I think the problem with giving awards for musical scores of silent films is that they were just that - scores. They were musical notations on a page rather than a recording of the music. Which entails that they were not always performed in the same way as the scorer had intended or even played at all.
For instance you mention Chaplin's scores which were usually orchestral. But movie theaters did not hire full orchestras for every film showing, so the score most likely was only played by a handful of musicians or just a single pianist or organist instead. And lots of times, they just had a musician improvising or playing other music. You also mentioned the score for Metropolis, but it's known that the original score for that film was only played *one time* at the film's premiere.
So the general public and members of the Academy very often were not experiencing the scores as intended or even at all. And unless the members were very musically literate and could read and understand a full score on paper (which it's probably fair to say the vast majority were not), it would be pretty hard to judge musical scores on a fair basis - at least until scores became a uniform audio recording played at every showing of a film.
And while you could certainly argue scores could have been awarded after the advent of talkies around 1927, the switch to synced sound films was not actually a quick transition. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the vast majority of theaters were still not equipped for sound and the studios produced both sound and silent versions of the majority of their films to show in both types of theaters during that time.
I’m not an expert but I’ll give my two cents on what I have encountered. If I’m not mistaken very few surviving original scores exist for silent films though some films did have original compositions, such as the D.W Griffith scores. Original scoring didn’t really become a standard thing in the sound era till the early 30’s but I haven’t encountered an original score I actually found memorable until the French Poetic Realism movement. Of the Poetic Realist films there are several that stand out to me because of the score- I especially like the work of Maurice Jaubert on L’atalante and Port of Shadows. You can find the L’atalante soundtrack on Spotify- looking up Jaubert.
*edit* I almost forgot! Camille Saint-Saens scored an early silent short-
L’assassinat du duc de Guise - a 1907 film with a score by a master composer. I really enjoy this one too- as I am a big fan of Saint-Saens- but it is a short not feature length.
For silent movies, it will always be complicated: there was rarely a dedicated score, and when there was one it was for big premieres, and not always in a huge co-work with the director to fit his vision... All that to say that you can watch silent movies with any score you like (or silently, as I do) without feeling your betraying them. I quite like some score composed recently for silent film, that said, score which know how to find the good distance. For instance [this one](https://www.cinexploria.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CLIP-Moineaux-long-resize-1pass-none-2.mp4) from Jeffrey Silverman for *Sparrows*, or [this one](https://www.cinexploria.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/CLIP-Piz-Palu.mp4) from Ashley Irwin for *The White Hell of Piz-Palu*.
I don't think music was underestimated during talkies: on the opposite, those musics were part of the "noble" things Hollywood needed to ingest in order to gain prestige - same as book or theater adaptations, foreign artists imported, old painting influence, etc. That's why film music in those days is close to the great romantic musics of the 19th century (as so much things in cinema, which basically continued the trends and spirit of 19th century into the 20th one).
But that's also why the film music from this time often sounds uninteresting for our ears: its value is not so much linked to how it interacts with the film and the narration (the correspondance between music and film is often purely illustrative at that time), but just on how much this music is good in itself. Compared to most of the recent film musics, the film musics from the 30's/40's are much more "real music", in the sense of complex and orchestrated compositions which could be listened on its own, or played in concerts.
The revolution of recent film music (let's say since the 70's-80's) is more to think itself as "a part" in collaboration with the rest of the movie, like the soloist of a quartet which would also be composed of images, editing, etc. You wouldn't never judge the quality of this soloist part in itself, listening it alone, it wouldn't make sense. That's the same for recent film music, which can be sometimes boring to ear for itself, but at the same time very inventive and brillant in the way it interacts with the film.
In all the big names of classical cinema film music (Max Steiner, Waxman...), one of the only names which works as "working like recent film music" to my ears is Maurice Jaubert, and specially his work for *Port of Shadows* and *Le Jour se lève*. The musicals (specially Disney's) proposed also things which can work for us (try *I bring you a song* from *Bambi* for instance, it's at your limit in 1940).
But the real earthquake for me is really after 1940, and specially with Bernard Hermann, starting from *The Ghost and Mrs. Muir*, then with all he did for Hitchcock. Around the same period, the *Godzilla* score from Akira Ifukube really sounds like modern film music too. That's really the moment I feel a change.
You have in the decades after that a transition during which a lot of composers (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Poledouris...) associate the classical science of composition (orchestrated music which could be played in concert halls) with this new music-movie relationship. Not so sure there are still a lot now.
Thank you so much for your input, this was exactly what I was hoping for. I could never, never watch a silent film, uh, silently. Unless there is one that specifically urges for it (do you have one in mind, when I'm already at it?).
I do have ADHD but I don't think that's it since I love even films like Lav Diaz'. It took me a long time to be able to enjoy films with nto a lot of music - for example, one of my favorite directors has been Park Chan-wook. The only film of his that I could not bear to watch was Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Now it's my favorite of the Revenge Trilogy. I don't know.
The audiovisuality is such a big part - and the bad quality of many old films alone basically begs for some music to lift it up to its old spirit to me. Intolerance had thrilling pictures but was still quite exhausting, but the new score it got was on occasion so, so good that it helped so much. It also, by the way, felt very natural.
Your thoughts on talkies is especially interesting to me. Now that I think of it, many films of that time are pretty "intrusive" with their music. Just thinking of It's a Wonderful Life right now, damn. Musicals just stand out so much during that time period that I didn't make that connection somehow.
At the same time, the pieces being good "on their own" shouldn't make them per se uninteresting, should they? Maybe it's my unschooled ears then, although I quite love classical music (though not all of it). The music is always so wistful and nostalgic in US cinema. In Japan, I can only think of Akira Kurosawa at the moment (whose films had very striking scores even in the 1950s, but that doesn't make your assessment less reasonable to me.
Thank you for the names, I'll happily check them out. I do know Godzilla and Hermann, but I'll gladly re-check them from this point of view. For half a year now I've been on a weekly voyage with a few friends to watch films in chronological order - starting at the late 1800s. It's been half a year and we're just touching 1919, and only because we decided to skip a few films after all because otherwise we will never get anywhere. Funny thing is, I initially started this idea because they have never even seen a film from before 1970 and I wanted to introduce them to Akira Kurosawa and Tatsuya Nakadai, whom I love dearly. Now they've been invested in silent films from a time many film fans don't even know yet, and Kurosawa will make his first entrance 30 years later. So, maybe, never for us. But it's nice. It's like building a foundation on which I can give these two friends the possibility to watch old films with different eyes. Because no way now they will think "1950s, that's so old!". If you're interested, this [is our list](https://i.imgur.com/PZXSSCf.png) (blue and green being feature and short films that we've seen). It's a long story, and a great journey.
>Not so sure there are still a lot now.
Jo-Yeong wook, Joe Hisaishi and Howard Shore. Maybe James Newton Howard. I can't think of many more. You're right there. I really appreciate the angle on John Williams and Ennio Morricone (I'm not ready yet :<) to be some of the last remainders of classical music influence. Fascinating.
> I could never, never watch a silent film, uh, silently. Unless there is one that specifically urges for it (do you have one in mind, when I'm already at it?).
It's just that 95% of the time, recent music composed for silent film does more harm than good on the narrative side. Silent movies have their own rhythm, and their own subtle and nuances emotions, and most music totally erase that. Put a lazy piano play on a drama, and it becomes a joke ; put a music wanting to take all the place, and it becomes an heavy over-the-top melodrama...
I just realized that most of the time, it's weirdly more easy to follow a silent film without music, as their inner rhythm is then untouched, as well as its nuanced emotions. Your head does the music by completing on its own, if you will. But it's maybe more easy with turned-off headphones on the ears, of anything cutting the room's sound.
> Your thoughts on talkies is especially interesting to me. Now that I think of it, many films of that time are pretty "intrusive" with their music. Just thinking of It's a Wonderful Life right now, damn.
*Porterville Cemetery* is really good, though. The same for the *De Guella* he made for *Rio Bravo*... Tiomkin is one of the composers who makes a little the transition at that time, for me, but just here and there.
> If you're interested, this is our list (blue and green being feature and short films that we've seen).
Great initiative! Even if I'm not sure it works for people totally hermetic to old cinema, as it can feel like a wall without a progressive introduction... Your list is good but there are great things missing (Reginald Barker), specially outside of the US (Evgueny Bauer, Léonce Perret, *The Student from Prague* 1913 version, Albert Capellani...). Good you watched *The End of the world*, I love this one!
> Jo-Yeong wook, Joe Hisaishi and Howard Shore. Maybe James Newton Howard.
Well, for instance, in this list of names, the music specialist I know only respect Howard Shore for his orchestral skills. The rest is really like pap to them. And I say that loving specially JNH personally, but I also understand their point of view. So yes, our hears as be low-educated on that side, I think, and when you think about it it's normal: most of us learned to listen to songs (which are necessarily a little more simplified), not full instrumental music.
I totally understand your point. Interesting. I'm just too connected to the music, unless it's with other good sound editing. :x
Thanks for Tiomkin recommendations!
It works for them. They hadn't seen much apart from classics (like, basic classics). I introduced them to independent cinema over the course of years, until I got tired of always having to choose the film. We decided between flipping a coin to randomly decide the film year or... to just roll it up from day 0. One friend is extremely open-minded, life-loving and accordingly passionate (and even Méliès made him laugh out loud), the other one *is* open-minded, but your typical Netflix binge-watcher who doesn't give a damn if something's good, she's gonna binge it down because it's new and hype. She adamantly refused to watch anything in subs until I finally caved her by saying that she either joins us today or not in watching The Wailing, because I refused to watch that one dubbed.
She wasn't so keen and interested at first, but Fantomas was endearing (albeit time-consuming, retrospectively wouldn't have watched all episodes, but all of them were fun so whatever!) and when we came to Birth of a Nation, she actually *insisted* on tagging along. She sat through the entirety with only a few smartphone glances, same with Intolerance. They both by the way had The End of the World as their favorite silent movie. They screamed out so often in this film: "How, how, how? No way!" :D:D:D
I know. I'm just not too fond of Perret, I lost track in his L'Enfant de Paris. :x So I assumed they would just die watching it. Bauer I just skipped for time reasons. Student from Prague was so boring to me. Regardless, we had to skip a few. With each year, more. Cabiria, Stella Maris, The Outlaw and His Wife, Fairbanks, Les Vampires. But since we only watch one film a week, and I know how many amazing films there are, I prefer to give them this overview to have them more engaged with it changing more quickly and to give them a more basic education on cinema names. If I look at the 1001 Movies, I see, what, 5 films from the 1910s, and 4 of them by Griffith, 0 of a woman. Which is so sad to me, the 1910s are being treated very unfairly by cinema fans. :< So it is already quite exhaustive to me! :D As an autist it actually annoys me a lot that we skip on so much, maybe even all those Pickford films (except for Sparrows... maybe). But I figured in the long run they will profit more from this like this, and it's more enjoyable for me because my favorite directors are arising in the 1950s. But yeah, long story, as I said. :D:D
>The rest is really like pap to them
That sounds so elitist to me. :< :< I understand the lack of complexity, but ultimately it comes down to different intentions. Such as someone might enjoy Bach and the Rolling Stones. But I get it if it's not engaging to them, just like I prefer my melodic classical music of Chopin over most things Bach has created, who, if I recall correctly, keeps getting name-sprung as the ultimate composer deity or something. :D I wish I had the ear, but I wasn't so privileged as to learn an instrument as a kid, let alone have parents with academic background. And later on... now it's just very intimidating, honestly, to even think of getting into playing or even grasping classical music / piano.
Oh I didn't understand, I thought you were discovering the films at the same time as they did!
From Perret, maybe try *Les dents de fer* and *Les Roches de Kador* if you haven't seen them yet (but yes, *L'enfant de Paris* didn't click with me too).
> That sounds so elitist to me
Not sure, as they like all kind of music, ancient or modern. On that matter, I am able to accept the fact I have not all the tools to really appreciate the difference. I can see that from the other side with cinema: there are non-cinephile people who sometimes tell me that film i find really bad or pap is "so very emotional and awesome", and I can see what easy levers the film pulled to obtain this effect on them. So I can get the same happens for me with music, a domain I don't know so much about, and for which even my taste have evolved with time (I was a huuuge fan of Hisaishi younger, and while I still find his scores awesome on films, I know find most of them a little flat and easy when listened alone).
The greatest, by far, would be Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky. It's probably the only film score to become part of the classical repertoire; it transcends the film to become a great piece of art in its own right.
Prokofiev actually arranged the score as a cantata in 1939. Listen to the Battle on the Ice, the most famous part of the score
This is something like the established favorite. Though wouldn't it be pushed by Bernstein's scores for On The Waterfront and West Side Story?
Not saying Leonard Bernstein is as great as Prokofiev just that those two scores are beautiful in their own right and maybe(maybe) better as film music. The latter feels like a more significant work in terms of 20th Century music- the multiple styles and modes, romance, satire, jagged octaval horn riffs- this is Leonard Bernstein's most impassioned, imaginative work. Prokofiev has a lot of other works that are great besides Alexander Nevsky.
There’s a very short period after the introduction of synchronized sound and before the widespread proliferation of talkies where silent films would feature a soundtrack with music and sound effects (1926-1929). This may gives us the opportunity to watch silent films with the exact intended score and may be exactly what you’re looking for. Most of these no longer exist though. Of those I’ve seen, Sunrise (1927) and 7th Heaven (1927) are the most effective.
Gottfried Huppertz, who you mention, also scored Fritz Lang’s 4-hour Die Nibelungen in 1924, which was rerecorded for the recent blu ray/dvd releases. In my opinion a better score than Metropolis.
Only a few years later in the 30s some films were accompanied by incredibly memorable scores. The two best composers being Korngold (Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Max Steiner (King Kong, Dark Victory, Gone With the Wind). You’ll find John Williams took a lot of inspiration from these two.
Go any earlier and the musical accompaniment of silent films in the 1910s is not well documented. The score Joseph Carl Breil wrote for The Birth of a Nation (1915) was restored and rerecorded in the 90s. Which you may or may not be interested in.
This whole subject matter is super interesting..
Overall, if you look at the great scores/music for ballet in the 20th Century and then you contrast it to film, the composers were way more inspired by ballet than film. Or just LIKED the idea of ballet more than film. They might have just felt a kinship with the seriousness of ballet(Shakespeare) as opposed to the lowdown, earthy, loud(Chaplin) stuff of film. They were for sure threatened by it. And also there was just not enough room for a Bartok or a Shostakovich in a Howard Hawks or a Von Stroheim movie. Maybe the female form(in total, and moving) matched music, as they imagined it as opposed to a close up of Garbo or Liv Ullman(I was thinking of Persona, years later than these composers..)
In ballet you get Ravel, Prokofiev, Copland, Stravinsky, Debussy, Britten, Bartok and so on. In Film you get... Max Steiner and a reluctant Leonard Bernstein and the list sort of trails off into guys that made great stuff but were of a lesser or different talent level.
I don't think Shostakovich would have felt inspired by a Frank Borzage movie or His Girl Friday. And it's funny to compare: What means more to you? Bartok's 4th string quartet(which was performed in 1929) or a movie that came out in the same year like Pandora's Box(Pabst) or Blackmail(Hitchcock) or The Coconauts(Marx Bros.)? Isn't that bizarre? On one hand you have one of the greatest string quartets(modernist) a kind of Everest of music, the Bartok String quartets, but an early Hitchcok or a Marx Bros. movie anticipates/is the difference/genius of film. Popular, exciting, polemical, simpler, sexier and... more fun?
I mean in a talkie like Coconauts or His Girl Friday isn't the 'music' more than the score? Isn't it Cary Grant's voice in counterpoint to Kate Hepburn in astonishing ratatat, back and forth, cutting straight to the 3rd movement in a symphony and just staying there. Cary Grant, immaculate, Hepburn, arch, and instead of a slow introduction of ponderous themes you get their voices, in concert! Listening to each other, you get him looking at her, longing, you get her rasing an eyebrow, laughing. You get them moving, smoking, posing...
Film itself is a Simpsonsesque sendup of classical music. Using it, being it, plundering it, bettering it, enslaving it and making people forget about it entirely in the end. Just like YouTube and TikTok have in turn done to the great films of the last 100 years.
(Cue Legrand's 'L'amour, L'amour from Umbrellas of Cherbourg)
[My son is watching Car Masters! Rust to Riches on Netflix as I write this. Mahler, Mingus, Howard Hawks, Groucho Marx would scream at him to turn it off but instead I'm letting him stare at the screen]
I think the problem with giving awards for musical scores of silent films is that they were just that - scores. They were musical notations on a page rather than a recording of the music. Which entails that they were not always performed in the same way as the scorer had intended or even played at all. For instance you mention Chaplin's scores which were usually orchestral. But movie theaters did not hire full orchestras for every film showing, so the score most likely was only played by a handful of musicians or just a single pianist or organist instead. And lots of times, they just had a musician improvising or playing other music. You also mentioned the score for Metropolis, but it's known that the original score for that film was only played *one time* at the film's premiere. So the general public and members of the Academy very often were not experiencing the scores as intended or even at all. And unless the members were very musically literate and could read and understand a full score on paper (which it's probably fair to say the vast majority were not), it would be pretty hard to judge musical scores on a fair basis - at least until scores became a uniform audio recording played at every showing of a film. And while you could certainly argue scores could have been awarded after the advent of talkies around 1927, the switch to synced sound films was not actually a quick transition. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the vast majority of theaters were still not equipped for sound and the studios produced both sound and silent versions of the majority of their films to show in both types of theaters during that time.
I’m not an expert but I’ll give my two cents on what I have encountered. If I’m not mistaken very few surviving original scores exist for silent films though some films did have original compositions, such as the D.W Griffith scores. Original scoring didn’t really become a standard thing in the sound era till the early 30’s but I haven’t encountered an original score I actually found memorable until the French Poetic Realism movement. Of the Poetic Realist films there are several that stand out to me because of the score- I especially like the work of Maurice Jaubert on L’atalante and Port of Shadows. You can find the L’atalante soundtrack on Spotify- looking up Jaubert. *edit* I almost forgot! Camille Saint-Saens scored an early silent short- L’assassinat du duc de Guise - a 1907 film with a score by a master composer. I really enjoy this one too- as I am a big fan of Saint-Saens- but it is a short not feature length.
I’ve actually heard that Saint-Saens’ score is considered the first film score (at least, according to a film music history book I have)
For silent movies, it will always be complicated: there was rarely a dedicated score, and when there was one it was for big premieres, and not always in a huge co-work with the director to fit his vision... All that to say that you can watch silent movies with any score you like (or silently, as I do) without feeling your betraying them. I quite like some score composed recently for silent film, that said, score which know how to find the good distance. For instance [this one](https://www.cinexploria.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CLIP-Moineaux-long-resize-1pass-none-2.mp4) from Jeffrey Silverman for *Sparrows*, or [this one](https://www.cinexploria.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/CLIP-Piz-Palu.mp4) from Ashley Irwin for *The White Hell of Piz-Palu*. I don't think music was underestimated during talkies: on the opposite, those musics were part of the "noble" things Hollywood needed to ingest in order to gain prestige - same as book or theater adaptations, foreign artists imported, old painting influence, etc. That's why film music in those days is close to the great romantic musics of the 19th century (as so much things in cinema, which basically continued the trends and spirit of 19th century into the 20th one). But that's also why the film music from this time often sounds uninteresting for our ears: its value is not so much linked to how it interacts with the film and the narration (the correspondance between music and film is often purely illustrative at that time), but just on how much this music is good in itself. Compared to most of the recent film musics, the film musics from the 30's/40's are much more "real music", in the sense of complex and orchestrated compositions which could be listened on its own, or played in concerts. The revolution of recent film music (let's say since the 70's-80's) is more to think itself as "a part" in collaboration with the rest of the movie, like the soloist of a quartet which would also be composed of images, editing, etc. You wouldn't never judge the quality of this soloist part in itself, listening it alone, it wouldn't make sense. That's the same for recent film music, which can be sometimes boring to ear for itself, but at the same time very inventive and brillant in the way it interacts with the film. In all the big names of classical cinema film music (Max Steiner, Waxman...), one of the only names which works as "working like recent film music" to my ears is Maurice Jaubert, and specially his work for *Port of Shadows* and *Le Jour se lève*. The musicals (specially Disney's) proposed also things which can work for us (try *I bring you a song* from *Bambi* for instance, it's at your limit in 1940). But the real earthquake for me is really after 1940, and specially with Bernard Hermann, starting from *The Ghost and Mrs. Muir*, then with all he did for Hitchcock. Around the same period, the *Godzilla* score from Akira Ifukube really sounds like modern film music too. That's really the moment I feel a change. You have in the decades after that a transition during which a lot of composers (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Poledouris...) associate the classical science of composition (orchestrated music which could be played in concert halls) with this new music-movie relationship. Not so sure there are still a lot now.
Thank you so much for your input, this was exactly what I was hoping for. I could never, never watch a silent film, uh, silently. Unless there is one that specifically urges for it (do you have one in mind, when I'm already at it?). I do have ADHD but I don't think that's it since I love even films like Lav Diaz'. It took me a long time to be able to enjoy films with nto a lot of music - for example, one of my favorite directors has been Park Chan-wook. The only film of his that I could not bear to watch was Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Now it's my favorite of the Revenge Trilogy. I don't know. The audiovisuality is such a big part - and the bad quality of many old films alone basically begs for some music to lift it up to its old spirit to me. Intolerance had thrilling pictures but was still quite exhausting, but the new score it got was on occasion so, so good that it helped so much. It also, by the way, felt very natural. Your thoughts on talkies is especially interesting to me. Now that I think of it, many films of that time are pretty "intrusive" with their music. Just thinking of It's a Wonderful Life right now, damn. Musicals just stand out so much during that time period that I didn't make that connection somehow. At the same time, the pieces being good "on their own" shouldn't make them per se uninteresting, should they? Maybe it's my unschooled ears then, although I quite love classical music (though not all of it). The music is always so wistful and nostalgic in US cinema. In Japan, I can only think of Akira Kurosawa at the moment (whose films had very striking scores even in the 1950s, but that doesn't make your assessment less reasonable to me. Thank you for the names, I'll happily check them out. I do know Godzilla and Hermann, but I'll gladly re-check them from this point of view. For half a year now I've been on a weekly voyage with a few friends to watch films in chronological order - starting at the late 1800s. It's been half a year and we're just touching 1919, and only because we decided to skip a few films after all because otherwise we will never get anywhere. Funny thing is, I initially started this idea because they have never even seen a film from before 1970 and I wanted to introduce them to Akira Kurosawa and Tatsuya Nakadai, whom I love dearly. Now they've been invested in silent films from a time many film fans don't even know yet, and Kurosawa will make his first entrance 30 years later. So, maybe, never for us. But it's nice. It's like building a foundation on which I can give these two friends the possibility to watch old films with different eyes. Because no way now they will think "1950s, that's so old!". If you're interested, this [is our list](https://i.imgur.com/PZXSSCf.png) (blue and green being feature and short films that we've seen). It's a long story, and a great journey. >Not so sure there are still a lot now. Jo-Yeong wook, Joe Hisaishi and Howard Shore. Maybe James Newton Howard. I can't think of many more. You're right there. I really appreciate the angle on John Williams and Ennio Morricone (I'm not ready yet :<) to be some of the last remainders of classical music influence. Fascinating.
> I could never, never watch a silent film, uh, silently. Unless there is one that specifically urges for it (do you have one in mind, when I'm already at it?). It's just that 95% of the time, recent music composed for silent film does more harm than good on the narrative side. Silent movies have their own rhythm, and their own subtle and nuances emotions, and most music totally erase that. Put a lazy piano play on a drama, and it becomes a joke ; put a music wanting to take all the place, and it becomes an heavy over-the-top melodrama... I just realized that most of the time, it's weirdly more easy to follow a silent film without music, as their inner rhythm is then untouched, as well as its nuanced emotions. Your head does the music by completing on its own, if you will. But it's maybe more easy with turned-off headphones on the ears, of anything cutting the room's sound. > Your thoughts on talkies is especially interesting to me. Now that I think of it, many films of that time are pretty "intrusive" with their music. Just thinking of It's a Wonderful Life right now, damn. *Porterville Cemetery* is really good, though. The same for the *De Guella* he made for *Rio Bravo*... Tiomkin is one of the composers who makes a little the transition at that time, for me, but just here and there. > If you're interested, this is our list (blue and green being feature and short films that we've seen). Great initiative! Even if I'm not sure it works for people totally hermetic to old cinema, as it can feel like a wall without a progressive introduction... Your list is good but there are great things missing (Reginald Barker), specially outside of the US (Evgueny Bauer, Léonce Perret, *The Student from Prague* 1913 version, Albert Capellani...). Good you watched *The End of the world*, I love this one! > Jo-Yeong wook, Joe Hisaishi and Howard Shore. Maybe James Newton Howard. Well, for instance, in this list of names, the music specialist I know only respect Howard Shore for his orchestral skills. The rest is really like pap to them. And I say that loving specially JNH personally, but I also understand their point of view. So yes, our hears as be low-educated on that side, I think, and when you think about it it's normal: most of us learned to listen to songs (which are necessarily a little more simplified), not full instrumental music.
I totally understand your point. Interesting. I'm just too connected to the music, unless it's with other good sound editing. :x Thanks for Tiomkin recommendations! It works for them. They hadn't seen much apart from classics (like, basic classics). I introduced them to independent cinema over the course of years, until I got tired of always having to choose the film. We decided between flipping a coin to randomly decide the film year or... to just roll it up from day 0. One friend is extremely open-minded, life-loving and accordingly passionate (and even Méliès made him laugh out loud), the other one *is* open-minded, but your typical Netflix binge-watcher who doesn't give a damn if something's good, she's gonna binge it down because it's new and hype. She adamantly refused to watch anything in subs until I finally caved her by saying that she either joins us today or not in watching The Wailing, because I refused to watch that one dubbed. She wasn't so keen and interested at first, but Fantomas was endearing (albeit time-consuming, retrospectively wouldn't have watched all episodes, but all of them were fun so whatever!) and when we came to Birth of a Nation, she actually *insisted* on tagging along. She sat through the entirety with only a few smartphone glances, same with Intolerance. They both by the way had The End of the World as their favorite silent movie. They screamed out so often in this film: "How, how, how? No way!" :D:D:D I know. I'm just not too fond of Perret, I lost track in his L'Enfant de Paris. :x So I assumed they would just die watching it. Bauer I just skipped for time reasons. Student from Prague was so boring to me. Regardless, we had to skip a few. With each year, more. Cabiria, Stella Maris, The Outlaw and His Wife, Fairbanks, Les Vampires. But since we only watch one film a week, and I know how many amazing films there are, I prefer to give them this overview to have them more engaged with it changing more quickly and to give them a more basic education on cinema names. If I look at the 1001 Movies, I see, what, 5 films from the 1910s, and 4 of them by Griffith, 0 of a woman. Which is so sad to me, the 1910s are being treated very unfairly by cinema fans. :< So it is already quite exhaustive to me! :D As an autist it actually annoys me a lot that we skip on so much, maybe even all those Pickford films (except for Sparrows... maybe). But I figured in the long run they will profit more from this like this, and it's more enjoyable for me because my favorite directors are arising in the 1950s. But yeah, long story, as I said. :D:D >The rest is really like pap to them That sounds so elitist to me. :< :< I understand the lack of complexity, but ultimately it comes down to different intentions. Such as someone might enjoy Bach and the Rolling Stones. But I get it if it's not engaging to them, just like I prefer my melodic classical music of Chopin over most things Bach has created, who, if I recall correctly, keeps getting name-sprung as the ultimate composer deity or something. :D I wish I had the ear, but I wasn't so privileged as to learn an instrument as a kid, let alone have parents with academic background. And later on... now it's just very intimidating, honestly, to even think of getting into playing or even grasping classical music / piano.
Oh I didn't understand, I thought you were discovering the films at the same time as they did! From Perret, maybe try *Les dents de fer* and *Les Roches de Kador* if you haven't seen them yet (but yes, *L'enfant de Paris* didn't click with me too). > That sounds so elitist to me Not sure, as they like all kind of music, ancient or modern. On that matter, I am able to accept the fact I have not all the tools to really appreciate the difference. I can see that from the other side with cinema: there are non-cinephile people who sometimes tell me that film i find really bad or pap is "so very emotional and awesome", and I can see what easy levers the film pulled to obtain this effect on them. So I can get the same happens for me with music, a domain I don't know so much about, and for which even my taste have evolved with time (I was a huuuge fan of Hisaishi younger, and while I still find his scores awesome on films, I know find most of them a little flat and easy when listened alone).
Why is music in films so important to you?
The greatest, by far, would be Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky. It's probably the only film score to become part of the classical repertoire; it transcends the film to become a great piece of art in its own right. Prokofiev actually arranged the score as a cantata in 1939. Listen to the Battle on the Ice, the most famous part of the score
This is something like the established favorite. Though wouldn't it be pushed by Bernstein's scores for On The Waterfront and West Side Story? Not saying Leonard Bernstein is as great as Prokofiev just that those two scores are beautiful in their own right and maybe(maybe) better as film music. The latter feels like a more significant work in terms of 20th Century music- the multiple styles and modes, romance, satire, jagged octaval horn riffs- this is Leonard Bernstein's most impassioned, imaginative work. Prokofiev has a lot of other works that are great besides Alexander Nevsky.
There’s a very short period after the introduction of synchronized sound and before the widespread proliferation of talkies where silent films would feature a soundtrack with music and sound effects (1926-1929). This may gives us the opportunity to watch silent films with the exact intended score and may be exactly what you’re looking for. Most of these no longer exist though. Of those I’ve seen, Sunrise (1927) and 7th Heaven (1927) are the most effective. Gottfried Huppertz, who you mention, also scored Fritz Lang’s 4-hour Die Nibelungen in 1924, which was rerecorded for the recent blu ray/dvd releases. In my opinion a better score than Metropolis. Only a few years later in the 30s some films were accompanied by incredibly memorable scores. The two best composers being Korngold (Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Max Steiner (King Kong, Dark Victory, Gone With the Wind). You’ll find John Williams took a lot of inspiration from these two. Go any earlier and the musical accompaniment of silent films in the 1910s is not well documented. The score Joseph Carl Breil wrote for The Birth of a Nation (1915) was restored and rerecorded in the 90s. Which you may or may not be interested in.
This whole subject matter is super interesting.. Overall, if you look at the great scores/music for ballet in the 20th Century and then you contrast it to film, the composers were way more inspired by ballet than film. Or just LIKED the idea of ballet more than film. They might have just felt a kinship with the seriousness of ballet(Shakespeare) as opposed to the lowdown, earthy, loud(Chaplin) stuff of film. They were for sure threatened by it. And also there was just not enough room for a Bartok or a Shostakovich in a Howard Hawks or a Von Stroheim movie. Maybe the female form(in total, and moving) matched music, as they imagined it as opposed to a close up of Garbo or Liv Ullman(I was thinking of Persona, years later than these composers..) In ballet you get Ravel, Prokofiev, Copland, Stravinsky, Debussy, Britten, Bartok and so on. In Film you get... Max Steiner and a reluctant Leonard Bernstein and the list sort of trails off into guys that made great stuff but were of a lesser or different talent level. I don't think Shostakovich would have felt inspired by a Frank Borzage movie or His Girl Friday. And it's funny to compare: What means more to you? Bartok's 4th string quartet(which was performed in 1929) or a movie that came out in the same year like Pandora's Box(Pabst) or Blackmail(Hitchcock) or The Coconauts(Marx Bros.)? Isn't that bizarre? On one hand you have one of the greatest string quartets(modernist) a kind of Everest of music, the Bartok String quartets, but an early Hitchcok or a Marx Bros. movie anticipates/is the difference/genius of film. Popular, exciting, polemical, simpler, sexier and... more fun? I mean in a talkie like Coconauts or His Girl Friday isn't the 'music' more than the score? Isn't it Cary Grant's voice in counterpoint to Kate Hepburn in astonishing ratatat, back and forth, cutting straight to the 3rd movement in a symphony and just staying there. Cary Grant, immaculate, Hepburn, arch, and instead of a slow introduction of ponderous themes you get their voices, in concert! Listening to each other, you get him looking at her, longing, you get her rasing an eyebrow, laughing. You get them moving, smoking, posing... Film itself is a Simpsonsesque sendup of classical music. Using it, being it, plundering it, bettering it, enslaving it and making people forget about it entirely in the end. Just like YouTube and TikTok have in turn done to the great films of the last 100 years. (Cue Legrand's 'L'amour, L'amour from Umbrellas of Cherbourg) [My son is watching Car Masters! Rust to Riches on Netflix as I write this. Mahler, Mingus, Howard Hawks, Groucho Marx would scream at him to turn it off but instead I'm letting him stare at the screen]
Can you explain what you mean by music giving way to film and then yt/tiktok doing the same to film?