The Dawn of Film Music, Part I: Max Steiner

I thought for quite a while yesterday about how to talk about history of film music on the screens. I thought about jumping straight to my favorite score ever, or talking about the TV theme I’ve been listening to on YouTube on repeat for about two straight days and how it’s a fascinating example of the seldom-seen morphing of a TV theme as a show progresses through a number of seasons, but none of this would have been possible without what I’m going to talk about today, the dawn of modern film music.

Film music has always composed a huge portion of the complete experience on the big screen. Strangely, however, the standardized film score, a film score written specifically for a film that was played as background at every screening of a given film, was not commonplace until the dawn of the sound era, and even few years after that, really. Charlie Chaplin was one of the few filmmakers to utilize such a film score before the sound era, and he even went so far as to compose them himself, though many times his music didn’t necessarily fit the action taking place on the screen. Even in instances in which the two are in sync, a modern listener would have trouble figuring out how the industry got to the powerful themes of John Williams’ work in Star Wars and Indiana Jones or to Ennio Morricone’s magnificently simple, yet indescribably beautiful and descriptive poems from what Chaplin was creating. Chaplin didn’t fully understand the power of instrumentation and of sentiment. No body composing the hard-to-come-by film music of the time understood that a film required, no, deserved a symphony. Around 1930, however, this was changed forever.

Just like many of the founding fathers of the Hollywood film industry, the majority founding fathers of modern film music came from abroad, mostly central and eastern Europe. Max Steiner, born in Vienna, was lucky enough to be born to the godfather of Johann Strauss, the composer of the ubiquitous “Blue Danube,” to be the godson of Richard Strauss (“Also sprach Zarathustra”) and to study under Gustav Mahler before he turned fifteen. Classical music was his future, but it certainly did not correspond to the time in which he was born. Eventually, at age 32, Steiner made his way to Hollywood and began composing. And like his co-founders of film music, his deep background in classical music informed virtually every notable score he ever composed. Many call Steiner “the founding father of film music,” and while I might disagree and say, as I have mentioned in passing, that he was one of a group of four or five composers that founded the genre, I cannot deny that Steiner is the composer of the first truly modern film score.

Released in 1933, King Kong was huge, to put it bluntly. It defined big budget for the time, and the special effects methods used were state-of-the-art and huge leaps forward. Sometimes forgotten about the film, however, was Steiner’s score:

If the chords of this, the main theme, sound familiar, it’s because they’re so incredibly formative for the genre that most every film composer worth his weight in anything has utilized much of the same chords at least once, even Steiner himself. The music perfectly combines the size, the fear, the importance, and the majesty of the film’s central plot in the same notes, in those opening 90 or so seconds. Throughout the middle of the theme, Steiner made excellent use of his string section, weaving a fascinating melody and counter-melody that conveyed both the beauty and the uncertainty of Skull Island, before finally dropping us near the end with soft, eerie single woodwinds, backed only by the foreboding pluck of the strings. Importantly, he avoided the pitfalls that so many composers of the studio era seemed incredibly prone to: lack of complexity when it’s needed. His luscious string theme in the middle is backed by great submelodies, and his foreboding, foreshadowing chords are piano or mezzo-piano at the loudest. He never even thinks to shout in your face, “Oh shit, there’s going to be a gigantic ape in this film that’s going to climb the Empire State Building and swat biplanes out of the sky. Be scared!” (The chord held out around 2 minutes in, if resolved differently, becomes Jurassic Park, in case you were wondering)

Steiner’s career took off. Over the next several decades he would compose some of the best and/or most recognizable film scores ever created. Gone with the Wind and Casablanca, The Lost Patrol and The Informer, Now, Voyager and The Caine Mutiny, Since You Went Away and The Searchers: these are just some of the many excellent scores he composed during his career.

I’m having trouble finding artful ways to introduce the videos, so I’m going to quit trying and instead just post a bunch of them with short comments.

Gone with the Wind:

It’s only fitting to list this one first. It is undoubtedly Steiner’s most celebrated work, and rightfully so. “Tara’s Theme” is what you think of when you think of the movie’s music, and I think there’s a simple explanation for that. Steiner manages to create something so effortlessly majestic that you can’t help but be spellbound (just like the monster-of-a-film itself), while somehow also making it incredibly personal. It's almost like he's talking directly to you.

Casablanca:

This is, of course, the second film that comes to mind when Steiner's name comes up. "As Time Goes By" is probably the most famous and iconic song with lyrics in film history. And while Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa Lund never actually said, "Play it again, Sam," Dooley Wilson's rendition of the song will last forever. That being said, Steiner wrote 0% of the song. He only composed the score, which I think is a example of variations on a theme at its best. Much of the sweeping melodies found in the film are simply variations on the melody of "As Time Goes By," and yet, I know I always felt like what the music I was hearing was something very original, if not completely so. This, the main theme, just shifts effortlessly between themes and musical strands. It's simply wonderful to witness.

Now, Voyager:

This is a great ending of a great movie. Besides the famous line about the moon, what always strikes me is, aside from how uncharacteristically tolerable Paul Henreid is, Steiner's gorgeous music. His score is of the sweeping romantic genre, but it never comes across that way. It's quiet and loud at the same time. It says so much, but allows the film to speak for itself instead of drowning it out with brash, unrepentant, unoriginal string-based concoctions. The crowning touch on that scene for me is that final chord. The camera quickly pans upward to the starlit sky, and just as the stars come into view, there's a musical flutter that makes it seem almost as if you can hear to stars.

Since You Went Away:

This is simply lovely. It's both reflective and progressive. Simply an absolute joy to listen to.

The Caine Mutiny:

This is just a fun as hell march. Plain and simple.

The Searchers:

What some argue to be the greatest western of all time (usually in competition with Once Upon a Time in the West and the Dollars Trilogy), certainly has a great score, though I would argue that all four of the scores of the other four great westerns, all of which were composed by Ennio Morricone, are better. The music is great and can certainly be seen as a paving of the way for the new style of composition of westerns that would come about in the 1960s. I do find it interesting that Steiner goes to great lengths to exude the Native American elements found in the film, and yet he does so in a relatively non-racist manner, strange considering the reputation the film itself has for having an incredibly racist lead character (who also happens to provide John Wayne the perfect avenue to exercise his limited acting abilities to greatest effect and give probably his best screen performance).

Here's a medley of some of the scores I've listed as well as some others:

When I began this particular post, I meant for it to include at least a bit about the other founders of film music, but this turned out to be far longer than I expected. As such, I will finish up the beginnings of modern film music tomorrow with snippets regarding all of the other founders of film music.

P.S. Writing all of this and finding all of the videos, I came across two great videos that are excerpts from an interview held on The Dick Cavett Show on November 18, 1971 with my favorite actress of all time, Bette Davis. The first video is an hysterical description of Davis' about kissing on screen. The second is a wonderful view into what her feelings about some of her Now, Voyager costars as well as what made her love actors in the character-driven old Hollywood versus the individual-driven new Hollywood, sentiments that would only be more pronounced today. The full interview is available and is really quite interesting if you want to listen to it.