Last Tango In Paris Music Theme

[Shinyoung Gedris]

Iposted this question, along with a few notable instances I could thik of, on my personal blog at -music-in-film.html. I'd enjoy hearing other peoples' thoughts, either here on the discussion forum or in the comments on my blog. Maybe I'll gain some new ideas for must-see films to add to my netflix queue!

October 2, 2007 at 02:54 AM There is a world of classical music in early films. One notable is "They Shall Have Music" starring Heifetz. Another more obscure example is the life of Theodore Spiering, who straddled his concert career strictly classical in Europe, and his endeavors in creating music for film.

October 2, 2007 at 03:03 AM I guess it depends on how you would define "best". If by best you mean a classical piece used in such a way that it becomes familiar to a whole new audience of people or best in the sense that the music used served to dramatically further the plot of the film, that sort of thing. I personally enjoyed hearing the theme of the last movement of Saint-Saens symphony #3 used in the movie "Babe". I still have middle school kids who recognize that theme even though they only know it as the "Babe" music. Growing up I watched the "Smurfs" on t.v. How surprised I was the first time I listened to the Liszt Piano Concerto and shouted out loud "that's the Gargamel theme"! In this sense the use of these pieces brought them to the attention of a demographic that might not have ever heard those pieces on their own. The Fantasia movies and Sleeping Beauty from the Walt Disney Company were great for this as well. The movie "Somewhere in Time" used the "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" quite well throughout the movie to further the love theme of the plot. I'm sure many people left the movie wanting to buy the soundtrack because of the great music. I'm sure I will think of more examples but I think those are fairly good uses of classical music within a film.

October 2, 2007 at 06:19 AM toscha seidel, certainly one of the greatest violinists ever to live, recorded for many movie sound tracks... some of the titles include Intermezzo and Around the World in 80 Days

October 2, 2007 at 11:14 AM "tous les matins du monde" (for various viola de gamba pieces played in it), and "le joueur de violon" (for bach chaconne)are my all time favorite movies for the way they used the music with the picture.

October 2, 2007 at 08:54 PM I think my favorite is the slow movement of Beethoven "Ghost" trio in the French movie "Colonel Chabert." The movie is based on a short story by Balzac, where the main character (Gerard Depardieu... bien sur!) returns home to France after being taken for dead by his whole circle, including his wife (who has subsequently remarried). It's a really well-done movie -- one of my faves... esp. for the great use of the Beethoven!

October 3, 2007 at 06:06 PM I saw a movie Sherlock Holmes played by Basil Rathbone I never forgot. It is not a mystery, but is about the fictional man himself and his brilliance and drug addiction . In the movie, Holmes is an opium addict, and after taking opium he plays, La Folia in a opium induce hallucination. He is really out of it, in the movie, but he is so brilliant it is unbelievable. Then you learn Holmes is really a genius who chose to be a detective, and gave up a brilliant career as a musician, writer, scientist et. al....He decided to be a detective to fight Dr. Moriority.

This is a very obscure, but the context of the song is so great and so woven in with the character you have to love it. He is completely drugged out laying on a sofa playing and of course through the magic of Hollywood he can lay down and play perfectly. Dr. Watson we learn watches over the brilliant Holmes, but also monitors his addiction. This movie plays on the "artist as tortured soul", and shows Holmes as unlucky in love as well, possessed by demons which he exorcises with drugs and fighting his rival. Very obsure, but very fun to watch.

Another film that I enjoyed this summer, thanks to my on-line DVD rental company, is "Merry Christmas" or "Joyeux Noel". This is not only a terrific movie, but features a lot of singing. I think it is one of the best movies I have ever seen. Highly recommended. Have hankies handy. Added bonus: the French officer is pretty nice to look at...

October 3, 2007 at 10:06 PM Just to mention a current usage showing on PBS now is Ken Burns' film on World War II in which William Walton's Death of Falstaff is used in any number of heart rending sequences and is itself part of the music used in the British film based on Shakespeare's Henry V that starred Sir Laurence Olivier.

Lots of people have mentioned "Babe," and I like all of the music in that movie... but I particularly like the use of Pizzicati from Delibes' ballet Sylvia when Babe and Ferdinand are sneaking into the house to steal the alarm clock. It makes the perfect soundtrack!

Edit--I also have been looking for the remake Unfaithfully Yours with Dudley Moore, which uses Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony quite effectively, as well as the violin concerto, and a humorous violin battle using Csardas.

Though the media have changed over the centuries (film, digital, etc.) since the masters of old were in practice, today's composers are still, in principle, doing exactly what Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin, Brahms and the rest did.

They, too, will come to be known as classical composers some day. As such, I'm going to cast a pre-emptive vote for the works of Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman--most of the stuff they've done...I could no sooner pick a favorite leaf on a tree. ;)

P.S. If I absolutely had to pick one piece from a modern composer, it would be "Chevaliers de Sangreal" by Zimmer. It's a very simple, repetitive theme, but oh my god, how he builds on it and brings it to a climax! I get goosebumps every time I listen to it. Perhaps folks two-hundred years from now will, too.

October 5, 2007 at 05:48 PM The second movement from the Bach Double Concerto for 2 violins was used in the soundtrack to "Children of a Lesser God." The movie dealt with a man who loved music and his love relationship with a deaf woman (played by Marlee Matlin, who won an Oscar for the role). I thought the double concerto was a poignant metaphor for their struggle to bridge their differences and make the relationship work.

October 8, 2007 at 01:35 AM I don't know what films exactly, but a lot have had Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in there. Mainly older films usually have most or all of it, but newer ones usually only have like 10-20 measures and then stops because something else in the movie happens.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey has great scenes of a space vehicle drifting languidly through space to the strains of Strauss's Blue Danube. This is a must-see. Every time I hear this waltz, I think of those scenes from this movie. Once, when we were practicing it in orchestra, the conductor broke down laughing because of his visions of the music in this film.

5. I once saw an old Grade C film on late night TV. I don't remember the title, but it featured Boris Karloff playing Bach on the piano in a haunted castle in Transylvania where a young couple on honeymoon got stranded. It was spooky.

October 8, 2007 at 06:33 PM Hi, Mike. I checked the IMDb, and the soundtrack of "Babette's Feast" uses music from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" (which would account for your characterization of it as "that beautiful piece").

Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris" is one of the great emotional experiences of our time. It's a movie that exists so resolutely on the level of emotion, indeed, that possibly only Marlon Brando, of all living actors, could have played its lead. Who else can act so brutally and imply such vulnerability and need?

For the movie is about need; about the terrible hunger that its hero, Paul, feels for the touch of another human heart. He is a man whose whole existence has been reduced to a cry for help -- and who has been so damaged by life that he can only express that cry in acts of crude sexuality.

Bertolucci begins with a story so simple (which is to say, so stripped of any clutter of plot) that there is little room in it for anything but the emotional crisis of his hero. The events that take place in the everyday world are remote to Paul, whose attention is absorbed by the gradual breaking of his heart. The girl, Jeanne, is not a friend and is hardly even a companion; it's just that because she happens to wander into his life, he uses her as an object of his grief.

The movie begins when Jeanne, who is about to be married, goes apartment-hunting and finds Paul in one of the apartments. It is a big, empty apartment, with a lot of sunlight but curiously little cheer. Paul rapes her, if rape is not too strong a word to describe an act so casually accepted by the girl. He tells her that they will continue to meet there, in the empty apartment, and she agrees.

Why does she agree? From her point of view -- which is not a terribly perceptive one -- why not? One of the several things this movie is about is how one person, who may be uncommitted and indifferent, nevertheless can at a certain moment become of great importance to another. One of the movie's strengths comes from the tragic imbalance between Paul's need and Jeanne's almost unthinking participation in it. Their difference is so great that it creates tremendous dramatic tension; more, indeed, than if both characters were filled with passion.

They do continue to meet, and at Paul's insistence they do not exchange names. What has come together in the apartment is almost an elemental force, not a connection of two beings with identities in society. Still, inevitably, the man and the girl do begin to learn about each other. What began, on the man's part, as totally depersonalized sex develops into a deeper relationship almost to spite him.

We learn about them. He is an American, living in Paris these last several years with a French wife who owned a hotel that is not quite a whorehouse. On the day the movie begins, the wife has committed suicide. We are never quite sure why, although by the time the movie is over we have a few depressing clues.

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