No I’m not thinking of Classic FM’s Top 100 or Desert Island Discs, but the most perfect, irreplaceable, hand-in-glove musical pieces ‘inserted’ in films, which re-imagine the former and elevate the latter. I’m not referring to music written specifically for a film, but classics lifted out of their original contexts and snuggled perfectly into an alien genre.
This occurred to me while attempting to play the piano the other day after six weeks in a sling. I shoulda stuck to “Chopsticks”, not tried something too ambitious, but Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” is what caught my eye while rummaging through my music stool. I tried to play it and failed.
After I’d consoled myself with a nice strong mug of builder’s tea, I remembered that Debussy’s composition had featured towards the end of Ocean’s Eleven (the Clooney/Pitt 2001 remake), after the gang had pulled off the most improbable heist in Las Vegas. They were standing by the Fountains of Bellagio, a large dancing water fountain synchronized to music, looking dreamy. (That’s ‘dreamy’ as in trance-like not dreamy as in gorgeous.)
I’ve no idea if ‘Clair’ has ever been on the Fountain’s play-list – I googled and couldn’t see it mentioned. So why Clair and not any others that are or have definitely been on the list? Examples include “Believe” by Cher, which sounds appropriate; as does “Fly Me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra. “Hey, Big Spender” from Sweet Charity or even “Simple Gifts” as performed by the London Symphony, also fit the bill. But no, the choice was Debussy’s masterpiece that means ‘moonlight’. For the scholars out there, it was named after an 1869 poem by Paul Verlaine, which references a bergamask, which is a dance and associated melody and chord progression. Now you know.
But most of the casual viewers of Ocean’s Eleven probably wouldn’t know any of that; they don’t need to. My point is, the melody, the harmonies, the tempo, the systemic whole, encapsulates perfectly the mood of the moment of a bunch of lovable rogues basking in their unbelievable success, i.e. the $13.6m-and-then-some they had each pocketed.
Another perfect, genius choice of film music featured in the Shawshank Redemption – “Sull’aria”, the duettino (short duet), from act 3 of Mozart's opera Le Nozze de Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). Countess Almaviva (soprano) dictates to Susanna (also a soprano) an invitation to Almaviva’s husband to a … er… rendezvous, as a ruse to expose him ‘playing away from home’.
The lyrics, sung in Italian, go something like:
“On the air…
That sweet little Zephyr [a
soft gentle breeze]
This evening will be filled
with joy
Little Zephyr
This evening will be filled
with joy…”
One of the film’s protagonists Andy Dufresne, a lifer in a brutal American jail, acquires an LP (remember them?) of the opera, locks himself in the warden’s office and plays the duet over the PA system. The inmates are spellbound.
Red, the other protagonist and lifer, says, “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But why that particular piece of music? Why not Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” that also ‘soars higher and farther’? or the aria “E lucevan le stelle” (And the stars were shining) from Puccini’s Tosca? Or my fave of all time, sung by soprano Tosca herself, “Vissi d’arte” (I lived for art).
Dunno.
And that is the beauty and magic of a beautiful and magical piece
of music. You can analyse the pants off it in the most scholarly, imaginative way,
but at the end of the day it boils down to your instinct. Your soul. A
religious experience. A certain piece of music just does ‘it’. What’s 'it'?
Ask your soul.
I could go on and on with example after example but have decided to end now by putting a smile on your face.
It’s Maurice Ravel’s Boléro in the film 10!
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