Brief Encounters

Quintessential Mahlerman this week: four exemplary unions of music and film…

A few weeks ago I took a sideways look at plagiarism in movie scores, going on to name the guilty men and sit them on the naughty-step. But a much easier route has always been available to film producers when they need to trim the budget. Forget John Williams and rent a classic. It will almost certainly be in the public domain, so no fat fees; it will probably bring a bit of ‘class’ to even the most tawdry visuals; and it is available right now, on a laptop near you. One of your kids can edit it.

My own introduction to Sergei Rachmaninov’s music was (yes, you guessed it) the dominating, nay overwhelming influence of his popular second piano concerto in David Lean’s early weepie Brief Encounter. I fell in love with the piece, as well as with Celia Johnson’s mousey housewife. I doubt if I was alone in this musical crush, and the word on the street is that this movie, more than any other, served as an introduction to classical music for thousands who trooped to the local Astoria to soak it up. Was it for them a brief encounter or was it the start of a lifetime of listening? Seeing the film again the other day I realized that Lean over-eggs the pudding by using the music in virtually every set-piece. Perhaps he fell in love with it too. Showing, I hope, a little more restraint than the great director, here are a few examples of music and image fusing together to make something rather wonderful.

Hard to imagine the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa sitting back in his chair and thinking ‘who do I cast as Vincent Van Gogh…..I know, I’ll ring Marty’. But he did, and Martin Scorsese rocked-up complete with New York drawl, donned the ear bandage and hit his marks. The marvellous Dreams, made toward the end of Kurosawa’s long life, is really eight short films linked together and forming the musings of, we imagine, this unique auteur. This chapter ‘Crows’, has the limpid accompaniment of Chopin’s Prelude in D Flat.

Along with perhaps the Busoni concerto, the B flat Piano Concerto of Johannes Brahms is the longest and most taxing (to perform) in the modern repertory. Its length is partly due to the four movement format, almost unheard of in 19th Century concertos, and a gargantuan first movement lasting almost 20 minutes. The heart of the concerto for many is the painfully beautiful third movement Andante which, unusually again, switches the spotlight away from the piano soloist and shines it upon the orchestra’s principal cellist, who introduces the memorable theme, and spends ten minutes playing with it. Ingmar Bergman‘s 1963 film The Silence is one of his bleakest creations, asking more questions than it answers. Is the relationship of the two sisters incestuous? Is the boy a son of one of them? Where are they, and why is it so difficult for them to communicate? Not a natural bedfellow for Brahms, except for the ravishing images by Sven Nykvist which keep us glued to this masterpiece.

Set in medieval Russia and loosely based on the life of the great icon painter, Andrei Rublev seems, to this viewer at least, to be as near to perfection as a film can hope to be. Without concern for profit Andrei Tarkovsky set out to simply tell a story, and created a masterpiece of the cinema. Unwinding slowly (3 hours +), it bursts the bounds of what film is supposed to be, and a sense pervades the film that the existence of an audience was of no concern to this visionary artist still, amazingly, in his early 30’s. The incidental music for the original film was composed by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov; over this montage Boris Grebenshchikov sings the soulful ‘Wolves and Ravens’.

Running for over seven hours, Satantango (‘Satan’s Tango’) by the Hungarian Bela Tarr makes Rublev seem like a short. When I saw it first, a few years ago, it struck me as a pitch-black, misanthropic comedy. A more recent viewing on DVD revealed, as much great art does over time, much deeper layers of truth – truth endorsed by the late Susan Sontag who declared in rather hysterical language that the film was ‘Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours. I’d be glad to see it every year for the rest of my life’. The music of Arvo Part appears quite regularly on Lazy Sunday and for that I make no apology. Here, the stately beauty of his Salve Regina walks slowly beside the film montage.

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About Author Profile: Mahlerman

Mahlerman's life was shaped by his single mother, who never let complete ignorance of a subject get in the way of having strong opinions about it. Facing retirement after a life in what used to be called 'trade', and having a character that consists mainly of defects, he spends his moments of idleness trying to correct them, one by one.

3 thoughts on “Brief Encounters

  1. Brit
    May 13, 2012 at 19:12

    Sublime stuff, MM.

    It’s fair to say that, without such promptings, I wouldn’t generally be brave enough to attempt a 7 hour black and white Hungarian film featuring cows in muddy fields and whatnot, but perhaps, one day, I now might. Make a change from The Lion King anyway…

  2. editor@anatomyofnorbiton.org'
    Toby Ferris
    May 13, 2012 at 22:01

    Great stuff, thanks. As Brit says, it’s refreshing to be reminded that there’s a parallel dimension of actual films out there somewhere. Have never watched Andrei Rublev, and had never heard of Satantango. I will now get hold of both (would make an epic double bill; I’d probably be awarded a carriage clock or something)

  3. danielkalder@yahoo.com'
    May 14, 2012 at 04:43

    That Boris G. track is from what is far and away my favourite of his records with Akvarium. Works beautifully with the film which I watched six or seven years ago in Moscow when an absence of viable TV/cinematic entertainment made such feats easier. Fantastic film, I have always meant to watch again, but…. you know how it is.

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