Classic TV Review: The Aphrodite Inheritance

When I stumbled upon this 1979 BBC mini series recently it was a blast from the past. Admittedly, over the years I’d think of it every once in a while and try to recall what it was about but all I could remember was a man driving quickly along a sun-baked dusty road. Turns out that’s exactly how the series opens. I wasn’t quite yet a teenager when I sat down and shut up at my parent’s bidding to watch with them this Cyprus-set prime time drama and I have to say, I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Far too grown up and complicated for a boy who probably watched the opening theme tune and then started to play with his Lego. Well, it’s taken over thirty years but I’ve finally watched it. And understood it. And I totally see why my parents insisted on my being quiet while it was on.

Written by Michael J. Bird, who had a thing for dramas set in the Mediterranean and had already given us The Lotus Eaters in ’72 and Who Pays the Ferryman? in ’77, The Aphrodite Inheritance ran for eight episodes and tells a story of greed, betrayal and murder. And Greek mythology.

David Collier (Peter McEnery) arrives in Cyprus following the tragic death of his brother Barry, who was living and working on the island as a construction engineer. It appears he’d been driving too fast on a coastal road and plunged over the edge of a precipice. David liaises with police inspector Dimas (Godfrey James) and assumes that his brother’s affairs will be wrapped up fairly quickly.

However, after the funeral a beautiful woman named Helene (Alexandra Bastedo) confides to David that his brother was murdered. She draws him to a deserted village where she presents him with a suitcase she says was owned by his brother which is filled with £50,000. She says it’s proof that Barry was up to no good. David finds the news hard to believe and when he asks Helene to accompany him to the police to tell them, she refuses saying she cannot get involved. She then disappears leaving David to drive back to town alone. On his way back with the cash, he is forced off the road and knocked unconscious and the case is stolen by a playful chap named Charalambos (Stefan Gryff) who just so happens to be a friend of Helene.

When David informs the inspector of these events and what Helene told him, Dimas is rightly sceptical because there’s no evidence that his brother was murdered. There’s no Helene either, and no case with fifty grand in it. In short, Dimas reckons David Collier is slightly bonkers.

Anyway, as the story unfolds there are plenty of strange goings on for David, plenty of weird coincidences that occur and draw him deeper into a plot that involves the lost tomb of Aphrodite. Along the way we meet another of Helene’s friends, the magnificent bandit Basileos (Brian Blessed). We also meet the seemingly untrustworthy American millionaire Hellman (Paul Maxwell), as well as dishonest partners and killers with big guns.

I don’t really want to say more than that because I think it would give greater enjoyment if the unfolding of the plot and characters therein retain their mystery just as they did when the series was first aired. I suppose that’s one downside to the Internet; because it’s all there to read, you can often spoil the surprise.

I admit that the story is a little slow in a couple of places and there are one or two scenes that invoke a slight cringe-worthy wince, which can promote the tendency to get up and put the kettle on or cast your eyes over a newspaper just to hold sleep at bay, but take my word for it, it’s well worth staying with it. While it may not be outstanding, it is highly enjoyable and quite intriguing.

The actors are all well placed and aside from the main characters, many locals were used as extras to add authenticity. Godrey James plays a great police inspector and Peter McEnery looks like a boyish version of Ian Ogilvy only without the suavity. Oh yes, and Alexandra Bastedo plays the mysterious beauty rather well too.

Give it a look if you can. It’s far more rewarding than a lot of current TV.

Film Review: The Importance of Being Earnest

At a dinner with friends the other evening the conversation meandered onto the diversity of the British accent and its plethora of dialects from various geographical points and social classes. Numerous attempts were made around the table to vocally replicate a variety of the nation’s populace, which for a while had the room in stitches. Overall, it seemed easier for those of us without an inherent talent to reproduce Ricky from Eastenders rather than Elyot from Private Lives. Which got me thinking because I’ve always quite liked “plummy”. It brought to mind the actress Joan Greenwood with her wonderfully precise elocution, which in turn led me to the film for which she is probably best known – The Importance of Being Earnest.

The play was written during the summer of 1894 and premiered the following year on 14 February at St James’s Theatre, London. The Importance of Being Earnest marked the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde’s career and remains undoubtedly his most popular play. However, it would also be his last.  A little over three months later, he would be in prison. But that’s another story.

This 1952 film was adapted and directed by Anthony Asquith, a stalwart of British cinema who gave us many notable movies such as Pygmalion (1938), The Winslow Boy (1948), Carrington V.C. (1955) and The V.I.P.s (1963) during his 40 year career.

Having been a student of drama many moons ago, I have a pretty good knowledge of this wittiest of farces and one thing I love about this film is its faithfulness to Wilde’s play. A couple of acts are broken into shorter scenes with different locations but generally what you hear is what you’d read. Indeed Asquith sets out to give us as near a theatrical experience as he can by opening the film in a theatre and introducing the action from a theatre audience’s perspective, opening curtain and all. With camera movement kept to a minimum, you could be forgiven for thinking it actually was a filmed theatrical performance you were watching which of course has a tendency to bring the acting into sharper focus. However, there’s no worry here. This cast does not disappoint. Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison are ideal (albeit perhaps just a tad too old) as the two young men-about-town who both pretend to be a man named Ernest in order to get the girl of their dreams. Joan Greenwood and Dorothy Tutin are equally up to the challenge of portraying young Victorian girls who men dream about (Greenwood’s elocution is just sublime). Margaret Rutherford (later of Miss Marple fame) is perfect as governess Miss Prism as is Miles Malleson who plays Dr. Chasuble, the rector. The three chaps who play the butlers are worth a mention too because they do great things with their small roles. But the show-stealer is without doubt Edith Evans who pretty much is and always will be Lady Bracknell. Her performance is so indelibly stamped on the character that it has since provided a challenge for anyone else taking on the role. The sets are small but lavishly detailed and wonderfully colourful and the period costumes are exquisite.

Dorothy Tutin received a BAFTA nomination as Most Promising Newcomer for her role and Asquith was nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. If you’re familiar with the story and have perhaps seen the 2002 film version with Rupert Everett and Colin Firth playing the two gents, give this one a look too. It’s a simple unfussy production that absolutely highlights the extraordinary wit and sublime writing of Oscar Wilde as well as the extremely high standard of those in the cast. If you’re not familiar with the story at all, then lucky you. Today you’ve discovered a true gem.

Film Review: Strangers on a Train

It may have come about as a result of an exhausting train journey I endured a few days ago or possibly because it’s Wimbledon fortnight – tennis being a daily headline at the moment. Maybe it happened because of both of these things or perhaps neither. However yesterday, Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller popped into my mind, vied for my attention and consequently prompted me to put pen to paper, so to speak.

Actually I’m surprised after looking back at the titles I’ve reviewed for this website over the past sixteen months that I’ve only reviewed one other Hitchcock film – North by Northwest. After all, I am a great admirer of his work. Maybe I’ve restrained myself on account of his films having been so extensively written about already but then, when one thinks of his best known films, Strangers on a Train often gets overlooked. And yet for me, it’s one of his finest efforts.

The plot is a simple one and I shall refrain from giving too much away for those who might not yet have seen it. It begins with a chance encounter between two men on a train. Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a semi-famous tennis player (ergo the Wimbledon connection) with designs on a political career, a slut of a wife, Miriam (Laura Elliott) whom he’s hoping to divorce and a real dish of a girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman) who just happens to be the daughter of a senator (Leo G. Carroll). The other man, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) is a smooth-talking weirdo with a worrying line in small talk. The two men chat over lunch in Bruno’s compartment and Bruno, who is aware of Guy’s private life via the gossip columns, explains his idea for the perfect murder. A simple criss-cross theory. Two complete strangers with nothing to connect them, swap the murders they would like to commit thereby absolving themselves of any motive and giving the police no clue as to the guilty parties. Bruno says that he’ll murder Guy’s unfaithful wife, leaving him free to marry Anne if Guy will murder Bruno’s overbearing father. Naturally enough, Guy makes a polite but hasty exit from the train compartment however, unfortunately for him, Bruno thinks a deal has been made.

Sometime later, Bruno follows Miriam and her two boyfriends to an amusement park and after a short boat ride, he strangles the life out of her in the darkness on the Isle of Love. Meanwhile Guy is on a train chatting to a drunk college professor who turns out to be an unreliable witness when, called by the police to corroborate Guy’s alibi claim, says he can’t remember their meeting. Guy is shocked and horrified that Bruno actually went ahead and murdered Miriam and is repeatedly harassed by Bruno and told that he now has no choice but to kill Bruno’s father. What ensues is a sublimely constructed thriller, perfectly paced, with just the right amount of humour (supplied in the main by Patricia Hitchcock who plays Anne’s younger sister Barbara) to make it still scary yet hugely entertaining.

Fade outs to black and swipes between scenes are replaced by a quick editing style and often cross-cutting between Guy and Bruno via their dialogue and movements, thereby seamlessly moving from scene to scene, the tempo never letting up. Strangers on a Train is a masterclass in how to build tension all the way to the finale and in true Hitchcock fashion, the climax takes place within a great visual location – this time aboard an out of control carousel spinning like a centrifuge. Implausible it may be with Guy’s legs flailing behind him like a sequence from The Simpsons but the skill behind the execution is evident in its greatness. With fighting and explosions and splintering wooden horses and screaming children it’s an incredible blend of close-ups, miniatures and background projections.

In my humble opinion, the film is worth watching for the Oscar nominated black and white cinematography alone. The gorgeous use of light and shadow is perhaps some of the finest of any Hitchcock film and it would see cinematographer Robert Burks begin a fourteen year run with the director and shooting every one of his remaining pictures with the exception of Psycho in 1960. The lighting is frequently dark and moody and choice camera angles and optical effects – so typical of Hitchcock’s style – add to the overall atmosphere of the film and keep the visuals interesting without ever going too far. There are several almost surreal shots from intriguing angles but perhaps the most famous shot of all (and one that is still studied in academic circles) is when Bruno strangles Miriam at the amusement park, the moment captured in the reflection of her glasses after they fall to the ground during her brief struggle. It’s simply cinematic perfection. Numerous other little blink-and-you’ll-miss-them gems are peppered throughout the film – Guy wiping lipstick off his face before meeting Anne’s father, Bruno’s shadow in the tunnel of love looming over his intended victim, Bruno again standing alone on the Jefferson Memorial, his dark figure an unwelcome stain on the white purity of the structure’s marble. It’s these subtleties, telling us the audience so much, that reveal the genius of the director.

The casting is spot on from the clean-cut figure of Guy Haines to Marion Lorne who plays Bruno’s befuddled mother (another character that adds a little comedy) but the performance of the movie and – one would argue – of his life, comes from Robert Walker. He’s just superb; charming, erudite, a bit of a dandy, but dark, deeply unbalanced, brooding. It was a role meant for him and I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing as good a job as he did. Sadly he died two months after the film’s release aged just 32 but his performance here will live on and be lauded for as long as people watch films.

Of course, all this visual brilliance starts with the written word and this came from a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. In the end there would be numerous differences between novel and screenplay and Hitchcock had a bit of a hard time getting the script he wanted. Originally, he had hopes for a proven writer to lend the project some clout and was looking at people like John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett but they showed little interest. Raymond Chandler wrote a draft but fell foul of Hitchcock when the two couldn’t get along and so after a suggestion from Ben Hecht – who had already written Spellbound and Notorious for Hitchcock but was unavailable – he hired Hecht’s assistant Czenzi Ormonde. She was a fair haired beauty who had no formal screen credit but had recently published a collection of short stories which was well received by critics. At their first meeting, Hitchcock encouraged her to forget all about Highsmith’s book and proceeded to tell her the entire story himself. It clearly worked because the film has a crisp linearity from beginning to end and a leanness to every scene. There’s no wasted dialogue and not a single unnecessary frame.

Bottom line – a true classic.

 

Film Review: Heimat

A friend recently asked me if I’d seen the classic German TV series Heimat. After replying with a somewhat dimwitted – “Huh? What?”, I had to admit to not even having heard of it. But when he added that it’s regarded very highly by film fans and critics alike and often reaches high places in numerous lists of The Greatest….etc etc, I was intrigued enough to seek it out.

Heimat (a German word that means Homeland) is actually a series of 32 films or rather episodes written and directed by Edgar Reitz. They depict life in Germany between the years of 1919 and 2000 as seen through the eyes of the Simon family from the Hunsrück region of the Rhineland and although the overall length of the 32 films is 53 and a half hours, making it one of the longest series of feature-length films in cinema history, for this review, I’m dealing with the first season only, which spans the years 1919 to 1982.

The first season of Heimat was originally broadcast in 1984 and consists of 11 episodes, centring on the character of Maria Simon (Marita Breuer), and her life in the small fictional village of Schabbach. We follow her from being a carefree teenager to a wizened, mentally scarred old matriarch and all the ups and downs that life throws at her along the way. At the beginning, it depicts a simple peasant life within a close-knit community where two and three generations often live under one roof and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The village is filled with colourful characters, some loveable, some not, and we get to join them on their journey through the years as they deal with everything from domestic and personal issues to wider social and political events.

English subtitles notwithstanding, I found it very easy to immerse myself in the affairs of these people as they deal with love, loss, illness, gossip as well as the national matters that were occurring in Germany at the time. The scope of the filming never really strays far from the village and surrounding towns so the effects that these national upheavals have on the members of the community are depicted in very personal ways. I found it quite extraordinary to see the village itself slowly transform over the years as horses and carts give way to motorcycles and automobiles and as the coming of the telephone and the building of a highway change the local landscape. The costume department did a great job too, no mean feat when you’re talking about seven decades and numerous fashion styles.

The plot is far too comprehensive to go into here but as part kitchen-sink drama and part social/political commentary, it shows in wonderful detail how times changed for the people of this tiny rural community and as positive as progress is, one can’t help but feel a little rueful at the passing of certain things. “Once, we all lived under the same roof. Now we are spread around the world,” says a family member, aptly summing up the changes. Of course, spanning so many years, characters come and go, some die through old age, sickness or war and new characters are born who become fascinating to us a little further down the line. For the most part, the make-up to age the actors is terrific as is the acting. The look of the film is beautiful too with sweeping panoramas of the countryside and nicely lit interiors and the frequent switching between colour and black and white to heighten emotional conveyance adds to the overall ambience of the time.

A filmmaker from his early twenties, the director, Edgar Reitz was born in Morbach, Hunsrück in 1932 and so he knew the region and the people well. This is likely why there’s such a feeling of honesty about Heimat. If this wonderful piece of art is unknown to you as it was me, do yourself a favour and take the time to give it a look. It’s richly rewarding and definitely worth it.

Film Review: Breathless (À Bout de Souffle)

Very few films can lay claim to being called innovative; after all, film-making is fundamentally a craft and a craft is basically an activity that involves making something with one’s hands. There are a number of well-trodden steps to follow in order to attain the end result in much the same way as there is when making a cake. First you do this, then this and then this and so on. In essence, the camera captures the shots and then the screen shows the result but of course, there can be an entire directory of additional technical processes in between, not to mention all that comes before the camera is even taken off the truck.

But each one of these processes is a craft unto itself and the individuals involved are all skilled technicians of their own particular field whether that’s to do with the actor’s wardrobe, the make-up they wear, the design of the sets, the editing, the special effects, the coordination of stunts, the lighting, or the cinematography (the list can go on), but they all have steps to follow; steps that define their job, their reason for being involved.

However, film-making is also an art; a medium for expression and an outlet for creativity. Part of that creativity could be defined as bending the rules, of thinking outside the box, of trying something new. This is innovation.

One film that can definitely be labelled innovative and still sleep soundly at night is Breathless, or if you prefer the French title – À Bout de Souffle. Released in 1960 to both critical and box office success, it quite simply rewrote the rule book, certainly for editing style. Its use of jump-cuts was totally radical for the time and to watch it now, amazes and horrifies in equal measure. Some of the editing is in-your-face noticeable and looks positively amateurish, jarring even – as though the film stock snapped and was poorly spliced back together – and yet it adds a nuance of freshness and intensity to the film that wouldn’t be there if the editing was smooth. Love it or loathe it, it was a stroke of genius. It was also filmed entirely on a hand-held camera (tracking shots were courtesy of a wheelchair or a postal cart with the camera hidden and the lens poking through a hole because no permission was given from French officials) and with virtually no additional lighting – made possible by using a specific type of film stock that needed to be painstakingly modified.

It was director Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature length film and was one of the earliest examples of the French New Wave of cinema or Nouvelle Vague and it would go on to become one of the most influential films of that era. The young Godard was very critical of mainstream cinema, saying it “emphasised craft over innovation” and many of his films challenged the well-established conventions of traditional Hollywood as well as that of French cinema. Together with his group of contemporaries that included Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut (who both wrote the foundations of Breathless), he set about shaking up the establishment and the way it was perceived that films could be made. He has influenced numerous directors like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, John Woo and Bernardo Bertolucci and is often ranked by critics as one of the greatest directors of all time.

The plot of Breathless revolves around a petty criminal named Michel Poiccard (played sublimely by the then soon-to-be-famous Jean-Paul Belmondo), who fancies himself as a sort of Humphrey Bogart tough guy stereotype. He steals a car in Marseille and then shoots the policeman who has pursued him out into the country. Now a penniless fugitive, he flees to Paris and hides out with an American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student and aspiring journalist who sells newspapers along the Champs Élysées to earn her living. He spends his time attempting to seduce her while trying to call in a loan from a local hood so that he can fund their escape to Italy. The police soon make the link between her and her boyfriend and when questioned by them, Patricia learns that Michel is on the run for murder. She eventually betrays him and yada yada yada. Watch it and you’ll find out what happens. Oh and an added bonus – Paris has never looked cooler!

 

 

 

 

Maestros of Film Music

If I were to ask you to name your top ten favourite movies of all time, how long would it take you to settle on a list? Would you find it as easy as 1,2,3, able even to put them in order of preference all the way up to 3,2,1? Or would it take hours of head-scratching, soul-searching and discussion, with DVDs and old videos being pulled out and watched over to remind yourself of how great or maybe not so great a film is? I was asked this recently and I must admit that I found the idea of naming my top ten favourite films absolutely impossible. I can name the titles of numerous films that would most certainly be included in the list but I couldn’t for a single moment begin to arrange them in any order of preference. Nor could I stop at ten. I’m guessing, but I think the number would be at least twice that and likely many more. For me, there are quite simply more than ten films worthy – for reasons aesthetic, technical, artistic or simply just plain entertaining – of standing on the shoulders of all the rest. Of course, if you want to see such a list the Internet has dozens of them. Dozens of top tens, top fifties and top one hundreds compiled by movie fans, critics and institutes alike, all with most probably a far greater knowledge of cinema than do I.

However, the idea of compiling a top ten list of something appealed to the pop-picker in me and so I continued to think of one that would be related somehow yet easier, nay possible to come up with. What I decided on came to me via my iPod and although it initially seemed fairly straightforward, as I scrolled through my music library and then began researching certain items that were on my wish list, so began the head-scratching, the soul-searching and the discussion. Nevertheless, finally after what I consider too long a time, I have compiled a list of my ten favourite film music composers. But please don’t think there’s any order of preference here.

I will kick off with the only one on my list that I happened to have shared a ceiling with because ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Elmer Bernstein perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Needless to say, it was a fabulous evening and I think I whistled The Great Escape tune all the way back home, probably to the annoyance of my fellow tube travellers. Bernstein (not to be confused with Leonard) is probably best known for his scores for The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, the latter of which undoubtably helped turn a fairly routine western into one of the most enjoyable films of the genre. His upbeat western themes, of which there are many, are a true joy but a quick look at his credits prove him to be an extremely versatile composer, capable of writing for any genre. He won an Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) and would go on to be nominated a total of 14 times giving us along the way great scores like The Man with the Golden Arm, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Age of Innocence.

Last year (2012), Hitchcock’s Vertigo replaced Citizen Kane at the top of the British Film Institute’s Greatest Films of All Time list. That’s somewhat significant when you consider that Orson Welles’ debut film had previously occupied the top spot for 50 years. What’s also of interest is that Bernard Hermann wrote the score for both movies. Hermann, who started off working in radio as a staff conductor, wrote some incredibly atmospheric pieces – The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Day the Earth Stood Still are about as atmospheric as you can get. He collaborated on many a Hitchcock picture and gave us the classic dramatic soundtracks to North by Northwest and Psycho. But there was much much more great music throughout his career too.  Mysterious Island, Cape Fear and On Dangerous Ground to name but three. He won an Oscar for The Devil and Daniel Webster in 1941and would go on to receive a total of 5 nominations.

Next up on my list of no particular order comes one of the most successful and influential film composers of all time, a man who, aside from Walt Disney, is unmatched in Academy Award nominations with a total of forty eight to date. Out of these he has garnered five wins. He has composed some of the most recognisable and whistleable music in film history including Star Wars, Superman and the Indiana Jones films. I refer, of course, to John Williams. Williams moved to Los Angeles and began writing film scores in the late ’50s but it wasn’t until he penned the music to Spielberg’s Jaws in 1974 that his career really took off. The ominous three-note motif that he composed was a stroke of genius and has since become synonymous with sharks. Many of his compositions employ a full orchestra and this gives his music a classical neoromantic style, making it very easy to pop in a CD and listen to. His grand symphonic score to Star Wars has become the highest grossing non-popular music recording of all time. His score for Jurassic Park is sublime as are those for Saving Private Ryan, Empire of the Sun and the Harry Potter films. His most recent work for Spielberg’s Lincoln shows that even after fifty years of composing film scores, he’s still got what it takes to give the world beautiful music.

Another John now, this time John Barry. Barry will probably be remembered as the man who gave musical accompaniment to the world’s coolest spy. Although the writing credit for the James Bond theme goes to Monty Norman, it was Barry’s arrangement that has made it one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of music the world has ever heard. He wrote the scores for eleven more 007 films throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and for my money, the Bond music was never better. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is, in my opinion, the high point of the series but all those that came before it have terrific soundtracks. He scored numerous other films throughout a fifty year career and picked up five Oscars (Born Free (best score and song), The Lion in Winter, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves) out of seven nominations along the way. Zulu, The Ipcress File, Midnight Cowboy and Enigma are great examples of his film soundtracks. Early in his career, he had a number of hit singles with his band The John Barry Seven – Hit and Miss, Walk Don’t Run and Beat for Beatniks to name just three – and these tunes simply ooze with the style and coolness that was inherent on the streets and in the clubs of London in those swinging ’60s. He also penned some memorable TV themes, none more so than The Persuaders!

Ennio Morricone, like the preceding four composers here, has a certain style. And this style is no more apparent than in his scores for the spaghetti westerns for which he is most famous. In 1964 director Sergio Leone set out to make a different kind of western and when he hired Morricone to write the score, they created an accompanying soundtrack that was equally different from the orchestral standards of the genre that had come before. Making use of the then new Fender electric guitar, jew’s harps and trumpets they basically came up with a whole new twangy sound for a western movie soundtrack. And what a sound it was. As instantly recognisable after just a few bars as the James Bond theme and equally as evocative. His music adds another dimension to these films and is arguably a character of its own. Without their soundtracks, these films simply would not be the same. And like Elmer Bernstein, Morricone’s versatility ensured that he wasn’t restricted to just cowboy films. His long list of credits include, the comedies La Cage aux Folles and Bulworth, John Carpenter’s excellent 1982 chiller flick The Thing, the Schwarzenegger fantasy movie Red Sonja, The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner and Robert De Niro and Clint Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire. Aside from the spaghetti westerns, perhaps his best known work is the soundtrack for The Mission, a 1986 film by Roland Joffé about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in South America during the 18th Century. It is considered to be a perfect example of what music can do for a film and has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Surprisingly, Morricone has never won an Academy Award but he has been nominated a total of five times.

Another composer who enjoyed a long and successful career was Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith began scoring radio shows in the early 1950s and this quickly progressed to television shows such as The Twilight Zone and later, the theme to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His first feature film was a western in 1957 called Black Patch. More TV and film scores followed but it wasn’t until he scored the classic 1962 western Lonely Are the Brave that he began to receive widespread recognition. Throughout the decade his career flourished with critically acclaimed achievements like A Patch of Blue and The Sand Pebbles both of which garnered him Oscar nominations. Another nomination together with enormous critical attention came for his controversial soundtrack to The Planet of the Apes in ’68, a score which saw him using innovative techniques to get the ape-like sounds he wanted. The Omen in ’76 saw him win his only Oscar out of a total of 18 nominations and before his death in 2004, he would go on to give us some of the most stirring and memorable film music ever. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is perhaps his most recognised work and following its success, he would go on to score four more films for the franchise (my personal favourite score being First Contact) as well as the themes to the TV series The Next Generation and Voyager. Other highlights include the wonderfully eerie Alien, the spooky Poltergeist and the cool jazzy L.A. Confidential.

Long considered to be one of the giants of Hollywood movie music, Dimitri Tiomkin was musically trained in Russia and made his performing debut in the early ’20s as a pianist playing with the Berlin Philharmonic. He moved to Hollywood in 1929 but it wasn’t until ’37 that his score for Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon helped him achieve any sort of recognition. The next ten years saw him work with Capra on films including Mr Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life. Over the course of his career, he wrote music for some of the most popular and spectacular films ever including The Guns of Navarone, The Alamo, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Land of the Pharaohs. He scored four Hitchcock films including Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder and numerous westerns, the genre with which he perhaps became most associated. His first was Duel in the Sun in 1946 and his most well-known was High Noon 1952, a film which received seven Oscar nominations and won four, two of which were for Tiomkin – Best Original Music and Best Song. This was the first time a composer had received two awards for the same movie. He won twice more for The High and the Mighty in ’54 and The Old Man and the Sea in ’58. In total he would be nominated twenty two times. Other highlights include Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The War Wagon, Town Without Pity and Giant. Tiomkin also penned memorable themes to TV shows such as Rawhide and Gunslinger.

In complete contrast to the classic style of Tiomkin comes Lalo Schifrin, an Argentine pianist at heart with jazz running through his veins. He is perhaps best known for his theme to the Mission: Impossible TV show and several of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies. These are excellent examples of his often edgy, frequently pumping and sometimes cool jazzy soundtracks but there are so many more scores worth attention. Schifrin moved to Hollywood in 1963 and was offered his first film project by MGM in the form of an African adventure called Rhino! That year he re-arranged Jerry Goldsmith’s original theme to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. into something far more jazzy and ended up winning the 1965 Emmy award for Best TV Theme. His credits encompass virtually every genre and include some of the coolest tunes associated with film. Notable soundtracks are Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Enter The Dragon and Rush Hour. Classic TV themes penned by him include Starsky and Hutch and Planet of the Apes. He’s yet to win an Oscar but he’s been nominated six times to date.

Another composer who knew how to write “cool” was Henry Mancini. Some of his best known works include The Pink Panther theme, Moon River and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the score to Victor Victoria. His career as a musician began in 1946 when he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra. Six years later he joined Universal Pictures music department where he contributed to dozens of films including The Glenn Miller Story starring James Stewart. This gave him his first Oscar nomination. In ’58 his thirty-five year collaboration with Blake Edwards began when he scored the TV series Peter Gunn. Breakfast at Tiffany’s followed as did The Pink Panther and it’s sequels, The Great Race and Victor Victoria to name just a few of their pairings. He worked with numerous Hollywood directors throughout his career and along the way gave us such scores as those for Hatari! which includes the chirpy and well-known Baby Elephant Walk, The Molly Maguires, Charade, The Glass Menagerie and Santa Claus: The Movie. In Oscar terms he was nominated eighteen times and won four.

One of the first composers to ever write musical scores for movies was Max Steiner, an Austrian-born music prodigy who was trained by Johannes Brahms and Robert Fuchs. He conducted his first operetta at age twelve and became a full-time professional conductor/composer at fifteen. Steiner is referred to as “the father of film music” and is widely considered one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He composed over three hundred scores for RKO and Warner Brothers throughout his career and was nominated for an Oscar twenty four times, winning three for The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides these, his more popular scores include King Kong (1933), Casablanca (1942) and his most famous work and arguably the greatest film score ever recorded Gone with the Wind (1939). From Austria, the young Steiner toured to England, then to New York for a fifteen year stint on Broadway as musical director or conductor before accepting an offer from RKO to move to Hollywood. His first screen credit as orchestrator came on a musical called Dixiana in 1930. His breakthrough came three years later with King Kong. Actor and musician Oscar Levant later called the film “a symphony accompanied by a movie”. After a move from RKO to Warner Bros. Steiner was sought after by the leading directors of the day. Other notable scores include The Searchers, They Died with Their Boots On, The Big Sleep and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Marvin Hamlisch wasn’t the first composer to take the musical reigns of the 007 franchise from John Barry. George Martin was that man. George ‘The Fifth Beatle’ Martin composed the score and the title song for Live and Let Die and while the latter is arguably one of the best of the series, the former is not quite up to the standard set by Barry. Marvin Hamlisch contribution to the franchise was The Spy Who Loved Me and again one can argue that the title song he co-wrote with Carole Bayer Sager – Nobody Does It Better – is a strong entry in the series but the rest of the soundtrack is below Barry’s high standard. Having said that, it’s by no means the weakest in the franchise’s history. Hamlisch’s first job was as a rehearsal pianist for Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl. His first film score was for the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie The Swimmer. He followed this with a number of comedies including two Woody Allen films but it wasn’t until 1973 that things got interesting for him. That was the year he wrote the title song and score for The Way We Were as well as adapting Scott Joplin’s ragtime music for the movie The Sting and he would walk away from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the following Oscar night with three gold statuettes in his grip. The Way We Were is beautiful romantic music and The Sting is a fun collection of Joplin’s classic rags sewn together and embellished by Hamlisch’s wonderful orchestrations. He would go on to receive a total of twelve Oscar nominations with three wins. Other fine works include Sophie’s Choice, A Chorus Line and The Informant! a 2009 Matt Damon film directed by Steven Soderbergh.

And now, I hesitate to continue because, as those of you who are still awake will have observed, I have already surpassed my allowance for this list of my ten favourite composers. And yet I still have more to share, more names that should be in that top ten. You see how awful I am at these lists! Oh well, maybe next time I’ll share with you my thoughts on Maurice Jarre’s exquisite scores to Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India all of which he won an Oscar for, and Ron Goodwin’s excellent wartime music for Where Eagles Dare, 633 Squadron and Battle of Britain as well as Yann Tiersen’s gorgeous score to Amélie.  But until then, if you get a chance, pop in a soundtrack CD and listen to the music that our film composers have written. Sit back and enjoy their hard work unaccompanied by the sights and sound effects of a movie and allow yourself the pleasure to hear their talent in all its pure, undiluted form.