Fanfare
When I was young, movies usually opened with great fanfare that touted the studio as well as the film. Who could forget the Fox arc lights, or the Paramount mountain, or the MGM lion? Then it was up to the composer to set the theme for the film, and fortunately the studios did not lack the talent to do just that.
One of the finest was Dimitri Tiomkin, who generated the themes for one great film after another. Here is his memorable theme for a powerful film, The High and the Mighty, a theme that still haunts me and has ever since it was introduced in 1954:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJb5r...
But as we entered the 1960s, things changed. Younger generations didn't care for the grandeur or the fanfare that opened films, and chose instead more intimate openings, sometimes with nothing more than a singer and a guitar, and quiet, swift credits leading into the story. Each generation matures with its own musical favorites. The younger people argued that the grand openings were not always appropriate to the more intimate way of telling stories on celluloid, and perhaps they were right. I grew used to, and accepted, the new ways of opening a story, though in my heart of hearts, I preferred the older ways, when the studio was letting the world know of the importance of a film, and the themes that would come to haunt viewers.
The more intimate introductions won, but they are not always appropriate either, and don't belong at the forefront of an ambitious film. So, it's a generational problem. I would have hated to see Gone With the Wind introduced with a solo voice and a guitar. It is the largest and saddest story ever put on film, and composer Max Steiner had the enormous task of writing a theme that would catch the catastrophe befalling the characters, the loss of everything, including an entire way of life, all sinking into an uncertain and hard future. The result was Tara's Theme, which exuded sadness in every phrase, a sigh heaped on a sigh, over and over, making the theme the bleakest, and yet most beautiful, music ever to usher in a film.
Here is Tara's Theme, perhaps the most haunting music ever to open a film, and a work of genius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Z4D...
One of the finest was Dimitri Tiomkin, who generated the themes for one great film after another. Here is his memorable theme for a powerful film, The High and the Mighty, a theme that still haunts me and has ever since it was introduced in 1954:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJb5r...
But as we entered the 1960s, things changed. Younger generations didn't care for the grandeur or the fanfare that opened films, and chose instead more intimate openings, sometimes with nothing more than a singer and a guitar, and quiet, swift credits leading into the story. Each generation matures with its own musical favorites. The younger people argued that the grand openings were not always appropriate to the more intimate way of telling stories on celluloid, and perhaps they were right. I grew used to, and accepted, the new ways of opening a story, though in my heart of hearts, I preferred the older ways, when the studio was letting the world know of the importance of a film, and the themes that would come to haunt viewers.
The more intimate introductions won, but they are not always appropriate either, and don't belong at the forefront of an ambitious film. So, it's a generational problem. I would have hated to see Gone With the Wind introduced with a solo voice and a guitar. It is the largest and saddest story ever put on film, and composer Max Steiner had the enormous task of writing a theme that would catch the catastrophe befalling the characters, the loss of everything, including an entire way of life, all sinking into an uncertain and hard future. The result was Tara's Theme, which exuded sadness in every phrase, a sigh heaped on a sigh, over and over, making the theme the bleakest, and yet most beautiful, music ever to usher in a film.
Here is Tara's Theme, perhaps the most haunting music ever to open a film, and a work of genius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Z4D...
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