Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Do you remember Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea?

Paul Smith’s score was just released on CD after being only available as an Itunes exclusive.

In 1959, 20^thCentury Fox remembered the success of the film and decided to release their version of a Jules Verne classic.

They chose Journey To The Center of the Earth.

Kirk Douglas’s song “A Whale Of A Tale” had been quite a success in the previous film, so it was decided that crooner Pat Boone would star and sing in the new film with the hope of having hit tunes tied-in to the film.

Alexander Scourby as Count Saknussem

The result was a sci-fi masterpiece. James Mason stars with Arlene Dahl and Diane Baker(who later co-starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie).

The film has many different cuts for different reasons.

A change of actors took place before and after production had begun. Clifton Webb was replaced by James Mason because of health problems. And the part of Count Saknussem was apparently played by Alexander Scourby. He was quickly replaced by Thayer David.

Also, an interesting difference between the American cut and British version is the song sung by the Professor’s students when they surprise him (and at the end of the film). The scene was shot twice using a different song. The British and international version uses the song “Gaudeamus Igitur” in latin.

The Americans went with “Here’s To the Prof of Geology”. The fun part is, on the DVD, since the French dub is offered, the scene is the American one, so the sound on the French track does not match the lips.

Of course, other songs were planned for the film. You just don't have Pat Boone in a starring role if he's not going to sing. Yet the beautiful songs composed by James Van Hausen (with lyrics by Sammy Cahn) met with a rather unfortunate fate.

First of all, they were all cut from foreign versions. This is apparent on the French and German track available on the DVD, where "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose" is offered in English with subtitles.

This song is the only Pat Boone song that survived on the DVD edition. I'm not entirely sure that the other two were cut before release. I read the testimony of a man on the Internet who remembered fondly of the other two sequences when he allegedly first saw them in a theater. So maybe there's hope and we will see them resurface some day.

The first one was a naked Pat Boone singing while washing under a waterfall in the quartz grotto. The number "Twice As Tall", was deleted at some point.

The song I prefer is the one Boone sings on the raft when the group is in the middle of the underground ocean. He plays the bandoneón and sings "The Faithful Heart", thinking of his girlfriend Diane Baker who stayed behind in Scotland. Even though the song was deleted, the producers thought it was good enough to release it on a single disc. To my knowledge, it is the only song of these three to get such a treatment until the 1997 original soundtrack CD came out and they were offered as originally recorded.

As a matter of fact, a good source of information to find out where scenes were deleted is the Bernard Herrmann score. For instance, you can hear a "rope" cue on the CD which was intended for the scene where James Mason comes down the cliff tied to a rope. Now you can only see a snippet of that scene in the trailer, another good source to see alternate takes and deleted sequences.

About the score, I suggest you see the excellent website of Bill Wrobel: I was surprised to find an article there about deleted scenes in this very film! I also love his analysis on various film scores. Read his essay and find out more about the film.
Also, go ahead and buy the DVD and experience the adventure in the center of the earth!
The film is also available in a limited edition on Blu-ray from Twilight Time with an isolated score option.
More pictures on A Lost Film Facebook page.
That's all for today folks!

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Pop songs in Hitchcock films

Que Sera, sera,
Whatever will be will be
The future's not ours to see,
Que Sera, sera
Some of you may know that this famous song was first heard in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.
When Doris Day first heard the tune, she reportedly disliked the song and had to be convinced to sing it. It became her signature song.
How many of you can name another pop tune used in a Hitchcock film? Who said there are no others?
The director used pop themes throughout his career. Many songs were composed, but he only used them when they would serve a purpose in the story. Needless to say, few were actually included in his works.

The first "talking picture" he directed gave him the occasion to use his first pop song in the most pivotal scene of the film. Blackmail was shot as a silent movie and when sound was added, all the scenes that required dialog were reshot with more or less the same cast. In some cases, this cast was rather unfortunate sound-wise: Star Anny Ondra had to be dubbed. In the case of the villain, Hitchcock was luckier: the actor was also a stage singer and he used that talent to have him play the piano and sing in the rape scene, adding a menacing atmosphere to an already stressful scene.
The song is "Miss Up-To-Date", a popular tune of the year in London(from the 1929 stage show Love Lies starring Ritchard). Cyril Ritchard sings it while Anny Ondra is undressing behind a screen, but clearly visible to the audience.

In Juno and the Paycock, the cast sings an old Irish song while a Victrola plays the music, and since the sound technology did not allow that, an orchestra was brought up on stage so that it could play live off-screen.

During a famous crane shot in Young And Innocent, the camera finds the murderer which a twitch in his eyes in a room full of people when the principals cannot even suspect he is the drummer of the band. And what is the leader of that band singing? A catchy, lively tune called "The Drummer man". And the song goes:
"Who's the fellow you seldom think of
When you think of a band?
(...)
I'm right here to tell you sister,
No one can like the drummer man"
If that isn't a clue I don't know what is.

Miklos Rozsa's score to Spellbound became a hit before the film was released. Producer David O. Selznick wanted to cash in on that music every way he could and hired at least 12 lyricists (among them Ned Wasington, Johnny Mercer and Oscar Hammerstein) to adapt the love theme from the film into a ballad. The song chosen was arranged by André Kostelanetz with lyrics by Mack David but failed to capture the public's interest.

Hitchcock made good use of the talent of his stars. And in Stage Fright, he had Marlene Dietrich sing Cole Porter's The Laziest Gal In Town (more about it in a previous blog entry) and La Vie en Rose, courtesy of her friend Edith Piaf.

During the fifties, the search for a pop tune is almost systematic in his work.
In Rear Window, composer Franz Waxman was assigned the task of developing not only a jazzy score but also a song called Lisa, which would apparently be composed throughout the film by pianist Ross Bagdasarian in the apartment opposite James Stewart's. The song is finally heard in the last scene with lyrics and full orchestration but Hitchcock considered the effect he wanted was not achieved.

The pianist followed Hitchcock's career and used it: in The Trouble With Harry, the main character is introduced walking through the countryside and singing "Flaggin' The Train To Tuscaloosa" later rerecorded by Ray McKinley for a single. But Ross Bagdasarian composed a pop song completely unrelated with Bernard Herrmann's first score for Hitchcock. Obviously it's nowhere to be heard in the film. Ross originally recorded it under the name "Alfi and Harry" for obvious reasons and Les Baxter later gave his own version with a little more success. Here it is:

Vertigo is such an iconic film that the use of a pop song must seem outrageous to anyone who knows the film, yet two were composed. One called Madeleine, using Herrmann's theme with lyrics by Larry Orenstein and arrangements by Jeff Alexander. I was not able to find a recording for it, but the song was copyrigted June 6, 1958 with a new piano arrangement submitted August 19, 1958, after the film was released.
The lyrics were:
Madeleine, so strangely beguiling,
Her eyes leave you helpless and spellbound.


Madeleine, so tenderly smiling,
Who cares if you're Heaven or Hell-bound?
To your arms she'll fly
And then with a sigh,
One day you'll awaken,
Forsaken.

Madeleine, so many pursue her,
But who, tell me, who ever knew her?
No one ever knew her.


The other one was simply called Vertigo and was composed earlier by Jay Livingston & Ray Evans who had done Que Sera Sera. This last song was written in an effort to explain the word to the audience, as it was a concern during post production that movie-goers just wouldn't understand what vertigo is (the trailer also opened with a dictionary and a lecture on the meaning of "vertigo"). Apparently, the concern was not in vain since singer Billy Eckstine, when asked what it meant before the recording, replied that he figured it was an island in the West Indies. Here is the song:

Now for Psycho. I can imagine you in front of your computer screen going: "They DIDN'T!" Well... Yes they did. Since no one in their right mind could think of a pop song connected with Psycho, studio publicist decided to use the last song from Anthony Perkins's previous album "This Is My Lucky Day", mix in strings reminiscent of the ones in the murder scene and they released the song as "Norman's Song". Can you imagine Norman Bates singing a love ballad while stabbing everyone in sight?

A Nat King Cole song was also composed for Marnie, although this time, the Herrmann theme from the film was used as a basis. The marquee in this next photograph advertised a Pat Boone song that I was not able to trace.

By then, Universal producers, and Hitchcock himself probably, wanted these songs to actually be used in the features. His needing a pop score led to his breakup with long time collaborator Bernard Herrmann. John Addison, his replacement on Torn Curtain (learn more about them in this previous blog entry) composed the song Green Years, which can still be heard on the CD soundtrack album in the final scene where it was supposed to be heard. That too, was eventually cut, thus ending Hitchcock's search for pop songs.

That's all for today folks!

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Gaslight

Gaslight or When cinema tries to destroy itself.
Patrick Hamilton is a brilliant British play-write who penned among other things Rope's End, which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. In 1938, he wrote Gas Light, a play about a woman driven crazy by the very man she loves so he can get his hands on some hidden jewels.







The play was filmed for TV with Judith Evelyn (Miss Lonelyheart in Rear Window) and Henry Daniell (Vincent Price appears in this Life Magazine picture) but the two adaptations that stand out today were made for the silver screen.

In 1940, British International Pictures produced a film directed by Thorold Dickinson starring Diana Wynyard (previously nominated for an Academy Award in Cavalcade). The suffocating story and its original source are not the only links to the world of Hitchcock.

The film is shot by Bernard Knowles who was Hitch's cinematographer throughout most of his British period. Actor Robert Newton (Most famous for playing Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island) had played in Hitchcock's last British film Jamaica Inn the previous year before the director headed to America.

Last but not least, the score was composed by little known British marvel Richard Addinsell, who later composed Under Capricorn, and conducted by Muir Mathieson who later conducted Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo when the 1957 musician strike prevented the composer from doing it himself.

Have you ever heard a musical theme which was so great that you felt you had known it all your life?
That's what happened to me when the credits rolled on that film. The music is that beautiful. A restored re-orchestrated medley was issued on CD but the score remains to be completely published.

The film was such a hit that it spun a remake by MGM starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, and introducing Angela Lansbury.

Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman & Joseph Cotten (1944 remake)

So how is this film relevant to this blog? Well, believe it or not, the success of a film can also be the cause of its loss! When MGM released their 1944 version of Gaslight, even though the previous film had been retitled "Angel Street" in the USA, they tried to have the negative and all prints of this film destroyed.

Allegedly thanks to director Thorold Dickinson, at least one print survived and the film is now available on DVD. Ironically, the print used on the DVD starts with an out-of-place MGM logo and music from a different film (I believe Jacques Tourneur's Romance of Radium), it then jump-cuts to the film's main title. The original musical intro was broadcast on the BBC a few years ago. Here it is:

And here is the film available in its entirety on youtube (with the MGM logo):

I also recommend the 1944 remake (This DVD has both films on it). Ingrid Bergman is simply divine as always and Angela Lansbury is devilishly pretty in her debut.

On the set of the 1944 remake

Here is a rare glimpse behind the scene of the two films during a very similar scene. If you're wondering what the two leading ladies are doing, you should know that corsets and other wardrobe requirements prevented actresses from sitting down and they used to recline on these "stand-up seats" between takes.


If you wish to see how a feeling of intense relief can be conveyed only through camera movements and music, watch the last shot of the original film. I find it mesmerizing.
[2014 update: the film is now available in a wonderful UK Blu-ray edition with a print restored by the BFI.]

That's all for today folks!

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Torn Curtain

Torn Curtain was Alfred Hitchcock's attempt at a "serious Bond film": i.e. Bond, without the parody element. His ideas were to have a gray color scheme, get rid of the humor, the girls, and especially show how difficult it is to actually kill a person.
With this in mind, yes, the film is as dark and unappealing as you may think. At the time, though, it seemed like the thing to do since the Bond series had basically copied many elements that Hitchcock himself had used in previous films, the most obvious example being North by Northwest. The master, after a box office failure with Marnie, and with the pressure of it being his 50th film, wanted desperately to show that he could send a new trend, change styles and keep up with the times, a desire which led him to several other unfortunate decisions.

Besides that, several major problems plagued the film: Universal wanted famous stars to recapture some of the glamor of Hitchcock's fifties movies. The director wasn't necessarily against the idea but the two leads chosen were bad casting. Julie Andrews didn't inspire Hitchcock and missed the so needed above-mentioned glamor. Although they both were respectful with one another, he considered her unattractive. A memo about a line to his scriptwriters politely reveals his feelings about her looks: "Not that I wish to cast any aspersions on Miss Andrews' physiognomy, but do you think 'beautiful' is perhaps too much, and cannot we say 'lovely' instead?"

Paul Newman was fine in the looks department, but he was a method actor, and Mr. Hitchcock was not the kind of director who would trouble himself with character motivation for a 5 second shot where one character hands a note to another. Hence they did not get along.
As if that was not enough, the actor's salary skyrocketed, which Hitchcock always resented, and chances of going on location in Europe were lost.

Some character actors were enjoyable, such as Lila Kedrova, Tamara Toumanova, and of course Wolfgang Kieling as Gromek, none of which could quite save the picture, which was a box office disaster.

So what's left? The idea of the kill which bloomed into an iconic murder scene. And a movie-that-could-have-been. How so? Well for one thing, an interesting idea which was shot, edited and scored was dropped because it would have made the lead characters even more unsympathetic.

Scenes 123 to 135 were to follow the murder scene: Newman and Andrews were invited to see a factory were they met Gromek's older brother (played by the same actor). This was in keeping with the realistic approach of the horror of killing a human being: in this scene, we learn that Gromek was a kind family man with three kids waiting for him at home. The brother then cuts a piece of sausage with a knife similar to the one used for the murder of his brother and asks Newman's character to give it to Gromek. Eventually, this scene was cut. You can find the script for the complete sequence on Steven DeRosa's website.

The most famous element of the film that did not make the final cut, obviously, is the Bernard Herrmann score.
Hitchcock usually liked to work with a team of people who came back film after film. The desire to change styles, his relatively recent move from Paramount to Universal, and the deaths of some of his co-workers put and end to that.


Bernard Herrmann had scored his most famous films and it was implicit that he would score the new film. Alfred Hitchcock sent him a telegram requesting a "pop score". In itself, the request basically meant that he wanted another composer: no way anyone in their right mind would think that Herrmann would compose a pop tune, although some of the films he worked on had a pop song connected to them, some composed from his themes (Marnie).

Eventually, Herrmann's score was as dark as expected (and as the film itself) and the two men argued over it. The composer walked out and Hitchcock commissioned John Addison a new score. You probably know the theme he later composed for Murder She Wrote. The pop theme "Green years" composed for the film was also cut from it and appears only on the soundtrack album.
Some cues of the original score were recorded by Herrmann and used in the special features section of the DVD. Others weren't recorded (or weren't used in it). But the Herrmann music was also recorded later (never in its entirety) by Elmer Bernstein and Joel McNeely.

Although the famous murder scene finally went unscored in the final cut, initially Hitchcock requested music in this scene and both composers wrote a cue for it.
Here is the scene with Herrmann's music:

Here is John Addison's take at the scene:

That's all for today folks!

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