Bill Wrobel's DVD - Film Score Rundowns

composer who had proven himself mightily in earlier Flynn movies; you have a movie
under the reins of a powerful director, Michael Curtiz. Alas, despite the potent
ingredients, the meal itself is rather poor. The cake fell rather flat! Something went
wrong, and I’m still trying to figure out why.
Well, for one thing, there is very little chemistry between Davis and Flynn (I do
not remember their pairing in The Sisters to see if there was chemistry)! Other people
may disagree (John Mauceri felt they did have chemistry in his comments in the Special
Feature on the dvd titled Elizabeth & Essex: Battle Royale). But it seemed so forced and
artificial to me. Behind the scenes, Davis had even admitted later in real life that she did
not really respect Flynn’s acting ability at the time (but later realized that he was pretty
good, after all). So already the heart of the movie is deflated—the relationship between
the Queen of England and Lord Essex. Practically the first 55 minutes was devoted to the
spat between the two because the Queen scolded Essex for his empty victory in Spain
(because the gold was sunk deep into the sea!). Both refused to give in to end the
stalemate of entrenched positions. This pettiness or shallowness in the storyline got old
real fast—so another reason why this film (cake) fell flat. Moreover the political intrigue
in the Queen’s court got tiring as well, and far too predictable. It was political ho-hum,
not intrigue. As a side note, have you noticed the fuzzy, out-of-focus shots here and there.
A dramatic example is when Essex returns to confront the Queen after the Ireland battles.
Go to 1:18:29, then 1:18:34, and so forth—the medium close-ups of Essex. Soft and outof-focus.
Is this a dvd error or was it part of the original picture, I don’t know.
About the only saving grace was Korngold’s music, but even that was overall
“great” in comparison to most of the other Korngold scores. I had researched several of
Korngold’s scores at Warner Bros. Archives, but I was never really sufficiently interested
in this score to invest limited, valuable time on it—except for a few cues. I would study
the Main Title, of course, and then I would pull that Ireland cue. The music I really like
starts at 00:56:08. I could easily see it being used in Sea Hawk later on. I can see why
Korngold did not write an outstanding score for The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
as he did for Sea Hawk or The Adventures of Robin Hood—simply because it was not a
very good film that would inspire a terrific score. Of course composers have written
terrific scores for poor or weak movies (Waxman’s score for The Silver Chalice comes to
mind, Herrmann’s score for Joy in the Morning, Tender Is the Night (and others!),
Goldsmith’s score for Supergirl) but generally I think they tend to rise to the heights
when inspired by a really good, entertaining movie.
-Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) ** 1/2 [music ***]
http://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Bottom-Sea-
Fantastic/dp/B00004VVOH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1292997180&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Bottom-Sea-Global-
Warming/dp/B000O78KY2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1293408889&sr=1-1
This movie produced and directed by Irwin Allen is better than the previous
year’s Lost World, and later became a television series on ABC starring Richard Basehart
286