LitLetter 224: Journey, continued...Dancing to the End of Love
Examples of the enhancement of great films by classical music
This is an end-of-the-year post, a light-hearted romantic dip into what we might sometimes call schmaltz, and at other times over-the-top romanticism. I love the drama, as I am sure you will. The idea came to me one evening recently as I was watching - as I often do - Youtube clips on my phone. Specifically clips of beautiful singing and/or classical music. The YT algorithm understood my direction entirely and began to feed more clips of a similar nature.
I had never realised how many significantly memorable, even epic, films had used classical music and singing as backdrops to exquisite filmic visuals. Here follow a few, some of my favourites. You will all have your own which you can by all means share.
PS. Please be patient with some of the formatting in your email; it may not be reproduced as perfectly as I intended it! Asking your accommodation here.
#1: Out of Africa (1985) starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, directed by Sidney Pollak.
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto Adagio (2nd movement)
The opening scenes of this seven minute clip have to be seen; they lie beyond mere descriptive powers. Wild animals, a man, moving around slowly or stationary in the sunrise mist over the Kenyan plains. There are zebra, wildebeest, elephant. Then cut to the famous biplane floating over the Great Rift Valley, rousing thousands of aquatic birds – flamingos – in patterns that vary on the water like a hand moving over velvet. And – one can hardly say in the background, the music is so powerful it is almost a character – the clarinet slowly and subtly warbles its magical notes in emphasis of the visual beauty. The perfect arrangement of the visual and aural such that the world dissolves like sugar in water and we touch what we intuitively know we will never come close to touching again. Meanwhile, hearts stop, tears flow, pacemakers do their work, and the sun moves across the sky. What has changed? Nothing – and everything. Merely the central plank of divine goodness.
#2: Room with a View (1985), starring Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands, directed by James Ivory
Two exquisite operatic arias here, one famous, the other not so much. But both perfectly selected to convey the soaring truth of the film, ‘Let your heart lead you into love’. And apologies for the final truncated bar on the second – but the characters in this clip are perfectly drawn. Both songs are sung here by Kiri te Kanawa:
O mio babbino caro, from the opera Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini
Ch’il bel sogno di Doretto, from the opera La Rodine, also composed by Puccini.
And here is a full version of this aria, sung by one of the voices of the 21st century, Renee Fleming.
It seems impossible, doesn’t it?, that these two films were both produced in 1985!
#3: Shindler’s List
Here are three examples of classical music that have been composed contemporaneously.
Schindler’s List is a movie about bravery, that of Oscar Schindler who single-handedly saved the lives of more than one thousand Jewish people in WW2 by employing them in his factories.  John Williams composed the score, and violinist Itzhak Perlman performed the main theme.
#4: The Mission
The Mission was for some time my favourite movie. Huge actors – Jeremy Irons, Robert de Niro, Ray McAnally, Liam Neeson, and Aidan Quinn – supported by brilliant music explored a time and place not often revealed - the interior of the South American continent in the wake of Christian missionaries in the mid-18th century, and the subsequent inroads of commercialism and venality which poison the original innocence. Brother Gabriel won over hearts and minds of the Guarani people by playing the oboe, particularly this famous melody, Gabriel’s Oboe, played here by Maja Lagowska.
#5: The Deerhunter
The Deerhunter, that haunting, traumatising movie of war in Vietnam and the aftermath for some survivors has a Cavatina (literally ‘little song’ in Italian) composed by Stanley Myers in 1970. This clip has to be watched to the end – de Niro strides purposefully hunting the magnificent stag. He has a clear shot – does he take it?
#6: The King’s Speech (2010), starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, and Helena Bonham-Carter, directed by Tom Hooper Â
George VI was king of England during WW2. Father to Queen Elizabeth II, he was the younger brother of the far more extrovert Edward who for a short time was Edward VIII, and who abdicated to marry a divorced woman, Mrs Simpson. George VI (Bertie) was tongue-tied and only unwillingly took on the trappings of majesty. Until the war that is, when he assumed his full responsibilities as monarch. But still he found public speaking very stressful, made more so by a difficult stammer. This film is about the overcoming of that stammer to make the rallying cry speech to the peoples of the world in September 1939. This clip is the whole speech, superbly acted out by Colin Firth who won an Oscar for his performance. The dramatic second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony deepens, expands, and makes more prestigous the message itself which for its slow haltingness has a much greater impact than could have been imagined. All the time one sits expecting Bertie to fail – yet the lovely sonorousness of the music does not allow it, nor does the kind accompaniment in the background of the voice coach, Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush.
#7: Chariots of Fire (1981), starring Ben Cross and Ian Charleston, directed by Hugh Hudson
One of the truly memorable-for-ever film themes. Composed by Vangelis for the movie, this classic tune is not classical, yet it is epic. Celebrating all that is youthful and energetic in athletic sport, this tune became known around the world for its use as an ‘atmosphere builder’ at the start of amateur marathons. The film’s centrepiece is the performance of the Great Britain squad at the Olympic Games of 1924, held in Paris. The camaraderie, the competition, the compassion of men (men only) for their fellows, and the music lifts everyone to inspirational highs.
A different Olympics await us in Paris in 2024.
#8: Saving Private Ryan (1998), starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, and many others, directed by Steven Spielberg
Many war movies have taken on a piece of classical music as its ‘signature’. I have not mentioned yet #9: Platoon which adopts Barber’s Adagio for Strings as its theme, nor Apocalypse Now.
Steven Spielberg in the making of Saving Private Ryan received praise for disallowing any musical accompaniment to the horrific scenes of war he shot on the beaches of Normandy at the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944. The opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan – the dawn attack by Allied forces on German emplacements on the beaches of Normandy – are acknowledged as the most realistic, most frightening scenes of WW2 warfare ever shot. I remember sitting in a cinema and seeming to hold my breath for fully thirty minutes as the drama unfolded. John Williams composed the score for that movie, most notably the ‘Hymn for the Fallen’ at the end of the film. This particular clip contains one of the most moving, naturally acted scenes of a grief foretold I have ever seen on film.
Williams has said of the final scenes of the movie that he relied on choir and orchestra as they traditionally ‘bring dignity most tastefully, discreetly, quietly, and elegantly’. He explains in simple terms the moving effects of sound, melodies, and harmonies on our human emotions.
#10: Dance Me to the End of Love, sung by Leonard Cohen and performed by Fred Astaire, Rita Heyworth, and Ginger Rogers
The final scenes here are pretty and lovely. The poem of Leonard Cohen Dance Me to the End of Love, is sung by the poet and accompanied by the sweetest and most fragile twinkle-toes dancing imaginable, courtesy of Fred, Rita, and Ginger. Pure pleasure!
Great examples! I’ll add a sleeper: the use of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in Peter Weir’s *Picnic at Hanging Rock.*