After the Silents by Michael Slowik

Author:Michael Slowik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film & Video/History & Criticism, MUS020000, Music/History & Criticism
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

ORIGINAL OR PREEXISTING MUSIC?

If orchestral film music was to be increased, to what extent should filmmakers continue to use compilations of preexisting music, a strategy that characterized much of the late silent and early sound era? Increasingly during this period, studios provided larger proportions of original music composed by staff members. This may have been caused partly by the nosedive of the musical. Though studios reduced their musical staff with the decline of this genre, enough staff would have remained to provide some original music for dramatic films. Original compositions—particularly those of Steiner—also offered certain advantages, including a score that could better “fit” the narrative and draw more attention to specific elements within the story. Still, the use of preexisting music remained an important option from 1931 to 1933, and scores from the period often struck a balance between original and preexisting compositions. The effectiveness of this balance suggests that it constituted an acceptable, potentially stable technique rather than an inexorable move toward the “Golden Age” of film music, which featured largely original compositions.

Paramount’s A Farewell to Arms (December 1932) offers an especially good example of the period’s frequent and effective balancing of older and newer methods. Adapted from Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 novel and Laurence Stallings’s 1930 play, A Farewell to Arms tells the story of Frederic (Gary Cooper). Frederic is an American ambulance driver who falls in love with a British nurse named Catherine (Helen Hayes) in Italy during World War I. Catherine becomes pregnant with Frederic’s child. While on the battlefield and away from Catherine, Frederic receives no letters from her because of the overzealous censorship of his friend Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou). Sensing that something is wrong, Frederic goes AWOL and undertakes a dangerous journey back to Milan to find Catherine. Heartsick and worried about Frederic, Catherine collapses when she receives all of her returned letters. Frederic finds Catherine, who has given birth to a stillborn child, just before she dies. War, the film indicates, created circumstances that necessarily obliterate the prospect of enduring love.15

Two particular aspects of the score point toward new tendencies in the 1931–33 period. First, though A Farewell to Arms’ music is intermittent, it occupies more than 35 percent of the film, a percentage that exceeded most nonmusical films from 1929 to 1931.16 Second, the score not only centers on an originally composed love theme by Ralph Rainger (fig. 5.1), but it substantially remolds this tune to suit the narrative. In the late silent and early sound eras, themes seldom featured modifications beyond slight adjustments in tempo, key, and instrumentation.17 Here, however, the adjustments include modifying the rhythm as well. For instance, when Catherine asks a street artist to produce a cut out of her profile, the score provides a love theme with a different time signature,18 tempo, and rhythm (fig. 5.2). The love theme also features grace notes (quick notes that are not essential to the melody) and other embellishments, giving it a frolicking yet edgy feel that matches Catherine’s excited emotional state.

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