00:09The drama, the excitement, the energy of the movies, it's an art form created by a versatile
00:25group of composers. His contribution helped audiences feel the movie's emotions.
00:31So it's a symbiotic relationship. If the film is good, if the performance is good,
00:38if we work hand in hand, we're both going to look good.
00:42Steiner, Stoddard, North, Bernstein, Herman, Wrexham, Capers, Newman. You may not know their names,
00:51but you've been moved by their music. Up to 1959, there was a studio system. And how it worked,
00:58at least for music, is there was a head of music, like my father was at Fox. And all the
01:04music for
01:05all the films at the studio, he was responsible for. He was responsible for hiring who composed it.
01:11He was responsible for getting it conducted. And therefore, it was all in the hands of a musician.
01:17Now it's all freelance. And of course, it's all basically in the hands of the directors or producers
01:23to choose who does the score. People came from from disparate places. The Viennese people, who were in
01:31the operatic world, like a corn gold, could be included and brought to Hollywood.
01:39A dramatic score could always be done in that, let's say, semi-operatic way. A dramatic tone
01:46poem. The music expresses what we're seeing on the screen, in the Seahawk. Before you hear that the wind
01:54is up. Excuse me, Your Excellency, but the wind does not serve well. In the orchestra, the little violins
02:02are going, the wind is coming up. Now, would that live today? I don't know that it would live today,
02:09but it's wonderful. Now, some of them were brought from the Broadway or the dramatic stage incidental music.
02:18Alfred Newman came from that place, as Alex North came from that place.
02:24All right, Sister, wake up. Come on, wake up. It's closing time.
02:28Well, Alex did more than it introduced jazz into the media. It was more than jazz. It was symphonic,
02:36with the jazz elements in it. There's no question about it. But it was purely American. And up to that
02:42time, film scores had been rooted in European tradition.
02:51But Elmer Bernstein was a part of that early, here comes jazz into the thing. He also did the
02:57Ten Commandments, which made him, oh, he's that kind of composer. Oh, we also did that John Belushi
03:03movie. Oh, you mean he's that kind of composer. So he is a complete composer. The versatility that you
03:12needed to be a film composer was just about as, you just, you needed to be about as versatile as
03:16you
03:16can be. Because it's not your own feelings that dictate what you do. It's the image that you're
03:22given. So if it's a movie about, you know, it's an urban movie, or if it's a horror movie, or
03:27if it's a
03:28period movie, if it's, you know, you needed to be able to jump into all these different arenas and be
03:34able to be facile with the, with the style.
03:42I think Bernard Herrmann was a genius. I think he was a really, really gifted film composer. I think he
03:48was doing completely different things than anyone else was doing. His ability to take small ideas and
03:54not huge grand sound and make it really singularly interesting in, in terms of what he was doing with
04:03the, the, the films. I think he was a perfect match for Hitchcock and for Orson Welles. He was a
04:09wonderful
04:10dramatist and a master orchestrator. If you really analyze his music, there's not a lot of music there,
04:16but it's so brilliantly conceived for instruments and dramatically it works so well.
04:23You know, in Home from the Hills, a dear friend who's not with us now, George Pappard, uh, said to
04:29me,
04:29he says, you know, everyone came up to me after Home from the Hills and they said,
04:32man, that acting, when you were approaching the cemetery, man, it was a moment for you.
04:37Why'd you do that, Miss Hannah? Don't you think I'm capable of a human gesture? Just once in my life.
04:44He says, that wasn't a moment for me, what he was telling me. He says, that was Branislav Kaper. That
04:49music made that entire scene. The emotional message that I'm receiving from these composers,
04:58how I feel, how they felt about all this, is always to be in context with the business
05:05of writing film music. I am proud of that heritage on being a film composer.
05:11They really invented the whole art form of film music as an art form. It can delineate narrative. It can
05:18obviously say all the unspoken things that cannot get said in a film and it gives it layers and depth
05:25that it doesn't have. That's the legacy.
