CH 18- The Rockin' '60s

  • Greatest decade for popular music as hollywood capitalized on musical tastes for younger and older audiences

    • Discovered financial rewards

  • The 1960’s marked the last years of Hollywood musicals


Instrumental Music Themes

Lawrence of Arabia

  • Music by Maurice Jarre

  • Scored with restraint but with a full orchestra

  • Creates strange sounds with Ondes Martenot, cithara, and a darbuka

  • Created both english sounding tunes and Arabian sounding tunes

  • Setting: Story of T.E. Lawrence during WWI as described in his autobiography “Seven pillars of wisdom”

  • Key Points:

    • Musical depiction of arid desert

    • Emotional outburst with rescue based on American Theme

    • Use of ondes martenot and cithara

Doctor Zhivago

  • Another collaboration between Lean and Jarre

  • Sparse musical cues cue a balalaika with a single dominant melody

Other Instrumental Themes

  • Seven Samurai included Japanese music and sounds of Mexican folk music supported by guitars and other instruments associated with Mexican music

    • Score is dominated by energetic main theme

  • The Great Escape (1963)- A cocky march supports humor in face of adversity

  • The Pink Panther (1963)- One of the most humorous and memorable movie themes


Theme Songs

  • Filmmakers found popular music is more popular with the general public than in instrumental melody

  • Evaluating quality and sustainability of a song for film:

    • Where does the song occur?

    • Does song mood represent overall film mood?

    • Do words reflect some aspect of the story?

    • Does the song blend into the musical style of the film score as a whole?

    • Does the placement of song support/detract from dramatic flow?

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  • Main theme played by harmonica, which foreshadows the character is not a city woman but comes from the country

  • Full symphonic score

  • Key points:

    • Big band sound with strings

    • Prominent piano

    • Develops fragments of the theme song

    • Theme song at the end with full orchestra

Other Mancini Songs

  • Mancini places tune in glockenspiel in his song “Days of Wine and Roses”

    • Potent effect with ambiguous meaning

  • Out of tune piano quality in “Wait until Dark” suggests disturbed psychotic killer


Bringing up Baby Boomers

  • Changing audience was a major factor in declining hollywood film traditions

  • Baby boomers were teenagers by early 1960’s - Hollywood began appealing directly to younger market

  • Rock Music had increasingly strong impact on films

James Bond

  • Monty Norman is credited as composer along with contributions from John Barry

    • Traditional symphonic scoring

    • Ethnic qualities heard as source music

    • Big band sound, electric bass, and rock pulse are added to appeal to younger audiences


Movies With Multiple Songs

  • Easy rider (1969) and The Graduate (1967) contain an albums worth of songs

    • Easy Rider has drug-oriented rock style that coincides with the plot

      • Two society dropouts ride harley bike through countryside

The Graduate

  • Music by Folk Duo Simon and Garfunkel

  • Captured spirit of disillusioned youth; was a great sensation

  • “Mrs. Robinson” sung during travel montage

  • Guitar becomes associated with car engine

  • Dissonant guitar chords reflect frustrations

  • “Sound of Silence” at the end of the film


Musicals

West Side Story

  • Adaption of Romeo and Juliet; music composed by Leonard Bernstein

  • Incorporates American and Latin American popular music

    • Showed racial conflict between American and Puerto Rican immigrant gangs

  • American Jazz accompany fighting scenes