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Another pleasant week in LA, making trips to the library and looking forward to upcoming assignments - the kind one hopes don't suddenly evaporate.
There's a bit of a fuss this week over the new mini-release of Sam Peckinpah's MAJOR DUNDEE which will hit New York and Los Angeles on April 15. Music score expert John Burlingame had an article entitled Resettling an Old Score in Thursday's Variety, discussing the displeasure of the president of the Society of Composers & Lyricists, Dan Foliart, over the re-scoring of the movie with an entirely new composition by Christopher Caliendo. Foliart stated that the revised DUNDEE had set a dangerous precedent, that future holders of old movies might be tempted to replace classic scores with contemporary ones. Burlingame said that studios have been known to replace the odd cue here and there when music rights were expensive or couldn't be located but that replacing an entire score was rare.
I'm not aware of too many full-score replacements either. I know of a lot of partial replacements, such as THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST, for which certain Barry McGuire songs were replaced, and a (Eurythmics?) pop score that was replaced for home video for 1984.
There are probably other examples of full score swap-outs but the ones Savant is familiar with are several English AIP pictures, most notably THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL (THE CONQUEROR WORM), for which Orion dropped the original tracks in favor of synthesizer soundalikes. THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST and PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES were restored for DVD, but 1984 was not. WITCHFINDER has been restored, but no DVD has been yet announced.
Columbia pictures had plenty of ammunition to justify their experiment with DUNDEE, as Sam Peckinpah's biographers affirm that the director hated Daniele Amfitheatrof's original score. It had been imposed on the movie in post-production along with 1001 other outrages to Peckinpah's vision. It doesn't take an expert to realize that the one most prominent factor crippling audience appreciation of DUNDEE has always been the music. The themes are reasonably good (my opinion) but grossly overused, while scene after scene that would play better in silence is drowned out by inappropriate noodlings or discordant phrases of Civil War-era themes. The crowning outrage was the producer's use of Mitch Miller's Sing-Along Gang. They chant the film's main theme, a mindless, jaunty march that inexplicably plays out over the aftermath of a bloody massacre.
Watching Peckinpah's epic always meant trying ignore the over-emphatic and distracting music. Nobody forgets the electronic "door chime" that goes off every time Major Dundee's Apache nemesis Sierra Charriba is mentioned - it makes the film play like Pee Wee's Playhouse.
I have seen the longer version (with the old score) and am very happy that twelve more minutes could be restored - it's an original extended cut from 1965, fully scored with Amfitheatrof music. The new scenes go a long way toward making the story coherent and satisfying.
It is a troublesome thought to think of future producers rescoring films and tossing out the old tracks. I don't think that will happen in any regular way for a couple of reasons.
The expense of arranging and recording a new score is prohibitive; DUNDEE used two different-sized orchestras and a new Mariachi band and is definitely not something whipped up on a keyboard. The Mariachis really help, by the way, as a ten-minute party sequence was previously backed by an inane Mexican cue repeated several times to fill up the time.
There are technical limitations as well. A few famous films previous to the late 1960s (like GONE WITH THE WIND, Foliart's worst-case example) have the original audio elements required to actually replace the music, but most older pictures exist only in composite tracks that will not allow the music to be separated cleanly. Perhaps future technology could make this possible, I suppose.
I also don't think marketers would consider that old movies could have a new life in release if the music were replaced ... what are they going to do, put in rap music or calypso beats or something? WUTHERING HEIGHTS isn't going to seem more modern or more commerical with new music. I don't believe Columbia approached the DUNDEE problem from that angle; I heard some of the discussion before the decision was taken.
The safe bet is always for not altering an old movie, but I think the new MAJOR DUNDEE will be of interest as an isolated experiment. I'll want to hear what the response to the new score is - personally, I have the feeling that I'll need several showings to shake the old music free from my memories ... this is one picture I've seen far too many times. I've been recutting the movie offline on my own for years, trying to see what would happen if the story were streamlined, or the narration removed. I'd like to hear what happens when the old score is backgrounded more, and with at least a third of it left out entirely. Dramatic scenes and battles could play on their own. Mitch Miller could be heard only over the end titles, or not at all.
I rather hope the controversy over the score gets some more attention because I like that idea that more people might become curious about MAJOR DUNDEE. With the new reel of footage and Christopher Caliendo's reinterpreted soundtrack, it's going to be a new experience.
I am told that Sony Pictures' eventual DVD will have both scores encoded, so the viewer will be able to compare and choose on their own. Glenn Erickson.
Posted by DVD Savant at March 11, 2005 07:36 PM