Listening to Stanley Kubrick

by Gengaro, Christine Lee

  Listening to Stanley Kubrick

  The Music in His Films

  Christine Lee Gengaro

  THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

  Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  2013

  Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

  A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Copyright © 2013 by Christine Lee Gengaro

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gengaro, Christine Lee.

  Listening to Stanley Kubrick : the music in his films / Christine Lee Gengaro.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8108-8564-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-8565-3 (ebook)

  1. Kubrick, Stanley—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Motion picture music—History and criticism. I. Title.

  ML2075.G46 2013

  781.5'42—dc23

  2012027850

  ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America.

  Contents

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Early Projects

  Chapter 2: Love Themes, Leitmotifs, and Pop Music

  Chapter 3: The Music of the Spheres

  Chapter 4: “It Was Lovely Music That Came to My Aid”

  Chapter 5: “I Was Lucky Enough to Have Superb Material to Work With”

  Chapter 6: Midnight, the Stars, and You

  Chapter 7: Kubrick’s Final Word

  Appendix A: Films and Their Source Material

  Appendix B: Film Synopses

  Appendix C: Soundtracks and Track Lists

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without the help and cooperation of many parties. Several archives and libraries were kind enough to allow me access to their collections. These include the Margaret Herrick Library Department of Special Collections, which houses archives for the Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences, and the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. I offer special thanks to the Stanley Kubrick Film Archive, LLC, Warner Bros., and University of the Arts London for permission to use their materials. I am grateful also to the Anthony Burgess Foundation and Burgess experts all over world for allowing me a forum for my work on A Clockwork Orange.

  Special thanks must be given to Jan Harlan, who offered time and expertise in conjunction with this project. Gerald Fried shared his recollections with me and kindly gave his permission for the use of his scores for Kubrick’s early films. Jocelyn Pook granted me an interview and generously answered any and all questions about her participation in Eyes Wide Shut. Friend and colleague Jon Burlingame deserves special thanks for immediately and unfailingly lending me his unique expertise in film music. His liner notes to the 2007 Intrada CD of Alex North’s lost score were particularly helpful in the completion of chapter 3, and his own interview with Jocelyn Pook enhanced the final chapter. These wonderful people are in no way responsible for any inaccuracies in the book that may remain.

  I am indebted to far too many friends to name, but I wish to recognize a few. Mike deHilster and Dr. Vanessa Rogers read through many versions of this manuscript and offered suggestions for its improvement. Fellow musicologist and film music specialist Katherine McQuiston has generously shared her time and her expertise on the subject of Kubrick and music. I would also like to give special thanks to Helen Moulinous and Daniel Stent, Andrea Moore, David Aguilar, Cael Marcus Edwards, and Thomas Witwer for their helpful comments. Finally, I must thank my mother, Geri, my father, Frank, and my sister, Michelle, for their unceasing love and support. Special recognition must go to my father for supplying me with classical music and soundtrack LPs in my formative years, for sharing his musical expertise on doo-wop for chapter 7, and for giving me my first copy of A Clockwork Orange, thereby starting this whole thing.

  Introduction

  Music in film is powerful. It enhances emotion, signals danger, accompanies epiphany, and depicts movement. It forms the aural element of an invented world, contributing to its authenticity and its vitality. Those directors who truly understand the power of music will create films that use it wisely and well. Stanley Kubrick is one of a handful of directors whose musical choices over the course of his career demonstrated a keen understanding of what music could bring to a film, and through almost fifty years and more than a dozen film projects, Kubrick’s musical sensibilities developed and became finely tuned. The music in his films displays insight, inventiveness, and vision. Furthermore, Kubrick’s musical choices have affected the world outside of his films, influencing cultural consumption of certain pieces of classical music. It seems appropriate then to compile a guide detailing the music in Kubrick’s films, both the traditional scores and the preexistent music chosen for the later films. Kubrick’s musical journey has often been overshadowed by other aspects of his work—his films’ visual look, his meticulous, near-obsessive work habits, his unwillingness to travel or appear in public—but music is a very important element of Kubrick’s art, one that needs analysis if it is to be truly appreciated.

  Kubrick’s use of music is certainly one of the things that have made his films legendary, and we must wonder where his affinity for music originated. Indeed, we wonder what combination of influences created all aspects of Kubrick’s filmmaking genius. Many biographers and Kubrick scholars have spent much time and many pages searching Kubrick’s past for clues to his greatness, for indicators in his childhood and young adulthood that would signal the development of a genuinely singular talent. Each book (including this one) dutifully explains similar aspects of Kubrick’s origin story. Stanley Kubrick was born in the Bronx in 1928. As a boy, he didn’t care much for school. He loved playing chess, and he had an eye for photography. All biographies mention his supportive parents Jacques and Gertrude, and his little sister, Barbara. Special mention is usually made of the strong intellectual relationship Kubrick had with his father, a doctor. It was his father who both introduced him to chess and gave him his first camera. Kubrick’s parents allowed Stanley the academic freedom to pursue his own projects, and they trusted him enough to let him learn on his own. One of these passions, photography, started Kubrick on a career path while he was still a teenager.

  Another of Kubrick’s early passions, chess, might have sent him down a different path. He was a good player, hustling games for money as a young man, but he quickly discovered that chess hustler is not a good career, although his skill at the game seems to many to be one of those important indicators of Kubrick’s future success. Interviewer Michel Ciment stated that Kubrick’s passion for chess taught him the art of strategy, which helped his storytelling. When asked if chess influenced his filmmaking, Kubrick spoke of the connection between chess and decision making, especially in the way it allows one to avoid the impulsive decision and deliberate the alternatives patiently. No one would argue that Stanley Ku
brick wasn’t deliberate in his decision making in his films. As he got older, and his films got further and further apart, this deliberation was quite long indeed.

  Music too was a part of Kubrick’s formative years, although less important to him than chess or photography. He was the drummer for his high school jazz band, and he was a great lover of all genres of music, even film scores. One score in particular stands out as a great influence, and indeed Kubrick’s admiration of this score has been mentioned by a number of biographers. According to childhood friend Alex Singer, Kubrick was so taken with the music of Alexander Nevksy that after seeing the film as a young man, he purchased the soundtrack album. Showing a tendency toward obsession that would come to be associated with him, he played the record so much and so often that his sister apparently broke it out of frustration.1 The power of this film score certainly affected him, and the film itself was a landmark.

  Alexander Nevsky (1938) was directed by Sergei Eisenstein2 and scored by Sergei Prokofiev.3 It was Eisenstein’s first sound film, and unlike the director’s previous, more experimental films, it had a traditional narrative structure. Eisenstein and Prokofiev collaborated in a unique way. Whereas in most films, the editing is completed before the composer finishes his work, and the music is cut to the edits made by the director, with Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein and Prokofiev were both involved in the editing process. Eisenstein could make cuts that would accommodate Prokofiev’s music or ask for the composer to alter the music for a particular shot. The result is a musical score that effectively evokes the emotions and actions on-screen, but also retains an organic sense of structure that translates well to the concert setting.4

  Although the scores for Kubrick’s first films were produced in the traditional way—after footage was shot and edited, a composer produced new music for the film—the model of Eisenstein and Prokofiev must have stayed in his mind. Kubrick was always very respectful of the music he used in his projects, even—and especially—when that music was not originally intended for his films.

  Although chess must have taught Kubrick how to plan things out, photography must have informed the visual look of his films, and love of music allowed Kubrick to develop a sense of respect for the art form, there is no single detail about Kubrick’s life that would indicate that he would become a legendary filmmaker. The early biographical details aren’t unimportant, yet the role they play in his genius has likely been overstated. Kubrick grew and changed as an artist throughout his life. Each film was a learning experience, and his ideas about how to make films changed as he matured. Since this is a book about the music in Kubrick’s films, the films will be our primary source material. The first chapters will explore the music in Kubrick’s films up to 1968, while the later chapters explore the films that required more preexistent cues and little to no original music.

  The music in Kubrick’s films has been given some attention in recent years. In 2002, Gerrit Bodde produced a book in German called Die Musik in den Filmen von Stanley Kubrick. In it, Bodde describes what he believes are the two main functions of music in Kubrick’s films: informative and interpretive.5 German composer Bernd Schultheis has made a documentary about the music in Kubrick’s films, noting a few recurring musical tropes in these works. Among these tropes are the use of waltzes, marches, electronic music, liturgical music, and fanfares.6 These sources begin to scratch the surface of what is a fascinating aspect of Kubrick’s work, and this book, and others to come, will build on that foundation.

  Notes

  1. Vincent LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), 56.

  2. Eisenstein is often associated with the idea of montage in films, specifically with the creation of meaning through the juxtaposition of multiple images. Eisenstein was assisted by fellow director Dmitri Vasilyev in order to make sure the film stayed within the Soviet standards for filmmaking.

  3. Prokofiev had been a child prodigy and, interestingly, like Kubrick, a master at chess. He composed his first opera at the age of nine and attempted to compose a symphony at eleven. Early in his career he was fascinated with new music and, again like Kubrick, found the formal aspects of education quite uninteresting. His first public works caused controversy because of their forward-looking harmonies and their use of dissonance.

  4. Alexander Walker, Stanley Kubrick Directs, expanded ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), 13. The most famous cue from the film is the one that accompanies that Battle on the Ice between the Russians of Novgorod and the Teutonic Knights.

  5. Bodde names four subheadings under the “Informative” heading: constructive, cumulative, doubling, and delimiting. Under “Interpretive,” he lists five functions: stimulating, descriptive, contrapuntal, expressive, and substituting. Gerrit Bodde, Musik in den Filmen von Stanley Kubrick (Osnabrück: Der Andere Verlag, 2002), 16.

  6. These ideas were collected in an essay for the Kubrick Exhibition that began at the Deutsches Filmmuseum. Bernd Schultheis, “Expanse of Possibilities: Stanley Kubrick’s Soundtracks in Notes,” Stanley Kubrick Catalogue, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Filmmuseum, 2007), 266–279.

  Chapter One

  Early Projects

  Shorts and Early Features

  The Shorts

  When Stanley Kubrick hit his early twenties, he had already been working for Look magazine for a few years. He sold a photo to them when he was still in high school and, following that, produced feature photo essays for the magazine with titles like, “Dixieland Jazz Is ‘Hot’ Again,” “Montgomery Clift . . . Glamour Boy in Baggy Pants,” and “Kids at a Ball-Game.”1 He was moderately successful with these essays, but after working for the magazine for a while, he began to become interested in filmmaking. In an article about Kubrick called “Quiz Kid,” in the photography review the Camera from 1949, the interviewer notes, “Stan is also very serious about cinematography, and is about to start filming a sound production written and financed by himself and several friends.”2 It seems as though this might refer to Kubrick’s first short film, a newsreel project suggested by high school friend, and later successful television director, Alex Singer.

  Newsreels, which had been very popular before television, were a dying species as the fifties approached, but still, series like Time Inc.’s The March of Time and Pathé News produced shorts for movie theaters until 1951 and 1956, respectively.3 Kubrick’s subject for his first short film was boxing. He had done a feature for Look magazine called “Prizefighter” in 1949, and he used both the subject and the idea for that feature—a day in the life of middleweight Walter Cartier—as the basis for the film, which he called Day of the Fight.4 It appeared as part of RKO-Pathé’s “This Is America” series, a collection of newsreels that were patriotic features rather than hard news. Another entry in this series was Sailors All from 1943, which featured the United States Coast Guard,5 and “They Fly with the Fleet” from 1951, which follows a cadet in the aviation branch of the United States Navy.6

  Kubrick handled many of the details of the production including writing, producing, cinematography, and editing, although his work was uncredited for some of these on the title cards. Singer recalled, “He did that sports short as if he were doing War and Peace. He was meticulous with everything.”7 Part of the filmmaking process was figuring out what to do about the musical score. Kubrick had a friend from the old neighborhood—a guy he used to play baseball games with when the two were teenagers—who studied music at Juilliard. Kubrick decided to ask his old pal Gerald Fried to write the music for his very first film. Fried hadn’t written any scores, but he was willing to try it. The two young men watched lots of films in preparation, discussing the various functions of music in film, but most of their learning came “on the job.”

  Synopsis and Score Description for Day of the Fight

  Day of the Fight begins with an exposition about the popularity of boxing. The narration was done by Douglas Edwards, the first television news anchor for CBS. Kubrick had originally co
nsidered Montgomery Clift for the narration since they had met on a photo shoot for Look, but ultimately chose Edwards for the job.8 Although this is a feature story, the narration has a seriousness that borders on parody. Because Kubrick had studied newsreels like The March of Time so closely, the attitude of the production has a whiff of propaganda about it:

  What is the fascination? What does the fan look for? Competitive sport? Scientific skill? Partly. But mostly he seeks action. Toe to toe body contact. Physical violence. The triumph of force over force. The primitive, vicarious, visceral thrill of seeing one animal overcome another.

  Kubrick biographer Vincent LoBrutto senses a hint of film noir in the words and cadences of Edwards’s voiceover: “The narration is crisp and lean, like that of a forties detective novel. . . .The text poses as documentary fact, but it is filled with noir poetry.”9 LoBrutto goes on to talk about the noir-ish lighting, the use of shadows, the kinds of visual aspects of filming that Kubrick would revisit in The Killing and Killer’s Kiss, although at the beginning of the film and at the very end, the music does not support the noir angle. The central musical cue for the film came to be called, on later compilations, “March of the Gloved Gladiators.” True to its name, it is a lively, brass-heavy fanfare. Just as Kubrick had studied The March of Time and other news films to mimic their visual and narrative structure, Fried must have studied the shorts to absorb the musical language of the newsreels. He was also inspired by a distant fanfare in an orchestral work from turn-of-the-century French composer Claude Debussy.10 The main theme of the cue is this fanfare, played by woodwinds and brass. This line is the flute part, easily heard, while the rest of the orchestra fills it out with harmony:

  Example 1.1. March of the Gloved Gladiators. Main theme.