Blog #3

The film, The Best Years of Our Lives, was not one of my favorite films this week. However, I thought that Hugo Friedhofer wrote an excellent score for the film. I can imagine that many of the scenes proposed a challenge for Friedhofer to create music for; the boys had come back home as men and were faced with many challenges, mentally, physically, and socially. I noticed that many of the scenes with Homer were accompanied with music played in a minor tone. I believe that this represents the repressed emotions that Homer had about his disability. I also think that Friedhofer did an excellent job with the use of source music in the scene with Sergeant Stephenson and Fred Derry. After Stephenson tells Derry that he must leave his daughter alone and cut all communication with her, there is a lot of tension in the film. Then Homer and another man start to play piano in the bar start playing chopsticks in a very happy manor, which I think helps to relieve the tension between the two characters.

                In the film High Noon, I personally believe the lack of violins in the score was a clever choice made by Dimitri Tiomkin. I thought the use of deeper sounding instruments helped create an appropriate mood for the western film. The most noticeable music in the entire film was the obvious leitmotive for Marshal Kane. I also noticed that when Helen Ramirez was on the screen, the music had a slight latin feel to it, but then it would ease back into the original song that was played with different tones and different tempos throughout the film. I mainly noticed it though whenever Marshal Kane was walking around the town or looking for the “bad guys.” This was one of my favorite films and I was very impressed with Tiomkin. In this film he successfully manipulated the music to bring more character and life to the film. It is no wonder he is one of Hollywood’s distinguished and well-known composers.

Although I’m extremely biased when it comes to Coppola films, (The Godfather is and will remain, in my opinion, one of the best films of all time) American Graffiti was an excellently done film.  The score was a nice change from a full orchestral score, which is all we’ve heard up to this point. Although at points I was distracted by the lyrics in the songs other than watching the film, which I don’t really like to do. [417]