[QUOTE=slortar]
I’m just trying to imagine Star Wars without the theme music.
Scene opens on a white hallway. Some guys are shooting down it at a door. Door opens. Big guy in black armor casually strolls in. Crickets and people coughing can be heard in the background.
[/QUOTE]
The music in Star Wars probably deserves about 51% of the credit for this movies success. If the studio had made the decision that “hey, it’s a sci-fi outer space movie. We need some electronic synthesized futuristic music to go along with it” Star Wars may have been a big dud.
The original trailer for Star Wars, that I saw in the theaters in January of 1977, had a non-John Wiliams score to it. It was a sort of brooding repetitive score, and I hated it. (The “Star Wars” logo was different, too – Blue lettering in a different typeface, not the flashy, yellow-outlined logo now in use).
The scenes were all the same, but it didn’t look as interesting or exciting. I saw the original trailer many years later at a con, long after all three original films had come out, and felt the same way.
[QUOTE=Labdad]
Speaking of Jerry Goldsmith, his score for Patton is nothing short of brilliant. It would still be an amazing movie, but next time you watch it, imagine it without the score. It would lose a lot.
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Watched this recently for the first time in 30 years, and was very struck by the music.
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
The scenes were all the same, but it didn’t look as interesting or exciting. I saw the original trailer many years later at a con, long after all three original films had come out, and felt the same way.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but wait until you see the restored, digitally revised, re-edited High Definition Special Edition Original Trailer. It will be released for the first time on HD-DVD in 2009, for the second time in an Expanded Special Ultra High Definition version in 2012, and then in a Final Definitive Collector’s Deluxe Definition Anniversary Edition in 2016. Then it’ll really kick ass.
There’s a related issue I’d like to insert for your consideration. That’s when a movie’s music is so subtle and so underplayed that you don’t even notice it. That’s how Schindler’s List affected me. I remembered only the solo violin at some particularly poignant moment and no other time. When asked what I thought of the music, I asked back, “What music?”
That’s one mark of well-constructed and well-placed music.
Very familiar with this score – when we used to play ches, a friend used to put this on as background music.
As a side effect, I had George C. Scott’s speech at the start memorized, since it’s on the recording, too. I was surprised to find, years later, that Patton had made a speech very similar to it – I assumed that they’d perhaps used many lines and phrases of Patton’s in coming up with that speech, but not that they were all together in one place.
[QUOTE=Zeldar]
But, being open to the idea, let’s try to formulate the question accurately. How would you reword this:
Name a decent movie (one that you would rate at least 2 1/2 stars out of four) that would lose no discernable effect or impact by having its music removed.
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Of course, the first two have practically no music, anyway, so it’s not a stretch. The other two are virtually stage plays. (So was Dracula, come to think of it)
