Bill Wrobel's DVD - Film Score Rundowns

note tied to “3” triplet value dotted 8 th to C# 16 th up to F 8 th down to D dotted quarter
note to Db 8 th to (Bar 3) Line 1 Ab-Bb whole notes legato trem (shakes). In Bar 3 the
bass clarinet and bassoon play a similar pattern an octave lower register. When Dracula’s
hand appears in Bar 18 (00:13:51) the flutes are soli playing descending to ascending “6”
sextuplet 16 th note figures Line 2 F#/Line 3 C to F/B to E/Bb to Eb/A to D/Ab to Db/G,
and so forth. [end session Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 7:48 pm. Time for dinner!]
************************
-South Sea Woman (1953) * [music **] [cartoon music ****]
http://www.amazon.com/South-Sea-Woman-John-
Alderson/dp/B000UJ48RW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1293682088&sr=1-1
This Burt Lancaster vehicle is a lemon! You can’t see yellow here because it is a
black & white movie, but it is still a lemon--a silly, pointless, unentertaining, meandering
movie. It is supposed to be a comedy. Ha-ha….remind me to laugh. Opening the movie
with a long court-martial sequence as the setup is not conducive for a sparkling comedy. I
(and my wife) got far more laughs later on watching the Joe McDoakes comedy short
about inheriting a million bucks. Then the movie incongruously becomes serious and
patriotic towards the end with the battle against the Japanese. Groan….The music by
David Buttolph is barely listenable except for a few interesting sections in the “serious”
section of the movie towards the end. Considering the nature of this movie, I can
understand why the composer was not particularly inspired! In that end section he resorts
to a certain technique that I heard from him in several other movies (including Beast from
20,000 Fathoms). He would hold an emphasis chord (usually brass highlighted) for, say,
a whole note duration in C time followed by another, more brassy, chord in the next bar.
To be quite honest, I was far more impressed with the Carl Stalling music in the Much
Ado About Nutting cartoon that was included in this dvd. Excellent, fun music! So buy
the dvd for the cartoon short and the Joe McDoakes comedy, but skip the feature film!
Incidentally, I liked the William Lava music for that McDoakes skit a lot more than
Buttolph’s music for this film!
-“Now, Voyager” [****] [music ****]
http://www.amazon.com/Now-Voyager-Keepcase-Bette-
Davis/dp/B0008ENIKM/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1301282869&sr=1-1
I’ve already wrote a music analysis of this Max Steiner score in my online Max
Steiner Potpourri:
http://www.filmscorerundowns.net/steiner/potpourri.pdf
I feel that this black & white film deserves a four-star rating, and even the score.
Claude Rains is terrific here, and Bette Davis too, of course. Paul Henreid gives a fine
performance as well. I almost gave it a three-star rating because of the very dated theme
of mother-dominance (Mommie Dearest here played and well-cast by Gladys Cooper).
Charlotte feeling so tortured and near a “nervous breakdown” was rather laughable in its
heavy-handed approach! Maybe in a rigid Third World country where males are king &
365