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Vince Guaraldi - Greensleeves (A Charlie Brown Christmas: Original Soundtrack Recording of the CBS Television Special)

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Feeling nostalgic.

#vince guaraldi #a charlie brown christmas #film score #1960s #peanuts

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Ella Fitzgerald - What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?

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Simple beauty.

#ella fitzgerald #music

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Ennio Morricone - The Ecstasy Of Gold (The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Vocals: Edda Dell'Orso

“'How does a film-maker make sure his music is heard? Let me give you an example. If someone has not been invited to a party, but wants to go, what does he do?’ [Ennio] Morricone acts out some noisy Italian bonhomie: ‘Hello everybody, hello.’

He pauses.

'He doesn’t do this. He knocks at the door, asks for permission to come in, enters the house and then starts meeting people. The music in a film must enter politely, very slowly. The composer does not have to write music at the actual moment a character enters a room - it might be too much. So there is this slow, delicate entry, with a simple sound that allows the film-maker to lower the other, naturalistic sounds.

The human ear can distinguish no more than two sounds of different quality at the same time. Some very nice music doesn’t work because of that: if it is too strong, it can become an element that disturbs the film, rather than giving something to it. Yet in some cases the music must be very, very strong, when it is necessary to give a particular dynamic to the storytelling course of the film, rather than, say, a person’s feelings.”

-excerpted from Guardian Morricone profile, “Screen Saver” (via)

#ennio morricone #film score #the good the bad & the ugly #1960s #music

oldhollywood

Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931, dir. Rouben Mamoulian) (via)

#fredric march #dr. jekyll & mr. hyde #1930s #film stills #horror

oldhollywood

Cary Grant receiving an Academy Honorary Award in 1970 (online here)

“Years ago, when Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were getting divorced, a perhaps apocryphal story appeared in the scandal sheets: As an example of Grant’s supposed irrationality, Cannon cited to the judge Cary’s yearly habit of sitting in front of his television and sardonically abusing all the participants. This item, true or not, must have amused nearly everyone in Hollywood, since nearly everyone in Hollywood does pretty much the same thing.

The funny thing is that from all accounts, when the Academy Awards began in 1939, they were conducted in a similar spirit of irreverence, something that has practically disappeared from the event itself. "They used to have it down at the old Coconut Grove,” Jimmy Stewart told me in the late 70s. “You’d have dinner and alawta drinks - the whole thing was…it was just…it was a party. Nobody took it all that seriously. I mean, it was swell if ya won because your friends were givin’ it to you, but it didn’t mean anything at the bawx office or anything. It was just alawta friends gettin’ together and tellin’ some jokes and gettin’ loaded and givin’ out some little prizes. My gawsh, it was..there was no pressure or anything like that.”

Cary Grant corroborated this to me: "It was a private affair, you see - no television, no radio, even - just a group of friends giving each other a party. Because, you know, there is something a little embarrassing about all these wealthy people publicly congratulating each other. When it began, we kidded ourselves: ‘All right, Freddie March,’ we’d say, 'we know you’re making a million dollars - now come up and get your little medal for it!’“

-excerpted from Peter Bogdanovich’s Who the Hell’s In It

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This is great. I wish men were still like Jimmy Stewart.

#cary grant #james stewart #film stills #hollywood

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Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind - The Shining: Main Titles (The Shining: Complete Motion Picture Score By Wendy Carlos)

This track is Carlos’ synthesized adaptation of Hector Berlioz's interpretation of the medieval Latin funeral dirge Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”) for his Symphonie Fantastique.

#the shining #film score #1970s #horror

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Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are directed by Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Notorious (1946)

#alfred hitchcock #notorious #ingrid bergman #cary grant #1946 #film stills

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“Say it again, it keeps me awake.”

“I love you.”

Marsh Wren

Red-bellied Woodpecker

#red bellied woodpecker

oldhollywood

Final scene of The Birds (1963, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Following the final attack of the birds, the Brenners escape the house - a key scene with the principals that remained to be shot. Hitchcock was still pondering the film’s ending. Should the birds keep up their attack? Why were the birds attacking? Why? The moron millions would want some answer, and he hated tidy answers.

It was during the last days of principal photography that Hitchcock decided to scrap [screenwriter] Evan Hunter’s ending [ed. note: Hunter discusses his original ending here], and excise several pages of dialogue and storyboarded visuals in favor of a single lengthy shot that would show Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and the Brenners slowly driving away in their sports car, crossing a bird-infested landscape as dawn breaks overhead. No final pursuit by the birds; no implication the attacks have spread - or have ended.

The future was left ambiguous. To Hunter, Hitchcock’s ending was a betrayal, yet its message was faithful to Daphne du Maurier’s novella. More important, it was true to Hitchcock - the kind of open ending the director had always preferred, salvaging his characters without offering any false reassurance that evil had been entirely vanquished.

“Emotionally speaking,” Hitchcock later said in defense of the controversial ending, “the movie was already over for the audience. The additional scenes would have been playing while everyone was leaving their seats and walking up the aisles.”

The ending was also a technical accomplishment, weaving the actors together seamlessly with a horde of live, dummy, and optical-illusion birds, against a background which is one of Albert Whitlock’s finest matte paintings. Thirty-two different exposures were required for the film’s final image, which remains stunning - “the most difficult single shot I’ve ever done,” said Hitchcock.

-excerpted from Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness & Light by Patrick McGilligan

#the birds #Hitchcock #old Hollywood