"Edward Scissorhands"

• The film is a modern Frankenstein story

CHARACTERS

• Inventor: Vincent Price
• Edward Scissorhands: Johnny Depp
• Kim: Winona Ryder
• Peg: Dianne West
• Joyce: Kathy Baker

PLOT

• Kim tells her granddaughter the story of how snow was made.
• Edward is a man created by the inventor, but the inventor had a heart attack and died before he could give him hands.
• Edward lives in the inventor’s mansion.
• Peg discovers Edward while she is selling makeup and takes him home with her.
• Edward trims people’s bushes into sculptures, and shows off his many talents to the neighbors.
• He falls in love with Kim, who is dating Jim.
• One night Edward cuts ice into a sculpture of Kim, making snow.
• Kim falls in love with Edward and decides that she needs to break up with Jim. So when she does, Jim gets mad and has it out for Edward.
• While this is going on, Peg’s neighbors call the police on Edward several times for his “weird” behavior.
• As Edward saves Kevin, Kim’s brother from a moving vehicle, he accidentally slices his face, which makes Jim angry and runs after him all the way to the inventor’s mansion. Kim follows.
• While up there, Jim beats up Edward as Kim watches. However, after regaining his strength, with one snip Edward kills Jim by cutting his heart and making him fall backwards off the terrace and into the yard.
• Kim tells Edward to stay and runs down to tell the crowd that Edward and Jim killed each other.
• At the end of the movie, we see Edward in the mansion still cutting sculptures of ice, creating snow for the town.

THE SCORE

• Danny Elfman’s style is “unusual in terms of orchestration.”
• He uses wordless voices and low strings.
• “The film’s credits begin with repeated sounds of a celesta and harp in a waltz-like rhythm. These delicate and twinkling tones provide a harmonic background for the film’s first and most prominent theme; a waltz idea first performed by wordless voices and strings.”
• “The English horn sounds a melancholy version of this theme, which is based on a seven-note motif of longer and shorter tones in an alternating pattern.”
• “The wordless singing by the Paulist Choristers of California adds a uniquely eerie flavor to this music, which injects a fantasy atmosphere that prevails throughout much of the film.”
• At the end of the film, “wordless voices and a melody that uses a three-note motif that resembles the last three tones of the opening waltz theme.”
• A minor key waltz melody, a lyrical flute melody, is played as Peg drives up the road to the inventor’s mansion. Low-pitched brass tones approach as she is coming up the lane to inquire danger and mystery. Wordless voices, harp, and celesta add to create a wondrous feeling as Peg looks at the things Edward has created/cut around the inventor’s mansion.
• The inventor’s laboratory theme is fast paced.
• During the hair-cutting scene, the first part is slow in the style of habanera. It uses strings in the melody. The other score for this scene is fast with violins.
• When the ladies rush out of their homes, a fast paced theme is played by piano and tonal percussion. “Violins provide a short tuneful melodic idea with loud ominous brass chords added in. Wordless voices and bongo drums are also featured.”