For the fourth year in a row, we’ll be looking at films through their musical scores — and their composers. Each week, either Mark Watters, Emmy-winning composer and Director of the Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media at the Eastman School of Music or Charity Lofthouse, Chair of the Music Department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the author of Hitting the Right Notes: Film Directors and Composers in Harmony, will introduce the film and follow the screening with an in-depth discussion with Jared Case. From thrillers to dramas, animation, creature features, and comedy, these films emphasize how important the musical experience is to the cinematic experience. Featured composers include Bernard Herrmann, Ennio Morricone, Elmer Bernstein, and Carter Burwell. A special feature of the series this year is the comparison of John Barry’s score for the 1976 King Kong with James Newton Howard’s for the 2005 version, on back-to-back nights! If you’ve ever left the theater humming, this series is for you!
Dates and Titles:
August 13: Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, US 1962, 106 min., 35mm)
August 20: Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, US 2008, 98 min., DCP)
August 27: King Kong (John Guillermin, US 1976, 134 min., DCP)
August 28: King Kong (Peter Jackson, US/New Zealand/Germany 2005, 187 min., DCP)
September 3: City Slickers (Ron Underwood, US 1991, 113 min., DCP)
September 10: The Mission (Roland Joffé, UK/France/US 1986, 125 min., 35mm)
September 17: The Grifters (Stephen Frears, US/Canada 1990, 110 min., 35mm)
October 1: Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, US 1990, 115 min., 35mm)
October 8: Women Talking (Sarah Polley, US 2023, 104 min., DCP)
Events in this Series
The Mission (35mm)
The Art of Music in the Movies In the wilds of Brazil in the 18th century, Jesuit missionary Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) fights to protect native Indians from being exterminated or sold into slavery by the colonizing Portuguese.
City Slickers (35mm)
The Art of Music in the Movies Mitch (Billy Crystal), Ed (Bruno Kirby), and Phil (Daniel Stern) are lifelong friends lost in early middle-age.
King Kong (DCP)
The Art of Music in the Movies As his follow-up to the Best Picture-winning Return of the King, Peter Jackson tackles this re-make of the Great Ape, thirty years after the last one. Focusing on the adventure aspect of traveling to an uncharted island and the new biological discoveries it holds, Jackson’s version strips out much of the dialogue to center the action, owing a great debt to silent film, and The Lost World in particular.
King Kong (DCP)
The Art of Music in the Movies As his follow-up to the Best Picture-nominated The Towering Inferno, John Guillermin tackles this re-make of the Great Ape, forty years after the original. Conforming to the style of the time, this version is a disaster spectacle, with large sets, complicated rigs, and a mixture of miniatures, inserts, suits, and makeup to achieve its effects.
Wall-E (DCP)
The Art of Music in the Movies With almost no dialogue for its first forty minutes, and only 862 total words of dialogue in the film, Wall-E depends nearly entirely on its score and soundscape. Thomas Newman’s score helps to develop the relationship between Wall-E, a trash-compacting droid abandoned on a desolate Earth, and EVE, an advanced probe droid sent to the planet to scan for signs of life.
Cape Fear (DCP)
The Art of Music in the Movies Florida lawyer Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is assailed by a fearsome voice from his past, Max Cady, a man he'd once put away. Mitchum plays Cady as a creature completely molded of evil, death in a Hawaiian shirt.