With its justly Oscar-nominated cinematography, art direction and costume design, the film is sumptuous to look at. But Melissa Mathison’s script only gives us the barest glimpses of the dramatic tale underneath and Scorcese seems more content to concentrate on images rather than story or fully realized characters. That being said, KUNDUN is one of those guilty pleasures I’ve always found fascinating to watch. Much of that fascination comes from the juxtaposition of Scorcese’s images with the haunting score by Philip Glass.

His own Buddhist beliefs made Glass a natural to provide the music. And Glass’ repetitive, minimalist style, which worked so well against the fluid images of Godfrey Reggio’s KOYAANISQATSI (1982) and POWAQQATSI (1988), gives KUNDUN much of its movement and atmosphere.

The film begins with the memorable image of a sand mandala being formed while a female voiceover tells young Norbu the story of his birth. The bold sounds of low male chanting are supported by Tibetan ceremonial horns and cymbals. Violins play repeated ostinati while flutes chrip in undulating rhythmic cells above. The music may not tell us much dramatically, but it sets the aural tone for the entire film.

Click Track: Sand Mandala

Flute arpeggios over seesawing strings flit in the air as the young Dalai Lama-to-be chooses his possessions. Contrabassoon settles on the bottom of a low string melody as steady chords and cymbals punctuate the piano and harp figures as the caravan moves out. Timpani and Tibetan horns slash through the strings as the letter of the thirteenth Dalai Lama is read under a plaintive trumpet melody. A pulsating wordless chorus accompanies the Dalai Lama’s dangerous escape into India.

One of the memorable sequences shows blood pouring into a koi pond. The red disturbs the tranquil blue of the water just as the blood of the dead monks covers the peaceful land of Tibet following a massacre by the Chinese. Clarinets and flutes swirl in the air while cellos give voice to the monks’ nonviolence and a muted timpani provides their quiet heartbeats.

Click Track: Fish

The score won the Los Angeles Film Critics, helping it to gain some pre-Oscar attention and its Oscar nomination is richly deserved. Though the score doesn’t delve into the characters and can’t overcome the lack of drama in the script, Glass’ music provides a hypnotic aural landscape to the film that adds to the story’s mysticism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW2USm6wTSA

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The film received five nominations, including one for Best Picture and two posthumous nods for Troisi (who died just hours after filming had finished) for lead actor and as one of the adapting screenwriters. Miramax made the most of Troisi’s untimely death and the fact that Italy was not submitting the film for Foreign Language Film (since the film was released in 1994, it couldn’t have been nominated in the category in 1995 anyway). It became the highest-grossing foreign film to date.

The story is slim, but Michael Radford’s gentle directorial touch and Troisi’s transparent, tender performance make the film a winner, while Luis Bacalov‘s lilting, Oscar-winning score adds just the right touch of Italian flavor. Bacalov was brought on to the project after Ennio Morricone and other composers turned down the film. In order for the film to participate in the Venice Film Festival, he had to write the score quickly.

Click Track: Postman (Titles)

Bacalov said in interviews at the time that he found the character of Beatrice to be “a sort of Carmen,” which in turn inspired his Spanish/Latin-American tango-flavored score. Using a spare orchestration of bandoneon (a cousin to the accordion), guitar, harpsichord, simple percussion, strings and woodwinds, Bacalov’s poignant music evokes a wonderful sense of time and place, enhancing the slender story without overwhelming it.

Click Track: Postman Poet

Though foreign film scores had occasionally been nominated in the past, Bacalov’s Oscar opened the door for future international scores to win, including LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. Most film score fans would probably pick one of James Horner’s two nominated scores—APOLLO 13 or BRAVEHEART. While those scores may be more compositionally challenging, Bacalov’s simple, tuneful score perfectly captures the emotion of this heartwarming story. In 2010, Mexican composer Daniel Catán adapted the story for the Los Angeles Opera, starring Charles Castronovo and Plácido Domingo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXCC7SdJW1o

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With his trademark rhythmic and melodic cells, Philip Glass’ Oscar-nominated score ratchets up the tension to the nth degree. The film begins with Barbara’s (Dench) signature music—an oboe solo over churning strings. Glass spent over a week on this cue alone. “The trick was to describe Barbara but to hint that there’s more to her than we’re seeing,” he said in an interview at the time. “When you listen carefully to the theme, you’ll hear that there are all kinds of funny ornamentations to the melody, and implied harmonies that don’t quite belong there. I tried to make it both ingratiating and disturbing at the same time.”

Glass used the oboe “because it has a richness and wiliness to it that worked with [Barbara]. It’s very rich and at the same time very elusive….[It's a] very melodic piece of music which has a kind of strange harmony to it, and you might not think about it, but it makes you wonder who the character is. There are a lot of, let’s say, funny notes in it. It’s almost slippery—you’re going along with something that seems very traditional and it starts sliding off in strange directions.”

Click Track: First Day of School

The theme changes as Barbara turns into the “spinster from hell,” and Glass adds more and more instruments in the process. “You first hear strings and woodwinds, and it’s rather gentle in a certain way, and by the end, it’s extremely dramatic and the music is very confrontational. So what I had to do was leave room–I knew where we were going, but the big thing in the orchestration was how things were added in. It couldn’t be a suddenly different score in Reel 5 or Reel 6. It had to slowly—although sometimes unexpectedly when the moment came—show a different side of itself. So when we get to the end, there’s percussion and brass, and it’s very heavy. At the beginning it’s a very delicate, warm orchestration.”

Click Track: Betrayal

Just as Dench and Blanchett find layers of humanity under the schlocky trappings of the story, Glass adds some poignant layers in the music. The ascending string motif underlying the plaintive French horn solo captures the sadness of Sheba’s conflicted emotions as she willingly succumbs to the damaging affair. And Barbara’s oboe perfectly captures the lonely existence she has carved out for herself.

Glass’ music is front and center for much of the film and critics took notice. The Los Angeles Times called it “a chilly urgent score,” while the New York Post said, “The mood is greatly abetted by…Philip Glass’ edgy score.” David Edelstein inNew York magazine called the score “a study in egregiousness—the usual busy undercurrents with a top layer of bombast. But it does suggest something of Barbara’s turbulent inner life, and it gives the picture momentum.”

But some critics were not amused. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe wrote, “The one mistake in Notes on a Scandal is its music: a Philip Glass score that tootles loudly in the usual circles and pushes the film toward a horror movie that’s not happening, at least not in a way to which we’re accustomed….this one is more obvious than anything that happens onscreen.”

Manohla Dargis in The New York Times also complained of Glass’ “serial intrusiveness,” but she was spot on in her assessment of the film overall—”The performers sell the goods, but the goods are cheap.” And that’s ultimately the problem. It’s a trashy, sordid tale that’s been told many times, though seldom with such excellent actors.

While Glass’ score contributes to the thriller elements more than some viewers would like, there are levels of subtlety in the music that don’t come across at times onscreen. While some critics and fans preferred Glass’ lovely and subtle work for THE ILLUSIONIST that year, NOTES ON A SCANDAL—for better or worse—is hard to ignore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AruRpjQquQQ

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Only twice in Oscar history has a song by one composer and a score by another from the same film both won. In 1994, Elton John and Tim Rice’s treacly “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from THE LION KING shared Oscar gold with Hans Zimmer’s excellent African-flavored score. And back in 1955, Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster’s popular title song from LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING helped Alfred Newman win his second and last Academy Award for Original Score.

Based on the bestselling memoir, Jennifer Jones stars as author Han Suyin, a Eurasian doctor in World War II Hong Kong whose affair with a married foreign war correspondent (William Holden) puts her job and life in jeopardy. Holden’s cynicism helps offset Jones’ overly sincere performance, and I don’t buy her as a Eurasian particularly. But it’s hard not to get swept up in the doomed love affair and the romantic clash of cultures, thanks in no small part to the music.

The song stayed atop the charts for six weeks and over 250 versions have been recorded. Fain’s melody may be the most well-known element in the score, but Newman’s peerless strings create a lush, romantic bed upon which the love story rests.

The melodic fragment for Han and Mark was borrowed from Newman’s own Oscar-nominated score for THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM a decade earlier. Surprisingly, Richard Rodgers also seems to have “borrowed” the theme’s melodic elements as the basis for the song “I Have Dreamed” in his 1951 musical THE KING AND I.

Click Track: Destiny

The other main theme is the “Hilltop” theme. Ascending strings and trilling winds stir the winds of passion as Suyin meets Mark atop a hill overlooking the harbor–their private “spot”–culminating in a tender rendition of the title song. The butterfly’s flutes and English horn capture the fragility of their love.

Click Track: Mark and Han Suyin

Pentatonic scales and ethnic percussion and orchestrations give an Asian flavor to the score, in particular for the Moon Festival and fortune teller cues, as well as Suyin’s trip back to China. Newman also incorporated these instrumentations in his Oscar-winning work for the film version of THE KING AND I, which he was working on at the same time as LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING.

When the chorus finally takes up the song in the finale, Webster’s lyrics–”Once on a high and windy hill/In the morning mist two lovers kissed/And the world stood still”–combined with Fain’s haunting melody and Newman’s peerless scoring of the moment brings a tear to my eye every time.

Though undoubtedly the score won on the strength of the famous title song, there’s much more to the score, as expected of someone of Newman’s caliber. Without Newman’s matchless talent on and off the podium, the music could have easily have turned the film into a syrupy, gooey mess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BNme9K2Rs

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Based on Marcelle Maurette’s 1954 play, the film can’t help belie its stage origins. Yet it is still thoroughly entertaining thanks to Bergman, Brynner and the imperious Helen Hayes as the Dowager Empress, who must be convinced of Anna’s ruse for Bounine to collect the reward money. The “reunion” scene between Hayes and Bergman is heartbreaking and why Hayes’s weary, humorous, domineering performance was denied an Oscar nomination is beyond me. Thankfully that didn’t happen to Alfred Newman‘s lush score.

Over the main titles, Newman’s now-classic main theme comes soaring across the screen and perfectly captures Anna’s alternating hope and despair. Contributing to the Russian feel of the film (even though much of it takes place in Paris) is the impressive Russian Easter choral work of Ken Darby in the opening scene. There are marches and polkas and, especially, grand waltzes to sweep the sumptuous ballgowns of the expatriate Russian nobility around the dance floor.

But the score is anchored by that memorable main theme. Whether dressed up in ball gown finery or as more dramatic fare, the theme is one of Newman’s finest compositions. In particular, as the despondent Anna walks along the banks of the Seine, the aching theme (in the always capable hands of the inimitable Newman strings) accompanies her desolation and its poignant, yearning melody keeps her from teetering over the edge.

Click Track: Self-Destruction

Whether or not the actual Anastasia ever survived the massacre of her family is not important here. The legend has always provided a dramatic impetus and this film is no different. Newman’s glorious score taps into the legend’s mystique and false sense of hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BEH9LMAMjE

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Hardy’s FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD reunited Christie with director John Schlesinger and screenwriter Frederick Raphael, both of whom had propelled her to her an Oscar in 1965 for Darling. (Raphael won as well.) Christie wears the period duds well, playing Bathsehba Everdene, a willful 19th century Dorset farm owner who falls in love with ne’er-do-well soldier Terence Stamp, much to the dismay of her caretaker (Alan Bates) and rich neighbor Peter Finch, both of whom have also fallen under her spell. Critics trounced the film, but the performances are fine, especially Finch and Bates, Nicolas Roeg’s cinematography is stunning (and should have been nominated), and Richard Rodney Bennett’s score is as ravishing as Christie herself.

Because Bathsheba is one with the earth, Bennett’s haunting main theme serves a dual purpose. Beginning with a solo piccolo followed by oboe and strings in the main titles, the music sets the perfect tone for the lonely, desolate Dorset countryside and foreshadows the desperate, hollow love to follow.

Click Track: Far From the Madding Crowd

The secondary love theme for Sergeant Troy (Stamp) and servant girl Fanny (Prunella Ransome) conveys love’s innocence and purity. During the coffin scene, the theme lays on a bed of sustained minor-key strings, giving the music a particularly

Click Track: Fanny & Troy

In the memorable hillside meeting between Bathsheba and Troy, snare drum, swirling strings and flutes follow her rush of passion and the main theme takes a twisted turn as Troy practices his sword maneuvers on her. Hints of the Fanny theme provide aural clues as to where his heart actually lies.

For such a long film, the score is used sparingly. Traditional folk songs from Dorset and Somerset give local musical color, in addition to a lovely solo by Christie singing Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “Through Bushes and Through Briars.”

The film could probably be trimmed by a half hour but, to his credit, Schlesinger said he didn’t want to treat audiences to a “Reader’s Digest version” of Hardy’s tale. Bennett’s lovely score brought the composer deserved attention and an Oscar nomination. The CD is long out of print, but hopefully one of the labels will repair that situation soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHkjskCqWI4

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Richard Burton stars as a troubled psychiatrist who must discover the reasons for a disturbed teenager’s (Peter Firth, reprising his stage role) blinding of six horses. Shaffer’s psychobabble hasn’t aged particularly well and the film loses some of its power in Sidney Lumet’s stilted direction, but the performances by Firth and Burton (both Oscar-nominated) are superb.

In a film that doesn’t leave much room for music, Richard Rodney Bennett’s subtle score fills the emotional void that its characters cannot express. Bennett scored the music with a hint of Baroque flavor for violas, cellos and basses, saying that he wanted to “get away from the massed violin sound” and focus on the “grave intensity” of the violas in their upper register. The score rises and falls, yearning for meaning and lending further gravitas to the film and never succumbing to the more disturbing images onscreen.

Click Track: Epilog

The original Ryko CD release surrounded the score with Burton’s magnificent monologues. (Many of the Ryko discs featured “bonus” dialogue tracks.) When Kritzerland re-released the score (on a double with John Barry’s THE WHISPERERS) last year, producer Bruce Kimmel thankfully separated out the instrumental tracks in the brief 22-minute score, followed by bonus tracks of the monologues.

While EQUUS may not be the great play that everyone thought it was in the mid-1970s, the film has much to recommend in the performances, Shaffer’s command of language and Bennett’s lovely, yet somber, score.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzNCYcYlmt0

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Brad Pritt and Cate Blanchett star as an unhappy American couple on vacation in Morocco. When Blanchett is accidentally shot by a stray bullet from a shepherd boy in the hills, it results in an international crisis. Back home in San Diego, Brad and Cate’s housekeeper (Adriana Barraza) takes their two young children over the Mexican border in order to attend her son’s wedding. While in Japan, a deaf student (Rinko Kikuchi) goes to desperate measures to be noticed by her father (Koji Yakusho), whose old rifle that was sold to his Moroccan safari guide sets the story in motion.

Inarritu described BABEL as “a film about the complex relationship between parents and their children. It is also about the borders that not only divide nations and cultures, but the real, borderlines that live within ourselves that can only be erased by compassion…” While the film doesn’t totally succeed, it aims high and has something to say in its memorable images. Barraza and Kikuchi stand out in their justly Oscar-nominated supporting performances.

Gustavo Santaolalla traveled to each location to do research. “Because the movie took place in such different, colorful places,” he said, “we didn’t want it to sound like a National Geographic documentary. The challenge was to find a sound that would be common to everywhere without becoming too regional.”

That common sound turned out to be the oud, a Middle Eastern lute. Santaolalla taught himself the rare instrument and instead of playing it with a pick, he played it with his fingers. “For me, it had a resonance that connected to all the places,” he said, “but played in that way, it became an instrument to project my vision of it, and particularly in a folk idiom.”

Click Track: Tazarine

Another unique sound to the score was the use of pure sine waves, an electronic sound that was used in early electronic music. “Nowadays, with synthesizers, they have sounds that are composed by things that create harmonics and different effects,” Santaolalla explained, “but pure sine waves have no harmonics, so they almost have a psychoacoustic effect.”

Click Track: Deportation/Iguazu

Santaolalla did not attempt to create leitmotifs or character development. While the three main locales–Morocco, Mexico, and Japan–all have a distinctive sound to them (thanks in no small part to additional source cues and pre-existing tunes), Santaolalla’s oud-flavored score crosses the cultural barriers to unify the entire musical sound of the film.

Many film music fans have strong feelings against Santaolalla. If his Oscar win for BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN the year before wasn’t bad enough (at least according to the fans), his back-to-back win for BABEL sent them into apoplexy…and still does. While my choice for the Oscar would have been Thomas Newman’s score for THE GOOD GERMAN or basically any of the other three nominees–Philip Glass’ NOTES ON A SCANDAL, Javier Navarette’s PAN’S LABYRINTH, Alexandre Desplat’s THE QUEEN–Santaolalla’s BABEL score (which clocks in at a mere 18 minutes on the “for your consideration” promo disc) complements the film, though the most famous musical segments come from pre-existing tunes by Oscar-winner Ryuichi Sakamoto in the Japanese sections and Santaolalla himself. Yes, the score won the Oscar as a consolation prize since the film wasn’t going to win anything else, but take the Oscar out of the equation and it’s an effective piece of scoring, if not nearly as memorable as his work on BROKEBACK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chNzbahOn_w

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Doris stars as interior decorator Jan Morrow while Hudson is Broadway songwriter Brad Allen. The two share a party phone line much to the dismay of Jan since Brad is always on the phone seducing countless women with the same song. Producer Tony Randall, Brad’s employer, wants to marry Jan. Once Brad meets Jan, he changes his name and accent to that of a visiting Texan who is much more charming than “Brad” seems to be. Complications arise but it’s all harmless and everything works out in the end.  Today, the film plays out like an extended stale sitcom, but the chemistry between Doris and Rocky still sparkles, ably supported by old pros like Randall and Thelma Ritter. Frank DeVol’s lighthearted score perfectly complements the sometimes witty banter.

For better or worse, DeVol’s music is a prime example of Mickey-Mousing in comedic scoring. There’s nothing particularly subtle about it, especially now after decades of TV sitcom scoring, much of it scored by DeVol himself (including classics like Family Affair, My Three Sons and The Brady Bunch). But perhaps it seemed fresher back then. Then again, maybe not. Still, DeVol scores the picture with a deft, sure hand that today’s comedy film composers would do wise to emulate.

DeVol had arranged for Doris before and he knows just how to score the music so that her voice is showcased to its best effect. In addition to the popular title song (written by Buddy Pepper and Inez James), DeVol weaves in melodies from various songs sung throughout the film, including the appropriately smarmy “Inspiration” for each of Brad’s conquests (changing the name of the female for each girl), as well as songs by Joe Lubin and I.J. Roth—“I Need No Atmosphere,” “You Lied,” “Possess Me”–and the camp classic “Roly-Poly,” by Elsa Doran and Sol Lake.

The score is pleasant and tuneful, but its Oscar nomination still makes me do a double take. No matter how cleverly scored, the music is just not in the same league as the other four nominees–BEN-HUR (Miklos Rozsa, the winner), THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (Alfred Newman), THE NUN’S STORY (Franz Waxman) and ON THE BEACH (Ernest Gold). And that doesn’t even take into account the omission of Bernard Herrmann’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST from the ten finalists! The nomination no doubt came from the popularity of the film and the title song’s hit status on the singles chart.

Back in 1996, before expanded editions of scores were the norm, Bear Family Records of Germany released the soundtrack in a beautifully packaged 2-CD set with loads of extras, which included a 12” x 12”, 60-page color booklet with the entire Oscar-winning script (yes, you read that right–Oscar-WINNING script!). Surprisingly, it’s still in print. PILLOW TALK, the film and the score, may not be high art, but it’s light, pleasant, harmless fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuR3l-xBKdM

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By basically throwing out most of the characters and glossing over many of the most painful and dramatic situations in the book (much as Spielberg did), Streisand was able to feed her own already inflated ego and beef up her role in the process, turning a truly moving narrative into a third-rate love story, complete with the “Hubbell face touch” at the end of the film that she ripped off from her own THE WAY WE WERE.

Not one word of dialogue rings true and I’ve seen Lifetime movies and cable access programs with more honest emotional depth. Somewhere amid all the color-coordinated hair, nails and furniture, James Newton Howard‘s (who was a frequent writer and producer on Streisand’s albums) music finds the lush, romantic center that escapes the rest of the film.

At the beginning of the film, the camera zooms over the Carolina marshes as an oboe melody gives way to soaring strings whose three-note figure accompanies childhood reflections of the Wingo family. It’s hard to deny the beauty of the music and it’s early enough in the film so that Streisand hasn’t yet robbed us of any emotion that Howard is forced to supply since her characters cannot.

Click Track: Main Title

The love theme belongs to a song that was recorded for the soundtrack (“Places That Belong To You,” with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman) that Streisand wisely chose not to use in the film. Unfortunately, some of the contemporary cues place the music firmly in the early ’90s, but these are relatively short and don’t really detract from the overall quality of the rest of the score.

Click Track: The Hallway (Love Theme)

At nomination time, the big scandal was Streisand’s lack of an Oscar nod for Best Director. It had happened in 1983 for YENTL, but this time her fans were in an even bigger uproar, questioning (as many did in 1985 with Spielberg) how the film could get so many major nominations (including an undeserving nod for Best Picture) and not one for Babs. The bigger question is why this piece of Southern-fried dreck deserved any nominations (outside of the cinematography and score) in the first place.

I don’t think I’ve listened to Howard’s score all the way through in nearly 20 years. The music dredges up such horrifying memories of the film (that still rankle to this day), that I can’t stomach it. It’s too bad that such lovely music was wasted on such down-home drivel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyy_A4wNQa8

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