly blurred the dialogue. I happened to attend several of the Gulliver orchestra recordings (conducted by Young), and what was then cleverly illustrative instrumentation, had been turned at length into monotonous, tinny, raucous clatter. It was disgusting. Seven Songs •I Notwithstanding this abominably vulgar manner of presentation, Gulliver's Travels was cordially received with laughter and applause during and after the showing. The impression would have been stronger yet, if some of Victor Young’s clever melodic and rhythmic juxtapositions could have been heard clearly. I did not get much of an impression from some of the songs, of which there are no less than seven. It’s a HapHap Happy Day was written by Sam Timberg, A1 Neiburg and Winston Sharpies. The following six tunes and lyrics are by Rainger and Robins: Faithful, Forever, I Hear a Dream, We’re All Together Now, All’s Well, Bluebirds In the Moonlight and Faithful Forever. The Hap-Hap Happy Day and All’s Well are gusty and readily appealing tunes. Jessica Dragonette was heard when Princess Glory sings. She always sounds pleasing on the radio and no doubt does on this occasion, although her first song is spoiled by a queer tremolo. ,Lanny Ross lent his voice to Prince David and did well. Music for Moods •I Drawing on my impressions gained at recordings as well as during this imitation of a boiler factory, I give high praise to Victor Young for writing music which intensifies the mood and which not merely clicks with the action in Gulliver’s Travels. That is an addition to music for cartoon not found often. I liked particularly his music of the waves, for the sunrise at the end of the scene when Gulliver has been transported to the palace. Very good, too, is the first alarm music as Gabby rouses the town of Lilliput after he has found the “giant.” Amusing and ingenious is music when the Lilliputians tie up and hoist the sleeping Gulliver. (Much of this staccato hammering and bustling about became tedious owing to overloud reproduction.) Really entertaining is the music for the spies and for Bombo’s bird messenger. Young has created a score of genuine, original humor, waxing at times delightfully satirical, employing then orchestral instruments with telling effect. There is also music of lyric charm and and it has, as well as the comic sequences have, a reality of expression not usually accompanying animated scores. Heretofore chief effort most times has been limited to “hitting action on the nose,” i.e. , split-second accuracy of timing the music. But the entire production of Gulliver has rhythm and phrasing, and of that I shall speak in a later issue. Messrs. Fleischer and Young have made a distinct contribution toward filmic cartoon art and cartoon music of full feature length. Rulers of the Sea tj Far be it from me to take so experienced and successful a producer-director as Frank Lloyd to task, but I believe strongly that he has given his composer, the eminent Richard Hageman not enough scope for underscoring in Rulers of the Sea, toning down, and worse yet, eliminating music, where, I am sure, a composer of Hageman’s dramatic sensibilities, would have put some, had he been allowed to do so. This, of course, goes back to my old conviction, that the composer should sit in on the story and script conferences. To my thinking it is nothing wonderful to have the sound-effect department insert so-called realistic noises of pounding waves and swishing winds. Water and storm have a “soul,” they symbolize something which the composer can voice while writing hurricane music more convincing to the ear than what I would like to call sound-montage, i.e., a bit of recorded realism. I will go back for a moment to the statement that the screen is essentially a pictorial art. No one can deny that, and it follows then that the composer should be allowed to be the soundpictorialist. What picture-strengthening music Hageman might have written if BY BRUNO DAVID USSHER music had taken the place of so much “realistic” engine noise in the boiler room scenes! Too Restrained <| Right or wrong, Director Lloyd’s Scotch folk in Rulers of the Sea are outwardly curbed of emotion, except for matters of temperament not limited to that finely stern race. That limits a composer, especially one as honest as Hageman. He relates his music as a good bookbinder adjusts the all-round calibre of a binding to the contents, not that music is an “outside” thing in relation to the screen. Hageman has devised a lovely and at times strong score, circumstances permitting. He employs such themes as Loch Lomond and My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose, giving his music the tang of Scotland, where the wind is perfumed with thyme and salt. Some important scenes, as the first farewell on the dock, are also left without music. On occasions one gains an impression of abrupt picture cutting and unprepared musical entries. The violin solo in the death scene is an obviously sentimental concession in a score which otherwise rings true thematically and is orchestrated despite evident subjugations. There is sweeping power, tenderness and humor. A Chance Missed <J More than once the Lloyd film cries out for music and the kind of music, humanly embracing and penetrating, which has made Hageman one of the top-ranking song-writers of today. But I have the feeling from this and a previous film that Lloyd too often uses music as an auto manufacturer uses paint i.e., on the outside only. Hageman has provided “bonny” music, apart from actually using two or three folk songs as Land of Leal, You Take the High Way. His incidental sequences, too, have the highland tang. Broad and rolling as his sweeping seascapes are, he is quaintly droll of melody and orchestration in the humorous scenes. The girl is well silhouetted musically in sharp, crisp outlines, and again with music of shyly withheld tenderness. There is a catchy whistling tune, but right beneath this down-kept music one senses suppressed dramatic music of power. The storm music is not skilful fuss and feathers: the swells and smash are real. Hageman's orchestration is distinctive for his thematic (theme carrying) instruments are not overshadowed by general effects of color and mood. His horns have something of the elementary force of the sea. There is force, too, in his throbbing, duly laboring heaving and pushing of ship’s engines. JANUARY 6, 1940 PAGE NINE