What is your favorite soundtrack to a Welles film?

[Kevin Loy]

I thought this might be an interesting topic/poll. What is your favorite soundtrack for an Orson Welles film, and if you'd like, explain why you like it.

(note: since I was limited to ten choices by this software, I decided to exclude "Lady From Shanghai" and "The Immortal Story")

[Roger Ryan]

I actually like the music to "The Immortal Story" quite a bit! I think it goes without saying that the "Lady From Shanghai" score is the worse if we're not counting the 1993 "It's All True".

Of the ones you've included, I have to go with "Ambersons". Herrmann was perfectly in synch with what Welles was trying to do with that movie. For me, listening to the complete score on CD is a better experience than watching the released version of the film as it completely evokes the nostalgia and melancholia of Welles' original vision.

[Tony]

Do you mean soundtrack or soundtrack music?
???

[Kevin Loy]

Sorry, Tony, I should have specified that I'm referring to the "score" itself.

Roger: I find it hard to go wrong with Satie as well, but I didn't include it since it wasn't written for the film...terrible reason, I know, but like I said, I was only allowed 10 poll options.

Myself personally, I had a lot of trouble with this, because there are so many really good scores for Welles' films, particularly those by Herrmann and Lavagnino.

[ToddBaesen]

It's too bad Bernard Herrmann didn't get to write the score for MACBETH, as judging from the enthusiasm he showed for the film, it no doubt would have really set his musical imagination on fire, and we would probably have been blessed with a real masterpiece of film music.

Here's what Herrmann wrote to his wife after seeing the film:

It is by far Orson's best picture and certainly the finest Shakespeare film ever made. It is set in Scotland in the 2nd Century and looks as if it was painted or rather filmed by Heironymous Bosch. It is full of a barbaric splendor and decay and all the characters in it are superb...

You have no feeling of it being a stage play but only of its horror and doom and the magic of its lines. It is full of darkness and snow and night. I believe that I will be able to do a fine score for it... I know that I will - as I feel that this picture will always be the pinnacle of my movie career.

[The Night Man]

It's too bad Bernard Herrmann didn't get to write the score for MACBETH... we would probably have been blessed with a real masterpiece of film music.

I agree completely, Todd. Ibert's score is perfectly acceptable, but Herrmann's would likely have been a classic.

[François Thomas]

Kevin Loy :

Welles had no hand in the scoring of The Stranger (nor on the one of The Lady from Shanghai). So I suggest you replace The Stranger with The Immortal Story if that is still possible. You would then exclude the two scores untouched by Welles. Does that make sense ?

[Kevin Loy]

It does, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to alter it now.

[François Thomas]

Well, let's see how The Stranger will fare. Thanks for initiating the poll.

[Tony]

Todd: "It's too bad Bernard Herrmann didn't get to write the score for MACBETH..."? ???

I believe he did "get to" , but chose "not to". You stopped your quoting of Smith just before the interesting part:

" By November, however, Welles had not finished editing the film and was considering leaving for Europe to start another project. "Unless he stays and works on it himself, I am determined not to bother with it," Herrmann wrote Lucille. "I do not care to have another Ambersons pulled on me... I am seeing him this afternoon and we shall have it out...If he goes about his wild orgies of Europe- I prefer to resign." (Smith, 'Heart at Fire's Centre', page 147)

Here's a later example of Herrmann's choosing "not to":

"Also in London that Spring (of 1956) was Orson Welles, then mounting the world premiere of 'Moby Dick: Rehearsed', Welles's free adaptation of the novel he and Herrmann knew so well. Welles visited Herrmann at the lavish Savoy hotel and asked him to write an original score for the production, but for reasons forgotten today, Herrmann declined." Smith, page 198.

But here's my favourite Herrmann quote about Welles, from a 1970 interview:

Interviewer: "Then Orson Welles, who's a difficult person, gave you a chance..."

Herrmann: "HE DIDN'T GIVE ME ANY CHANCE!" I gave HIM a chance! I had a job and he was just an actor who we used...What the hell...he didn't give ME any job!"

Benny: you gotta love him!

[The Night Man]

I think it goes without saying that the "Lady From Shanghai" score is the worst if we're not counting the 1993 "It's All True".

This will probably get me in trouble, but I must say that in spite of Welles' lifelong disparaging of the musical score to LADY FROM SHANGHAI, I think it works.

Welles was obviously sending up certain aspects of the noir/thriller genre, and it's apparent that he pushed the the studio-required close-ups of Rita Hayworth into the realm of parody. IMO, Roemheld's score actually enhances the parodistic qualities of the film through its straight-faced ur-Hollywood lushness (whether Roemheld was in on the joke or not is something we can never know, but some of those toilers in the dream factories were far more sophisticated than we give them credit for).

That it works in a way Welles may not have anticipated could account for some of his antipathy towards the score, but of course that's pure speculation on my part.

For me, the score works consistently with the picture and enhances its over-the-top qualities; I don't find it obtrusive (as in THE STRANGER) or vague and ineffectual (as in THE TRIAL). I know it's heresy here to praise anything done to a Welles film after his involvement had ended, but things can sometimes work serendipitously in unintended ways. (Don't get me wrong - I'd rather have the film exactly as Welles intended it, but as it is I think it's nowhere near the disaster it's made out to be.)

[Tony]

Night Man:
I not only 100% agree with you, but I've never seen it expressed so well (if at all): you've clearly articulated an idea I've been vaguely pondering for 30 years.

Well done! :;):

[mteal]

I don't think the LADY FROM SHANGHAI score is bad either, but Welles, for his preview version of LFS, did use music by George Antheil, who was the enfant terrible of the 1920's American symphonic scene, because of his notorious Dadaist score BALLET MECHANIQUE (scored for 10 player pianos, 5 glockenspiels and an airplane propeller). I think it's likely that Welles would have wanted Antheil, who was mainly scoring films by that time, to score LFS in it's completed form. It would have been a fascinating collaboration.

[Glenn Anders]

I agree with Nightman, also. The score for THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI works in a number of places, mainly in the transitions. The problem is that there is just too much of it. But in remembering scenes like those between Mike and Grisby, the voyage from New York to San Francisco, or the final crazy shoot out, I often cannot separate the music from the action.

It would be hard to imagine those scenes without the scoring.

That's a testament to both that the atmosphere created by the music and the genius of Welles' images, angles and cutting.

Glenn

[Kevin Loy]

Personally, I find the score from "Shanghai" to be overwrought and overbearing at its worst (which it often is). The biggest offender is that damned musical number that was put in the film (though at least there's a nice moment of humor when Grisby "croons" it) and then incessantly referenced. I find the overall effect of the scoring with the film to often be detrimental. But then again, I didn't quite feel that "Shanghai" was a send up of the Noir genre.

As a side note, does anybody know if the original (i.e. pre-90s) score for Othello has ever been released, regardless of audio format?