The Film
Directed by Michael Mann and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, and Jodhi May, The Last of the Mohicans is an American historical drama set during the French and Indian War.
Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), an adopted son of a native, joins forces with newly arrived Britons in their fight against the French. Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe) is part of his group, as is Alice (Jodhi May), her younger sister. After rescuing them from an ambush, Hawkeye takes them to a British fort that is under attack from the French. After a French victory and British surrender, a truce is made whereby the British agree to return home and never return, but these terms are betrayed by a war-mongering native ally of the French. The wondrous landscapes of America are shown in full splendor as the film’s narrative progresses, positing the bloody battles against stunning cinematic backdrops.
The film won one Academy Award for Best Sound, was nominated for one Golden Globe, and won two of seven BAFTA nominations.
The Music
The musical score to The Last of the Mohicans was composed by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman. The musical cues are split between the two composers in an unusual example of sharing a film score. The composition process for this film was not a harmonious one. Trevor Jones, in an interview with Soundtrack.net, explains: “I tend to score a particular film in the way I feel suits it best. But the fact is that if I feel I’m being asked to do something injurious to a picture, I have to say that and stick to my guns. I was asked to score parts of the picture that were under dialogue, and I didn’t think required scoring. The option at the end of the day was that it was the director’s prerogative to get someone else to score those bits, and for me to produce a score that I felt worked for the picture. To that end, that’s what happened.” Jones spoke to Edelman for around ten minutes during the whole process, and while no ill feelings exist, it was far from an ideal situation. This makes it even more remarkable that, together, they composed what is now considered a classic score.
Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis, center), Uncas (Eric Schweig), and Chingachgook (Russell Means, right) confront the British. Morgan Creek Productions / Photofest © Morgan Creek Productions
The score is well known for its intense Celtic melodies, mixed with Native American influences. This represents well the film’s temporal context of the late 1700s, when European and Native cultures were beginning to clash and mix.
Opening the film is a heavily beaten drum with a dissonant string drone. The low brass perform a slowed-down version of the main theme under the title sequence. This builds up in volume and tension until the title of the film appears on the screen. At this moment, the drums stop, and the soaring, passionate main theme is heard for the first time in all its glory.
The drums reenter, the main theme dies away, and we see Hawkeye chasing a deer. The fatal gunshot that kills it also kills the music. The music gives us clues as to Hawkeye’s allegiances. As Jessica Green explains, “through the unity of the strong brass title theme, the audience realizes that Hawkeye is one with Chingachgook and Uncas despite his white heritage. The music [also] draws the audience into the foreign world of pre–Revolutionary War America.”
Perhaps the most powerful scene in the film is the seven-minute finale. As Magua is deciding the fate of the two sisters, Cora and Alice, the ominous drums from the start of the film are heard fading into the background. The fiddle then joins this, playing the 12/8 eight-bar phrase that is heard throughout the film, in an intensely Gaelic or Celtic style. It is hypnotic in its repetitiveness, yet strangely emotive. The fiddle motif is pulsating, fast-paced, and riddled with a sense of fate or forthcoming doom. The quick editing of the visuals here matches the fast-paced tempo. The film not only reaches its culmination narratively, but also in terms of tempo. It is hectic, frenzied, chaotic, and utterly climactic. The fiddle is joined by groups of instruments incrementally, until finally the entire orchestra brings the film ever closer to its close.
The scene reaches an emotional climax as Alice edges away from the Hurons toward a cliff edge. She has to choose between torture and a quicker death. The music is less complex here, as it is obvious that Alice has no choice. The melody is removed, and we are left only with the strings alternating between two pitches, with a thumping drum accompanying her tragic fall from the cliff. The fiddle returns as Magua turns away, not fazed by the suicide, and the film reaches its climax with Magua finally being defeated as the main melody returns.
The combined efforts of Jones and Edelman, albeit working separately, resulted in a score that admittedly may not have a great deal of variety or diversity but makes up for it in the emotional impact of the main themes. This is nowhere more powerful than in the first and final scenes of the film, where it is used as first a signifier of excitement and context and finally as a poignant underscore to tragedy, death, and hopelessness. The score deserves its place in this book, and the main theme, often heard outside the film world since 1992, deserves its place in the higher reaches of all-time memorable soundtrack melodies.
Recognition
Nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
Nominated for a BAFTA for Best Original Score.
Recording
Trevor Jones, Randy Edelman, The Last of the Mohicans, Shout! Factory Records, 1992/2014. This fifty-four-minute album spread over sixteen tracks is the official release and is well recommended. ****
Bibliography
Goldwasser, Dan. “Interview: Scoring Saucy Jack” (interview with Trevor Jones). Soundtrack.net, October 23, 2001. https://www.soundtrack.net/content/article/?id=87.
Green, Jessica. “Understanding the Score: Film Music Communicating to and Influencing the Audience.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 44, no. 4 (2010): 81–94.
—ML
The Film
Directed by Otto Preminger, Laura stars Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, and Clifton Webb in a wartime film noir classic. The film is set in New York City and focuses on the story of Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), an NYPD detective who is investigating the murder of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), a successful advertising executive. After interviewing a selection of characters, ranging from Laura’s fiancé to her housekeeper, McPherson becomes too attached to the supposedly murdered woman. After falling asleep at Laura’s apartment after a day investigating the case, Laura herself wakes him as she returns home. McPherson arrests Laura for the murder of a model who was wearing Laura’s dress when the attack happened, but her innocence is proven when it is revealed that a newspaper columnist, infatuated with Laura, was the real killer. The columnist is shot by an NYPD officer and utters the final words “Goodbye, Laura. Goodbye, my love.” The film utilizes the classic conventions of noir throughout, from the contrasts of light and dark to the use of a femme fatale to ensnare the male protagonists.
The film has been placed in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress due to its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. It was nominated for several awards, but won just one: the Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography.
The Music
The music to Laura was composed by David Raksin and was his breakthrough score. The composer wrote over four hundred film and television themes in the Golden Age of cinema, and he is often referred to as the “grandfather of film music.” However, he was not the first choice for this film. The director offered Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann the commission, but both composers refused. The former was not a fan of the director and, in any case, had too many existing commissions, while the latter was simply unimpressed with the script and refused on those grounds. Laura is Raksin’s most well-known film score by a considerable margin, although it was only because of a change of opinion by the director, on Raksin’s recommendation, that the theme music to Laura was written at all. Originally, Preminger wanted to use Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” or George Gershwin’s “Summertime” for the main theme, but Alfred Newman, music director for 20th Century Fox, persuaded the director to allow Raksin a weekend to compose an original theme. Raksin was adamant that it should be an original composition, as he argued that the two songs were unsuitable because of “the accretion of ideas and associations that a song already so well-known would evoke in the audience.” Preminger agreed to this, and the main theme was composed and subsequently used at frequent intervals in the film. However, the use of the song in the film is only part of the story, as a year later, lyrics were added to the melody to create a jazz standard that would go on to be recorded over four hundred times. It is one of the most recorded pieces of music in history. Raksin was suffering with writer’s block during the weekend when he was to compose the theme and came across a letter from a girlfriend. He had not been able to fathom what it was saying previously but now realized it was a breakup letter. Placing it on the piano, he used the contents of the letter to improvise a melody on the piano, and thus the theme to Laura was composed.
Clifton Webb and Dana Andrews standing in front of the portrait of Laura (Gene Tierney). 20th Century Fox Film Corporation / Photofest © 20th Century Fox Film Corporation
The melody is a haunting, romantic theme with an air of mystery, appropriate to the film noir genre. The music somehow encapsulates the femme fatale nature of Laura’s character along with undertones of more innocent love and romance. The music is mysterious without being sinister and seductive without being sleazy. Its chromatic melodic movement and jazzy harmony place it very firmly in a 1940s film noir context, but its durability resulted in its ongoing success and popularity. Interestingly, there is very little other music in the film except the theme and variants thereof. The characters mention a concert of Jean Sibelius music at one moment in the film, but none of his music is heard. Alfred Newman loved the theme so much that he kept encouraging the composer to return to it. Raksin replied that he didn’t want to overdo it, but as he later wrote, “monothematic . . . there would be no other reiterated themes, merely needed fragments.” The theme never truly resolves and is at all times mysterious. It is “a wandering ghost, musically diaphanous, shimmering, ever-changing” as the liner notes to a rereleased recording explain.
Raksin’s amorous melody shines through each time it is heard, and it dominates a film that is short in duration but full of the elements that make it a 1940s film noir classic that has endured for decades.
Recognition
Surprisingly, there were over twenty nominations at various awards ceremonies for film scores in 1944, but Laura did not receive a single one of them.
Recordings
David Raksin, David Raksin Conducts His Great Film Scores: Laura, Forever Amber, The Bad and the Beautiful, RCA Red Seal, 2011. A compilation of some of Raksin’s most popular film scores. A recommended purchase. ****
David Raksin, Laura, Kritzerland, 2013. The original 1944 soundtrack with Alfred Newman conducting. At the time of writing, this CD is out of print. The lack of variety in the film score results in a short soundtrack of thirty-eight minutes. ***
Bibliography
Hirsch, Foster. Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Kirgo, Julie. Liner notes. Laura. Available at http://www.kritzerland.com/KL_Laura_Notes.pdf.
—ML
The Film
Directed by David Lean and starring Peter O’Toole, Lawrence of Arabia is considered one of cinema’s most influential films.
T. E. Lawrence dies in a motorcycle crash at the age of forty-six. As he is dying, he begins to reminisce about his time serving in Cairo as an intelligence officer in 1916 during the Arab revolt against the Turks. He plays a crucial part in leading the Arabs against the Turks, and the film concludes with Lawrence helping to bring down the mighty Ottoman Empire. The film was exceptional for the size of the cast, running to over a thousand with extras included. The cinematography and narrative combined to create a true classic on an epic scale.
Lawrence of Arabia was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning seven for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematographer, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Music Score. It also received nine Golden Globe nominations, of which it won six, and five BAFTA nominations, of which it won four. It is the joint fifth-most-successful film in history in terms of Academy Award wins. Adjusted for inflation, it is comfortably in the top 100 grossing films of all time domestically, with returns of over $500 million in today’s money.
Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence. Columbia Pictures / Photofest © Columbia Pictures
The Music
The score to Lawrence of Arabia was composed by Maurice Jarre, a French composer who is rightly considered “one of the giants of twentieth-century film music” and was known for writing in a variety of styles, from sweeping orchestral themes to electronic music. Lawrence of Arabia was Jarre’s breakthrough score and earned him his first of three Academy Awards. He initially did not have any involvement with the film, but William Walton and Malcolm Arnold, the two first-choice composers, were unavailable. Jarre recalls that the director was very clear where he wanted music, which was crucial, as he was given just six weeks to complete the score. The composer stated that Lean “had clear ideas on how and where he wanted to use music. In the original script, there were very precise indications for where the music would begin and end. He wanted the music to come in, without it being heard to come in.” Jarre combined military music to represent the British, with unusual instruments to represent the nomadic tribes in the film. Instruments such as the cithara and ondes Martenot were used to evoke an exotic atmosphere.
The opening theme begins with tempestuous drums, playing a tribal, irregular rhythm. This is then joined by a brass fanfare, harsh in sound. Almost instantly, we are introduced to the sweeping string melody, perhaps the most well-known theme in the film. Interestingly, the tribal drums continue to sound during this beautiful theme, contrasting not only two musical styles but also two cultures with it. The romantic theme dies down and is replaced by a march, which is one moment Arabian in style and the next moment Turkish. This represents well the two opposing sides represented during the film. The Turkish section is a variation on Kenneth Alford’s march “The Voice of the Guns” (1917), which is prominently featured on the soundtrack. The director had used one of Alford’s other marches, “The Colonel Bogey March,” in his Bridge on the River Kwai, which appears elsewhere in this book.
The soundtrack matches the epic scope of the film. Jarre used a 104-piece orchestra including sixty string players, eleven percussionists, and two pianos. He also used three of the aforementioned ondes Martenot, an instrument that produces eerie electronic sounds and was used initially by French composer Olivier Messiaen. The score has been described as epic, symphonic, exotic, but also curiously “sun-scorched.” This latter description is apt. There is simply something about Jarre’s juxtaposition of Western European symphonic sounds and Arabian musical expression that depicts perfectly the vast, arid deserts of the film. There is little doubt that this score deserves its place in the top 100 film scores, and it might well be found in the top ten were they to be ranked in such a way. Indeed, the American Film Institute ranks Lawrence of Arabia third in its top twenty-five list of film scores.
Recognition
Academy Award for Best Music Score.
Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
Nominated for a Grammy for Best Original Score.
Recordings
Maurice Jarre, Lawrence of Arabia, Tadlow, 2010. This two-CD edition by Nic Raine and the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra runs to over one hundred forty minutes across twenty-six tracks. Lawrence of Arabia occupies the first disc and the second contains other Jarre music. For the extra music and the other works of the composer, this is well recommended. ****
Maurice Jarre, London Symphony Orchestra, Lawrence of Arabia, Foyer, 2011. This is the original recording of the score rereleased, thirty-three minutes over fourteen tracks. Recommended for its authenticity. ***
Bibliography
Goodfellow, Melanie. “Jarre Mixed Ancient, Ethnic and Electronic Music: European Achievement in World Cinema.” Variety, November 27, 2005.
McLellan, Dennis. “Maurice Jarre Dies at 84; Composer for Lawrence of Arabia.” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2009.
—ML
The Film
By the time Peter O’Toole played King Henry II in The Lion in Winter he had already played this twelfth-century English monarch in the 1964 film Becket (discussed earlier in this book). This time out, O’Toole was made to look fifty years of age, to resemble an aging king who worries about who his successor is going to be.
The 1968 film, adapted by James Goldman from his 1966 stage play, is a fictional gathering of the English royal family in December of 1183. It is set at the English court in Chinon, in the West of France, to which King Henry has invited his three sons and his estranged wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), to join him for a Christmas reunion along with King Philip of France and Henry’s mistress, Alais, Philip’s sister. These historical characters are all portrayed as having hidden agendas dealing with the succession to the English throne. Henry wants to place John, the youngest son, on the throne, while Eleanor favors their eldest, Richard. Meanwhile, Geoffrey, the middle son, yearns to be a power player in this politically contrived situation.
The Music
Despite its medieval setting, The Lion in Winter is quite modern in terms of its dialogue, which includes such witty moments as the queen’s summing up of an argument with the words “What family doesn’t have its ups and downs.” Inspired by the anachronisms in Goldman’s screenplay, John Barry created a score that includes both old and modern musical elements.
Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn) and her husband, Henry II (Peter O’Toole). MGM-United Artists / Photofest © MGM-United Artists
A good example of this duality comes immediately in the film’s opening credits, which begin musically with a loud pair of statements by trumpets and strings of a dramatic eight-note idea. The French horns and strings then repeat this idea twice. This repetitive music leads directly into a dynamic thematic statement by trumpets based on the opening idea, with rhythmic accents played by brass and strings along with repeated tones on timpani that provide a rock-music type of background. Then a melody sung by a choir is sounded above the timpani. The translation of the Latin text deals with a day of wrath and judgment, as though the music were intended for a medieval funeral mass. There is no funeral in the film, however; instead, there are numerous heated verbal exchanges concerning the royal succession.
The second major theme in the score occurs when Queen Eleanor’s boat sails toward the shore where King Henry awaits her arrival. As the boat floats along, female voices introduce a chant-like melody that celebrates Eleanor as queen. Male voices join in singing this theme while strings accompany this sweet-sounding music in an emotionally lyrical and smoothly flowing way.
It is worthy of note that the selection of the Latin texts for both of these themes is the work of Denis Stevens, who at the time was the artistic director of the Accademia Monteverdiana, the choir that recorded the choral music heard in the film.
After Eleanor’s arrival and the gathering of their sons and the French king, there is not much music in the first hour of the film. One exception is a short fanfare for trumpets in two-part harmony that is sounded when Henry walks with Eleanor into a dining hall for a Christmas feast.
Another exception comes at around thirty minutes in with a short piece for trombones and trumpets, which are joined with strings and soft female voices, as Richard approaches his mother’s private chamber. Such music provides pleasant interludes between the moments of heated anger spouted by all of the royal family, especially the cunning queen and the conniving Geoffrey, the latter speaking with venom in almost every syllable.
The score’s main theme returns a few times. A memorable occurrence comes in the latter part of the film, starting around 1:47:00, when Henry’s three sons are roused from their sleep during the night by castle guards who lock them up in a dungeon. At this point dynamic brass chords, strings, and rumbling timpani accompany the action as Henry determines to leave Chinon on the spur of the moment. The melodic part of this music includes trumpets playing a variant of the score’s main eight-note motif. Throughout this scene wordless voices add a repeated series of descending chords while the timpani melodically add a second variant of the film’s main motif.
Other noteworthy music in the film includes “Allons gai gai gai,” with French words sung by Alais to Henry in an early scene. This lilting tune comes during an interlude that precedes Henry’s explanation of why he wants John on the throne. Later in the film Alais sings an unaccompanied piece called “The Christmas Wine,” with words by James Goldman.
Since nothing is resolved regarding the royal succession, the film may seem rather pointless. However, John Barry’s inspired music makes the film entertaining in a darkly comedic way and is a testament to his artistic ingenuity. While the film contains only a meager amount of music, what Barry composed is first rate. The dramatic main-title theme, with its insistent rhythmic drive and strongly sung Latin text, bears more than a little resemblance to the opening chorus of Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana, but Barry’s melodic idea has a quality that is truly original in design. When this theme returns one last time in the final scene, the film comes to a majestic close that confirms the fact that, even without any real plot resolution, Barry’s music makes the film an emotionally satisfying experience.
In summing up Barry’s achievement, it is safe to say that his music is crucial to the success of Lion in Winter. This score represents one of his most memorable film-music creations.
Recognition
Seven Oscar nominations and winner of three, including an award for Barry’s score.
Voted by New York film critics as best film of 1968.
Recording
John Barry, The Lion in Winter, Columbia Legacy, 1995. Original soundtrack recording, issued on CD. Excellent sound.****
Bibliography
Deutsch, Didier. Liner notes. The Lion in Winter. Columbia Legacy CK 66133, 1995, CD.
—LEM
The Film
In December of 2014, Peter Jackson completed a monumental task that seemed unthinkable as recently as the 1990s. Jackson and his production team had brought J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epics, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, to life on screen over a thirteen-year period.
The films have all been commercially successful, grossing billions of dollars worldwide, with the full complement of six films finding themselves within the top-forty rankings of all time in terms of box-office earnings. Through the success of the two trilogies, Jackson established himself as a leading director, and the profiles of actors such as Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, and Andy Serkis have been raised significantly.
However, the production of the six films and the trials of translating such revered literature into the medium of the big screen brought significant protest from within the Tolkien family, as well as pressure from millions of expectant fans. Jackson needed to assemble a prestigious production team in order to do Tolkien’s respected works cinematic justice. One of the greatest decisions he had to make was choosing someone who would succeed in conjuring Tolkien’s world musically.
The Fellowship of the Ring received thirteen nominations for Academy Awards and won four of those: Best Score, Best Makeup, Best Visual Effects, and Best Cinematography. In total, the film received 152 nominations for awards worldwide and won 98. While not the most successful of the trilogy in terms of awards, The Fellowship of the Ring was still universally acclaimed. The trilogy became the most awarded film series of all time, receiving an astonishing 475 awards from 800 nominations.
The first film, highlighted in this chapter, was The Fellowship of the Ring, released in December 2001. It had a budget of $93 million and grossed $871 million worldwide.
Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins. New Line Cinema / Photofest © New Line Cinema
The Music
Jackson chose the Canadian composer Howard Shore to underscore his six films, and Shore’s music has been received with critical acclaim for both trilogies.
One of the challenges composers face when writing music for a fantasy film is to ensure the audience recalls the locations and characters across the films. The music must act as an audial anchor point to grasp the attention of the audience. Even if some audience members may not remember all the exotic names of the locations and characters, the music can at least provoke a recognition of location.
The first significant location the audience sees is the Shire, home of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and the rest of the Hobbits of Middle-earth. The music used to represent the Shire is perhaps the most well-known from the six films. The tin whistle is used to evoke a certain Celtic atmosphere, and it is not unreasonable to make the strong link between the Shire and the United Kingdom, particularly the countryside in the midlands and southern England where Tolkien grew up. What is unique about this motif is that while starting out as a piece of music to represent a location, it transforms throughout the films into something with a far deeper meaning. The melody remains the same, but a grander, hymn-like setting emerges that begins to denote homesickness but also the resilience of the Hobbits on the road. One example of this is when Frodo Baggins and his acquaintance Samwise Gamgee have left the borders of the Shire. The same melody is heard, but it is now in strings and French horn as well as the original tin whistle. It accompanies a tender moment of reminiscing but also represents the growth in character of the two hobbits as they explore a new world.
More broadly, the landscapes of Middle-earth are represented musically in a way that immerses the audience in the expansive world Tolkien (and Jackson) created. The elves in their valley home of Rivendell presented Shore with a challenge. He must have wondered how he would attempt an underscoring of a location that is described in the book as being inconceivably beautiful, exotic, and otherworldly.
Shore creates this exoticism using harmonies that have a somewhat Eastern feel, with ethereal female voices accompanying swelling string arpeggios and chimes. Doug Adams describes the Rivendell motif as containing a “wonderful tone of opulence,” and says it is “welcoming, open and gives a sense of age.” The narrative, in which Elrond and Bilbo both say the name “Rivendell” as the music is heard, assists Shore by introducing a new location to the audience in the most literal fashion possible. When you isolate the clips, it might seem heavy-handed to see a character actually vocalize the name of the location followed by its musical leitmotif, but in the midst of a three-hour film, it is very useful and acts as an explicit signposting for viewers.
Howard Shore elevated himself to the highest echelons of the film composer world with his remarkable scores for all six of the Tolkien adaptations. The pressure to score such a diverse but also publicly adored fictional world might have caused some composers to crumble, but Shore approached it with enthusiasm and sincerity, immersing himself in Jackson’s re-creation of Middle-earth. The music is undoubtedly a key aspect of the films and their success, and it has entered the film music canon alongside the many great scores that preceded it.
Recognition
Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Grammy for Best Soundtrack.
Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
Nominated for BAFTA for Best Original Score.
Recordings
Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring—The Complete Recordings, Reprise Records, 2001. Studio recording, rereleased in 2013. Official Soundtrack with high-quality performances and sound. ****
The London Studio Orchestra, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, NPL, 2010. For those on a budget, but not recommended due to electronically produced sounds. **
Bibliography
Adams, Doug. The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films: A Comprehensive Account of Howard Shore’s Scores. Los Angeles: Alfred, 2011.
—ML
The Film
Frank Capra is probably best-known for social-commentary films set in contemporary America. But unlike Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe, Capra’s version of James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon takes viewers to a faraway place called Shangri-La. Nestled in a valley surrounded by the Himalayas, Shangri-La’s mild climate helps to provide a peaceful existence for its inhabitants. It also allows them to age very slowly.
Hilton’s story centers on Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), a British diplomat and humanitarian, who is first seen helping the evacuation of foreigners during a revolution in China. When Conway boards a plane with four other passengers, he does not realize that they are being hijacked. When the plane crashes on a mountainside, all but the pilot survive unharmed. They are soon aided by a rescue team led by the mysterious Chang. After a perilous mountain journey they arrive in Shangri-La, where they are treated like royal guests. Eventually Conway, who becomes infatuated with this place, learns that his coming to Shangri-La was no accident.
After crash-landing in the Himalayas, Robert Conway (Ronald Colman, center), George Conway (John Howard), Alexander Lovett (Edward Everett Horton), and Henry Barnard (Thomas Mitchell) are welcomed by Chang (H. B. Warner) and his people. Columbia Pictures / Photofest © Columbia Pictures
The Music
Since Lost Horizon has an exotic Eastern setting, Capra felt that its composer should be someone other than such western Europeans as Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Franz Waxman. Thus Dimitri Tiomkin, who was born in Russia, had the ideal ethnic background for this scoring project. A second advantage was the fact that Tiomkin had refused to sign any contract that would have confined his work to a single studio. The invitation from Capra to score Lost Horizon was thus easy to accept.
Three distinct musical ideas are introduced at the beginning of Tiomkin’s score. The opening credits begin with a bold succession of orchestral harmonies that accompany a dramatic melodic motif. This short musical fanfare leads to a lyrical melody in a waltz-like pattern that represents the film’s central love theme. This music in turn leads to the credits’ third melodic idea, a soaring theme that represents Shangri-La itself. The melody of this theme progresses in a steadily flowing way that lacks the resting spaces that would normally help to establish a metric pattern. This music’s non-metric character is enhanced by wordless choral singing that is added to the orchestration. With a visual background of a mountain peak, the music soars higher and higher until Capra’s name appears on the screen.
Music continues nonstop through a printed forward that features the love theme and concludes with a repetition of the fanfare idea as the following information is shown: “Baskul, the night of March 10, 1935.”
The film begins with a chaotic scene of political unrest at the Baskul airport, where Conway is attempting to get dozens of Westerners on airplanes that will fly them to Shanghai. Highly dramatic and rhythmically propelled music continues until Conway and the last remaining fugitives are airborne.
More turbulent music can be heard when the plane lands in an unnamed place to take on more fuel. There is no music in the subsequent scene when the plane runs out of fuel and crashes on a snowy plateau in the Himalayas.
One of the film’s musical highlights occurs when the rescuers approach the plane with the intention of taking the passengers to safety. At this point, a slow march-like idea begins to sound. With Tiomkin’s use of the lowered seventh step of the scale, this theme resembles the modal tones of Gregorian chant melodies. There is also a repeated accompanying pattern of two chords that are a whole step apart (this parallel harmony has often been used to establish ancient settings (as in Miklós Rósza’s score for Ben-Hur.) As the trek to Shangri-la continues, the music gets progressively more dramatic, until the travelers enter a hidden passageway that leads to the Valley of the Blue Moon, where the lamasery of Shangri-La is located. At this point, the music shifts to a lyrical choral piece that suggests the serene nature of this enchanted place.
Much choral music is heard in the Shangri-La scenes, along with several repetitions of the love theme, which accompanies Conway and Sondra (Jane Wyatt), a young school teacher.
The most memorable music in the film occurs following the death of the High Lama, who has explained to Conway the reasons for his having been brought to Shangri-La. While Conway’s brother George is trying to convince him to leave Shangri-La and return to the outside world, a large contingent of musicians is heard in the Shangri-La theme, with a great number of percussion instruments added to the orchestration. During a torchlight procession to the lamasery, the music continues to sound, although it gets muffled when George closes a window so he can talk to his brother. When they depart, along with George’s supposedly young female friend, Maria, and several porters, the music gains in intensity, with the love theme returning as Sondra frantically chases after them. The music builds to a grand conclusion as they reach the hidden passageway.
Tiomkin’s music is hugely responsible for the exotic impact that Lost Horizon can have on its viewers. The funeral procession music itself remains one of the most remarkable pieces ever written for a film. This is truly one of Tiomkin’s film masterworks and richly deserves inclusion in this book.
Recognition
Lost Horizon was one of 1937’s most critically acclaimed films and a box-office success.
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including citations for Best Picture and Best Score. It won in two categories: sound and art direction.
Recordings
Charles Gerhardt, National Philharmonic Orchestra, Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin, RCA, 1991. CD reissue of the 1975 vinyl recording. Includes around twenty-three minutes of Tiomkin’s score. Reissued again in 2010 on the Sony label. ****
Dimitri Tiomkin, Lost Horizon, Soundtrack Factory, 1999. This is a limited edition, B00004T25M. Dated sound. ***
Bibliography
Palmer, Christopher. Dimitri Tiomkin: A Portrait. London: T. E. Books, 1984.
Sven, Kurt. Liner notes. Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin. RCA 1669-2-RG, 1991, CD.