Immortal Story Music

[Peter Tonguette]

Fellow Wellesians...

Does anyone better versed than I in music know what specific Erik Satie piano pieces are used in "The Immortal Story"?

Thanks,

Peter

[Cole]

That Satie music is great, isn't it? The main theme is from his Gnossiennes No. 3, and I think you hear excerpts from Gnossiennes Nos. 1 and 2 as well. They also play a part of his ultra-popular Gymnopédies. I can't remember the other Satie pieces in the movie.

[mteal]

The Gnossienes are definitely among Satie's most haunting melodies. I believe the music for the end credits is one of the Gnossienes too. I don't know what the word means, but I think it has something to do with ancient Greece, like the Gymnopedies. "La Balconairre" (or "See-saw") from "Sports and Divertissements" accompanies the scene where Clay picks up the sailor in the street. I also like the music for the sailor being served dinner, but I don't know what the name of that piece is.

[Cole]

I went to the end of Immortal Story and played the tape. That's Gnossiennes No. 1 while the credits are rolling. That's a very nice piece, but I really love Gnossiennes No. 3 which is played at the beginning of the movie, and which essentially becomes the theme piece. They are all relatively "haunting" tunes when compared to other Satie pieces which I would describe as generally sounding "playful."

(As an aside, I have on CD a Satie piano piece entitled "Je te veux" (or "I Want You"), and whenever I hear it I immediately think of the MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS for some reason. Mteal (or anyone else), have you heard that and do you think the same thing? Maybe I'm just imagining things.)

[Peter Tonguette]

Thanks, guys!

You've been a big help in identifying this stuff.

I couldn't agree more about the haunting quality of this music and the way in which Welles uses it. I've always regarded "The Immortal Story" as the most openly "poetic" of Welles' films and the Satie music certainly contributes to this sense, in my opinion.

Thanks again (and now I'll have to check out that one piece which makes you think of "Ambersons")

Peter

[mteal]

Cole,
I agree that "Je Te Voux" is somewhat reminiscent of the Ambersons waltz, which actually has a French name, "Toujours Jamais", or "Always and Forever". It's by Waldteufel, I think - Bernard Hermann just borrowed it for the film. Now that I think of it tho, Hermann's original music for Eugene's letter to Isabel - which was eliminated from the final version - also sounds like a slow and elegaic version of "Je Te Voux". Hermann called it "Antimacassar", which seems to express one of the film's themes of ageing and decay.

BTW, another famous classical piece that reminds me alot of the Amberson waltz is "Will-o-the-Wisps" from Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust" (not taken from Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus", which Welles and the Mercury staged).

[mteal]

Peter,
I think OTHELLO is another one of Welles' most openly poetic films. THE IMMORTAL STORY is probably Welles' quietest, most reflective film; his "Rubber Soul", if you will. I like some of the allusions in the film, such as when Virginia compares Clay to the emporer Nero, who used his omnipotent power to get his plays performed; or when Clay compares the sailor's story to a businessman luring investors with promises of huge profits. It's a complex and mysterious story, which is typical of Welles.

[Cole]

I’ve always thought it was odd how our friend Jonathan Rosenbaum could dismiss Immortal Story as an unambitious production when Rosenbaum is such a big fan of Dreyer and Bresson films. Welles never made a film more Bresson or Dreyer like than Immortal Story. The only Welles films that come across as relatively unambitious to me are the three Hollywood films he made in the late 40’s.

I wish I could find “Will o’ the Wisps” mentioned by Mteal, but I haven’t been able to download it from the internet and I don’t have it in my music collection. If Napster was still around it wouldn’t be a problem I’m sure, but with post-Napster software it’s hard to find anything but a few random pieces by Mr. Hector Berlioz.

Thinking of The Magnificent Ambersons, but getting off-topic, I see that one of our Wellesnet brethren has written a review of Ambersons at IMDB.COM. I don’t know why I was reading reviews at that web site, but I was, and the review was less than flattering of the movie. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but use of the words “soap opera” is a bit too much. Could get a guy expelled if I was running this board (probably a good thing I’m not).

[Glenn Anders]

Hi Fellas: Like all Wellsians, I am really someone else, but I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to take part here for several months, and so I've adopted an alias. If I could destroy my old identity, I would, but I don't know how.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on Bernard Herrmann's music for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. As you all probably know, there is a wonderful schema and analysis of the music in the collateral material with the CD of the complete score, "The Magnificent Ambersons" [Original 1941 Motion Picture Score, played by the Australian Philharmonic Orchestra, under Tony Bremmer]; PRCD 1738 Stereo (Preamble Records), Fifth Continent Music (FCMC), 1990.

If you follow that schema, and you see that the original plan was -- to cut the whole film to that score, you fully realize what THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS might have been, and what we have lost.

In that regard, though I am not the traitor at Amazon, I have some sympathy for him/her. The parts of the movie we have that Welles shot and supervised are nigh perfect, but the chops and addititions do, in a very real way, turn the film into a sentimental "soap opera," where Welles intended a nostalgic tragedy, and a mordant commentary on how Heartland America had begun to resemble an industrially ruined landscape by 1940's. That change came about largely because of the relentless popularization of the automobile, something Welles must have felt personally because of his Father's involvement with the early days of headlights.

Almost all of Welles films subsequent to CITIZEN KANE were altered substantially from his original intentions [I have come to believe substantially for political reasons], but they may be enjoyed for what they are, and in every case, Welles humanism and unique central insights can be discerned, but THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, beyond its midpoint, becomes so scattered and distorted that it begins to resemble (superb Cortez photography and performances to one side) a travesty of its intentions. To maintain that the film, as it stands, is a masterpiece is difficult for me to argue.

Alas, unless Rick Schmidlin finds that 16mm print in the vault in Rio, we are unlikely to know how great it might have been. Its destruction, I agree, is one of the great cultural atrocities of the 20th Century.

Hope I can stay aboard here, fellas.

[signed] The Man now Known as Glenn Anders.

[Jeff Wilson]

I think "traitor" is perhaps too strong a word, as Welles isn't a nation we are all citizens of, simply an artist whose work we can choose to like or dislike. I tend to agree that Ambersons, for all the beautiful moments and work within it, completely falls apart at the end, and I have trouble calling it a "masterpiece" under those conditions. A masterpiece until the hacks took over, obviously. I don't consider it a soap opera; for that, look at junk like the clunker he did with Claudette Colbert a few years later. Perhaps we should move the Ambersons discussion to a new thread?

[71-1045893605]

Sorry to disagree, but I put AMBERSONS right up there with KANE as a masterpiece. Not a single dull moment for this cinephile. I do believe, however, that the tacked-on ending is a slap in Welles' face.
GA

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Jeff and Gregory: I'm sure that you have examined the cutting continuity of the excisions made in AMBERSONS. RKO slashed the subplots to pieces. And their ending is not "just tacked on"; it replaces the real meaning of the picture. I am reminded of a story by Thomas Wolfe about how people so individual and idealistic in youth become sheep-like and hopeless in an "old folks home." The scene between Cotton and Moorehead in the boarding house is meant to convey a similar conclusion. That AMBERSONS, taken from Welles deep broodings about his parents, and the ends of their lives, is a masterpiece. The picture we can see today is an entirely different picture. Actually, it is the sentimental denoument of Tarkington's novel, and that is why even Welles' friends and colleagues agreed to it.

I have figured out how to stay here. Never Log Out!

Glenn Anders.