On the Beach (1959)

As of March 20, 2024, the content of this post, including discussion of "Waltzing Matilda" and two suggestions for exercises, has been moved to a file published on the Texas ScholarWorks platform: Film Music: Some Posts from Blogs. 

More to the Film Score Guide series; course papers

At the bottom of this post is yesterday's list of the 19 volumes in the Film Score Guide monograph series, arranged in reverse chronological order of the film's general release. A checkmark (√) at the beginning of an entry indicates that the film is discussed or mentioned in Hearing the Movies, second edition.

If a course based on the book includes a final paper developed incrementally across the semester, it will follow logically through the work suggested in Chapters 6, 8, 10, 12, and 15. Recall that Chapters 6 and 8 explore the writing of scene analyses and the short papers we called “screening reports." The final sections of Chapters 10 and 12 focus, respectively, on a compare and contrast exercise and the building of a historical argument. In Chapter 15, the several earlier elements contribute to grounding a critical essay whose objective is to draw the sound track and music into a thematic reading, especially a reading that shows how these elements support or resist the dominant directions or emphases of the narrative. [The preceding text, btw, is a compressed and edited version of the opening paragraph of Chapter 15, page 509.]

One possibility— workable only with a small class, to be sure —would be to assign each student one of the films covered in the Film Score Guide series. Thus, reliable background and other basic information about the music and underscore composer would be readily available, and for the final paper (the work of Chapter 15) the student might well find material that would lead to supporting or challenging the arguments or point of view of the volume's author.

• 2008
• √18. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's The Dark Knight. May 2, 2016. Vasco Hexel
• 2007
• 15. Ilan Eshkeri's Stardust. IAN SAPIRO. July 2013
• 2000
• 17. James Newton Howard's Signs. January 14, 2016. Erik Heine
• 1997
• √9. Mychael Danna's The Ice Storm. MIGUEL MERA. June 2007
• 1996
• 7. Gabriel Yared's The English Patient. HEATHER LAING. February 2007
• 1993-94
• √12. Zbigniew Preisner's Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red. NICHOLAS W. REYLAND. December 2011
• 1989
• √4. Danny Elfman's Batman. JANET K. HALFYARD. September 2004
• 1974
• 16. David Shire's The Conversation. October 8, 2015. Juan Chattah
• 1972 ff.
• √11. Nino Rota's The Godfather Trilogy. FRANCO SCIANNAMEO. October 2010
• 1966
• √3. Ennio Morricone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. CHARLES LEINBERGER. September 2004
• 1960
• √19. Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven. May 31, 2017. Mariana Whitmer
• 1959
• √12. Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur. ROGER HICKMAN. March 2011
• 1958
• √13. Jerome Moross's The Big Country. MARIANA WHITMER. June 2012
• 2. Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo: A Film Score Handbook. Feb 28, 2001. David Cooper
• 1956
• 5. Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet. JAMES WIERZBICKI. June 2005
• 1954
• 14. Leonard Bernstein's On the Waterfront. ANTHONY BUSHARD. December 2012
• 1951
• √10. Alex North's A Streetcar Named Desire. ANNETTE DAVISON. February 2009
• 1947
• 6. Bernard Herrmann's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. DAVID COOPER. August 2005
• 1942
• √1. Max Steiner's Now, Voyager: A Film Score Guide. Jul 30, 2000. Kate Daubney
• 1940
• √11. Franz Waxman's Rebecca. DAVID NEUMEYER AND NATHAN PLATTE. December 2011
• 1938
• √8. Erich Wolfgang Korngold's The Adventures of Robin Hood. BEN WINTERS. March 2007

Writing exercises and analyses using Film Art: An Introduction

When we first conceived the idea of a film music and sound textbook nine years ago, we modeled the work on David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Film Art: An Introduction, not only for its rare combination of high standards and clear presentation but also for its focus on film analysis. As Bordwell puts it,

[The book is] aimed at undergraduate students and general readers who want a comprehensive and systematic introduction to film aesthetics. It considers common types of films, principles of narrative and non-narrative form, basic film techniques, and strategies of writing about films. It also puts film art in the context of changes across history.  (description on website: link)   [link checked on 3-08-2024]

 Film Art is now in its 11th edition. With the various content transformations along the way, several short analyses were deleted, but David has generously posted them to his website (at the same link as the quote above). Here is the list of film titles, in reverse chronological order:   [list checked on 3-08-2024]  

The Prestige. dir. Christopher Nolan, 2006.
Hannah and Her Sisters. dir. Woody Allen, 1985.
Desperately Seeking Susan. dir. Susan Seidelman, 1985.
Fuji. dir. Robert Breer, 1974.
Tout va bien. dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1972.
High School. dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1968.
Innocence Unprotected. dir. Dušan Makavejev, 1968.
Last Year at Marienbad. dir. Alain Resnais, 1961.
A Movie. dir. Bruce Conner, 1958.
A Man Escaped. dir. Robert Bresson, 1956.
Day of Wrath. dir. Carl Dreyer, 1943.
Stagecoach. dir. John Ford, 1939.
Clock Cleaners. dir. Walt Disney, 1937.
The Man Who Knew Too Much. dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1934.

 Since each of these analyses was intended as a self-contained section within a chapter, we can look at them as models for student analysis and writing exercises, even if only one of them focuses on sound (and none on music). These essays will be immediately relevant to chapters 8 and 15 in Hearing the Movies, and the compare-contrast writing exercises in Chapters 8 and 10, of course, but may be useful elsewhere for readings, assignments, or background reading for student projects. Of course, many similar analyses in the current edition of Film Art can be used for the same purpose!