A Singer’s Life – Films and Music - 1

A Singer’s Life – Films and Music

Since the recent publication of my long awaited memoirs book, ‘A Singer’s Life – The Journals of a Modern Troubadour’, which is a distillation of the many Blogs I wrote during and after lockdown, I got to thinking about new articles I might write for the EMR which might complement the book, which, incidentally, is available now on Amazon UK and, as I write, is currently No 1 on the Amazon Opera Memoirs list.

Watching, as one does, classic films during the Festive Season, it occurred to me that all my favourite films have either musical themes or are suffused with music of some form or another, and that it might be interesting to look at them in more detail to find out a) why I like them so much and b) why music plays such a major role in them?

In no particular order, and with apologies for upsetting readers by missing some you like or choosing some you dislike, I refer to ‘Some Like it Hot’, ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’, ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘Casablanca’, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘High Society’ and ‘An American in Paris’.

PART 1

I watched ‘Some Like it Hot’ again over Christmas, and I do think it is my favourite film of all. Set in the Prohibition era, around 1929, it follows the story of two jazz musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), who inadvertently witness a mob killing in Chicago, and flee to Florida, dressed as women in a girls’ jazz band, meeting up with Sugar Kane on the train south (Marilyn Monroe). In a swanky hotel by the sea, Sugar falls in love with a bogus millionaire with a yacht (Curtis double cross-dressing back as a man) and Lemmon is wooed by the real millionaire with a yacht (Joe E Brown, as a dirty old man with a heart of gold, and lots of other things made of gold). Meanwhile the mobsters all arrive at the same hotel, supposedly at a Convention for the Friends of Italian Opera. Merriment, hilarity, murder, love and some great jokes ensue, in a screenplay by Billy Wilder and the writer I. A. L. Diamond, and the whole thing is directed brilliantly by Billy Wilder.

The entire film is suffused with jazz music, much of it composed by Adolph Deutsch, a titan of movie music, who had started his career as an accompanist for silent movies, progressed to writing for Broadway and then films from the late 1930’s on. His music pervaded ‘The Maltese Falcon’; he wrote background music for ‘Oklahoma’, and conducted the orchestras in many great films. For ‘Some Like it Hot’, he wrote almost all the music, apart from Marilyn Monroe’s two solo numbers, which were both actual 1920’s songs.

There are numerous horror stories about Monroe’s behaviour during filming, driving Curtis, Lemmon and Wilder mad, but somehow, in the final cut, she is utterly fantastic and mesmerising, and her breathy singing is to die for. It’s a little reminiscent of the making of Fleetwood Mac’s great album, ‘Rumours’, which despite all the members of the cast hating each other, having affairs and hardly speaking, turned out to be one of the best albums of all time.

The music of ‘Some Like it Hot’ is all-pervasive and essential to the story and the feel of the film, and I especially like the fact that all the gangsters are supposed to be Friends of Italian Opera. When one of the hoodlums claims as an alibi that “we was at Rigoletto’s”, it is doubly funny!

‘Casablanca’ is another great film, made greater still by its music. Released in November 1942 in New York, and nationally in January 1943, it didn’t make a huge splash until it won Best Film Oscar that same year. Even then, it only slowly became one of the miracles of cinema but is now seen as one of the greatest of all time, and the music in it is hugely important. Max Steiner was responsible for the soundtrack, which is dripping with atmosphere, and two moments stand out. One is the iconic ‘As Time goes By’, sung by Dooley Wilson, and the other comes where the French and non-German people in the bar overcome the Nazi soldiers singing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ with a spirited and earth-shattering rendition of La Marseillaise.

Dooley Wilson was the actor who played Sam, the resident pianist in Rick’s Bar (Rick was of course played by Humphrey Bogart), and who was famously asked by Ingrid Bergman to play ‘As Time goes By’ – “Play it, Sam!” Wilson was actually a drummer and not a pianist, and he certainly sings the song, but his hands are nowhere near the notes on the keyboard (Jean Plummer was the actual pianist on the soundtrack). It’s still fabulous.

The most amazing thing about the film for me is that the Second World War was only halfway through, the North Africa campaign was still ongoing, and the whole outcome of the War was very much in the balance. Seeing it now, knowing the history, it is an astonishingly optimistic story, with such bravery and warm-hearted fervour which touches the soul. It has a certain propaganda feel to it, but it’s much more than that! There is a palpable sense of fear permeating the whole film and Steiner’s music contributes immensely to that atmosphere.

Another film from WWII is ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’, a two part epic directed by Marcel Carné, filmed in Vichy and Occupied France in the last years of the war, and released in March 1945. It was filmed in Nice and Paris under extremely difficult circumstances, as one can imagine, and the cast of hundreds contained many members of the Résistance. When I first saw the film, 50 years ago, I had been reading several of the novels of Honoré de Balzac, as part of my Honours Degree at St Andrews University, and I have always felt that this marvellous film about the theatre was a cinematographic transposition of some Balzac texts. It evokes the early years of the 19th century in Paris better than any film I know, and the sheer audacity of Carné’s vision is stupendous.

‘Les Enfants du Paradis’ translates into English as The Children of Paradise, but just as we call the cheap seats in British theatres the Gods, those seats are referred to in French as Paradis. The film therefore is an homage to all those who have spent time in the upper balconies, and are there for the play or the music, not simply to be seen downstairs and gossip. The film’s score was written by Joseph Kosma, a Jew, and his ethnicity and his presence were hidden from most of the participants, with the film’s orchestrator, Maurice Thirier, acting as his front. The set designer, Alexandre Trauner, was also Jewish, and he stayed in the home of Carné and the screenwriter, the poet Jacques Prévert.

Music and the life of the theatre provide the soul of the film and its score is a huge part of its success. The main characters, Baptiste, played by Jean-Louis Barrault, Frédéric Lemaitre, played by Pierre Brasseur, and the femme fatale, Garance, played by Arletty, are brilliant creations, but even the smaller parts are outstandingly performed. A little known fact is that the rag and bone man, Jericho, was originally played by Robert de Vigan, but he was discovered to be a collaborator, and fled the set. His replacement as the disgusting Jericho was Pierre Renoir, son of the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, brother of the distinguished film director, Jean Renoir, and father of the cinematographer, Claude Renoir. It was quite a family. A sour coda to all this is that Arletty, who played Garance, was herself denounced as a collaborator for living with a Luftwaffe officer during the occupation, found guilty of treason and sentenced to eighteen months in prison – she served two! I love this film, and rarely a year goes by without me watching it again.

‘The Lord of the Rings’, the three part epic directed by Peter Jackson, is another of my favourite films. I first read Tolkien’s wondrous story in my late teens and return occasionally to the books and often to the films. When first advertised in the early 2000s, I could not believe that it would be possible to film such a huge story, but Jackson did a terrific job, and the score again is crucial to its success. While lamenting the inevitable cuts from the story, and the over-reliance on grim battle scenes, the three films have an epic sweep and a timeless quality that is unique. The score by Howard Shore is a masterpiece of atmospheric brilliance, musically highlighting the events and the characters, and, in an almost Wagnerian way, holding the mammoth plot together. Shore has used Wagner’s technique of ‘leitmotivs’ to illustrate characters and events, giving musical phrases to individuals and groups of people, and it works wonderfully well. In fact, I think it might well be the greatest film score of all, so perfectly does the music always fit the scene. I particularly love the sinuous string sections associated with the Ring. The fact that the work is in several sections (3 films as opposed to 4 operas) and is all about a Ring of Power, like Wagner’s huge tetralogy, demonstrate a close affinity to Wagner’s major work.

It might be an idea at this point to take a break and continue with Part 2 after a short intermission!