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  • BAD composer movies?

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    I am seriously disturbed after seeing "Copying Beethoven."  Did anyone see this?  

    This film is almost as irritating as "Amadeus."    It is good enough - like that one - to present the time and place, but then it proceeds to depict one of the greatest artists of all time as a goofball who shows his ass, who makes fart noises to ridicule another composer, acts obnxious, cruel, annoying and stupid.  And once in a while acts like "a  genius." 

    This is Beethoven!  And Mozart -  What is wrong with these directors?  Milos Forman did Amadeus - a competent director though completely dependent on his scripts not being a real auteur - and he had a simplistic script which was ax-grindingly attempting to show the "Idiot Savant" Mozart as opposed to the ernest but mediocre Salieri - a simplicistic equation, since Mozart worked his ass off to be a composer, and his music didn't just fall out like turds. 

    And this Beethoven  film - very irritating, since it was by Holland who collaborated with the great Kieslowski earlier.  But on her own she directed a film which to put it simply, is lame and simplistic and DOES NOT RESPECT Beethoven.  I am not saying one should  treat him as a god, without any human qualities, but what one sees today is stuff like this over and over again - filmmakers, artists, writers, etc. who constantly try to find every negative or small or wretched characteristic of a great artist and then SHOVE IT IN YOUR FACE.  As if that is just as significant as the fact that these people created works and accomplished art that the entire world loves and admires.  What is the real significance of a human being? That he acted like a goofball once in a while or did something great?  In the modern era, all that people can see is the crap somebody did. Not his greatness. And it is a total distortion.  These so-called artists should have some RESPECT! Simply realize that a great artist is more than the sum of his faults. On top of that, Beethoven was not even noted by any contemporaries for being particularly disgusting. He was simply grouchy since he was going deaf!   Holy crap!   Try doing that if you are a composer.  Wouldn't you be a bit irritated? 

    Anyway, that film really annoyed me almost as much as the overrated Amadeus.  What is needed is a GREAT filmmaker like Bergman, or Kubrick, or Kieslowski - to make a film about a great composer.  Not this kind of  director.   

    However, this got me to thinking about what films were good composer bios.  One that was very good was "Song of Love" that is not even available on video!  (Except maybe on an archive collection I am going to check out.)  It was with Paul Henreid and Kathryn Hepburn.  It did not show the usual artificial Hollywood glossy bullshit, but rather accurately depicted Robert Schumann's bio with a good style and very good actors and managed to put just about everything known about Schumann into one movie!  There are two other films about composers I can think of - "Song to Remember" about Chopin and another one about  Lizst "Song Without End" (a lot of "songs"!)  and I seem to vaguely remember one about Grieg.   I am wondering if anyone can recall any other good or bad ones about the famous composers.  There haven't been very many.  There were some occasionally good TV docudramas by Ken Burns on Mahler, Debussy, etc. but other than these I can't think of anything else.
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    I saw a film a while ago I liked a lot called 'Notturno'. It is about Schubert. Here is an extract.

    Also Tous les matins du monde about Marin Marais. Some great scenes but the soundtrack is the really special thing. Jordi Savall is incredible.

    My least favourite film about a composer was a Song to Remember. I hated it so much that I written a long draft for a screenplay for a film about Chopin. If any directors stumble into this territory...It's still sitting around...
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    I remember watching one about Strauss years ago and then there was one with Gary Oldman playing Beethoven. Gary Oldman is a good actor of course but I remember the film as being overly sentimental (which is basically what Hollywood has been bogged down in doing for years now) and interspersed with moments of gargantuan frenzy and gloom. No humour at all.

    Are these people saying Beethoven didn't have a sense of humour? According to Milos Forman Mozart certainly did. And so did  the King of Austria, who was even  funnier than Mozart. 


    there it is.
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    I am always interested in great composers' fictionalized biographies, however when I read the synopsis of 'Copying Beethoven' I knew instinctively I would hate it convulsively and - as always - I followed my instincts and was spared it. I didn't get such premonitions with 'Immortal Beloved' (the Oldman film), but his resemblance to Beethoven's scowl was all that was impressive other than reaching ecstasy while listening to the master's excerpts in full Dolby Surround, and his obsession with his nephew was realistic. What they otherwise did, was invent wild stories that never happened, especially the characterization of the Immortal Beloved (how ugly that woman was seriously!) and what transpired between them. I was very disappointed but I am sure I would find this one a great film compared to the one poor William subjected himself.

     

    'Song of Love' was such a different film; so touching and classy if quite superficial for the music connoisseur, it treated its subjects with long lost respect, as well as interestingly portraying the often forgotten about young Brahms (the real male star of the film, for the main character of the film really was Clara). 

     

    'Amadeus' for me was really just a masterpiece of film-making, and Shaffer's writing just breathtaking. I also misunderstood it when I saw it as a kid when it came out, and felt that Mozart was nothing like the clown portrayed in the film, no matter how brilliantly his music was described and extolled. Many years later, having seen it again and again, I realized that the film was not depicting the composer as he was, but as Salieri chose to remember and relate him to the priest during his visits to the sanatorium. I guess this would have been more apparent in the theatre (it was originally a play later adapted for the screen), but in the movies one felt that Salieri's distorted flashbacks were the actual events that took place, and Mozart's grotesquerie the factual representation of the composer's character. Again, the main character of the film was Salieri, and it is through his prism that we are led into his soul where we experience both his adulation and execration for the great genius. I am happy that Forman did cut from the original film the scene where Mozart's wife visits Salieri and offers herself to him in order to extract favours for her husband. Although this could still have been construed as Salieri's own dementia, it would have been too big a leap.

     

    There are the famous Tony Palmer biographies of composers, ranging from the hilarious (Liszt) to the over-sombre (Wagner), with very interesting results in between (Shostakovich). For those interested, he has done quite a few!

     

    I believe that directors should remember they are addressing a wide audience which is unaware of the great composers' lives' details, and shouldn't tangentially invent wild untrue stories in order to show us how creative they are, as most of the audience (even today) takes everything for granted and leave their seats believing they just became privy to the innermost thoughts and torments of an artist. False impressions about anybody should be discouraged.
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    @Errikos said:


    'Amadeus' for me was really just a masterpiece of film-making, and Shaffer's writing just breathtaking. I also misunderstood it when I saw it as a kid when it came out, and felt that Mozart was nothing like the clown portrayed in the film, no matter how brilliantly his music was described and extolled. Many years later, having seen it again and again, I realized that the film was not depicting the composer as he was, but as Salieri chose to remember and relate him to the priest during his visits to the sanatorium. I guess this would have been more apparent in the theatre (it was originally a play later adapted for the screen), but in the movies one felt that Salieri's distorted flashbacks were the actual events that took place, and Mozart's grotesquerie the factual representation of the composer's character. Again, the main character of the film was Salieri, and it is through his prism that we are led into his soul where we experience both his adulation and execration for the great genius. I am happy that Forman did cut from the original film the scene where Mozart's wife visits Salieri and offers herself to him in order to extract favours for her husband. Although this could still have been construed as Salieri's own dementia, it would have been too big a leap.

    Wow Erik - that's a seriously good synopsis. I, alas, was not a kid when it came out at the cinema and I loved it. It's a cinematic (photographically) joy. I remember the cinema where I went had an enormous screen (pre multi screen days) and there are moments when Mozart's character is conducting (facing the camera and thus, we the audience become the orchestra), where for instance his arms are outstretched, thus filling the entire screen. Brilliant cinematography. The Queen of the Night scene is terrific.



    one other that I recall that I thought was very good at the time and that was really a made for TV film by Ken Russell. It covered the last period in the life of Frederick Delius and the relationship with his orchestrator Fenby ( maybe he was portrayed as writing A Walk in Paradise Garden at the time) and others - such as Percy Grainger. I think it was part of a BBC Monitor series and he did a few.
    also  did a film about Mahler. Was it any good? I don't remember it too well. And of course he did one called The Music Lovers which is about Tchaikovsky which is quite difficult to watch.
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    I remember a line from the Delius film where he advises Fenby "make sure you marry a woman that is in love with your music rather than you"... Great film in general as I remember. I liked the Mahler film too (I saw that when I was about 17, so not when it came out), I enjoyed the scenes where Mahler is walking through the woods of his lake estate composing and you can hear the music, it had a powerful effect on me... I found Robert Powell though a little too British for the role. I haven't seen the Tchaikovsky one, why is it difficult? Are they (typically...) concentrating the plot on homosexuality?
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    Tony Palmer? Are those TV documentaries or are they dramatized? 

    Yes, those Russell ones are highly variable.  For example, the one on Debussy which had Oliver Reed - an actor whom I absolutely worship - was nevertheless stupid and worthless crap as a film.  However, the one Russell did on Percy Grainger was excellent and in fact, one of the best films about a composer I've ever seen.  So Russell was, as usual, erratic in the extreme.  

    I notice you guys liked Amadeus but I HATED it. I hated the performance of the actor they got to play Mozart first of all.  He looked like he should have been shambling drunkenly on the streets of Liverpool after vomting at a punk rock concert instead of playing the greatest composer in history.  Or perhaps he should have played a chimp that became a human being in a wacky science fiction comedy.  Yeah, that would fit his range beautifully.  And I hated  the simplistic message -  Mozart was an effortless angel of music and Salieri was a hard-working hack.  Like that is a message to artists this  playwright just discovered!  Whoah! That's deep!   It is a bunch of shit, because first of all Mozart worked hard on his music, and so does any great composer.   And Errikos, usually I agree wholeheartedly but what are you saying?  That a mere shift in point of view suddenly makes something wonderful that would otherwise be stupid?  That doesn't happen for me.  But of course this is all a matter of taste. 

    I don't remember Song to Remember which is probably a good thing.
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    @Errikos said:

     I found Robert Powell though a little too British for the role. I haven't seen the Tchaikovsky one, why is it difficult? Are they (typically...) concentrating the plot on homosexuality?

    Robert Powell is British??????  I thought he was Albanian!!!

    Lets just say The Music Lovers has some difficult moments. I wonder how Trevor would get on scoring this scene?



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    @William said:

    I notice you guys liked Amadeus but I HATED it. I hated the performance of the actor they got to play Mozart first of all.  He looked like he should have been shambling drunkenly on the streets of Liverpool after vomting at a punk rock concert instead of playing the greatest composer in history.  

    I say!!! - steady on there old sport. I have relatives still living in Liverpool to this day - and they only vomit when they have go to Manchester.

    No - I loved Amadeus and  I thought Milos Forman's directing was a triumph. Let's not forget the film of itself was from the Schaeffer written stage play and was highly entertaining.
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    @William said:

    Tony Palmer? Are those TV documentaries or are they dramatized? 

    Yes, those Russell ones are highly variable.  For example, the one on Debussy which had Oliver Reed - an actor whom I absolutely worship - was nevertheless stupid and worthless crap as a film.  However, the one Russell did on Percy Grainger was excellent and in fact, one of the best films about a composer I've ever seen.  So Russell was, as usual, erratic in the extreme.  

    I notice you guys liked Amadeus but I HATED it. I hated the performance of the actor they got to play Mozart first of all.  He looked like he should have been shambling drunkenly on the streets of Liverpool after vomting at a punk rock concert instead of playing the greatest composer in history.  Or perhaps he should have played a chimp that became a human being in a wacky science fiction comedy.  Yeah, that would fit his range beautifully.  And I hated  the simplistic message -  Mozart was an effortless angel of music and Salieri was a hard-working hack.  Like that is a message to artists this  playwright just discovered!  Whoah! That's deep!   It is a bunch of ***, because first of all Mozart worked hard on his music, and so does any great composer.   And Errikos, usually I agree wholeheartedly but what are you saying?  That a mere shift in point of view suddenly makes something wonderful that would otherwise be stupid?  That doesn't happen for me.  But of course this is all a matter of taste. 

    I don't remember Song to Remember which is probably a good thing.

    Have a look at the dramatization of Shostakovich's life 'Testimony' by Palmer (based on Solomon's collected writings of Shostakovich), starring Ben Kingsley. It is quite a powerful film. I also enjoyed Percy Grainger's dramatization, I think his character was akin to Russell's own in certain respects...

    Like I said before, 'Amadeus' is really a film not about Mozart, but about how Salieri viewed Mozart; at least this is how I perceive it (if it was not meant that way I would then be in agreement with your objections). After all, Schaffer was not the first to write about the dynamics of the relationship between the two composers (see Pushkin). Additionally, the stories about how Salieri might have poisoned Mozart did circulate around Europe at the time, so much so that Salieri himself felt obliged to deny them (according to Moscheles who adds that even if that weren't the case, everybody knew how Salieri had done what he could to obstruct Mozart's career). 

    If Salieri felt like that, it is only understandable that he would portray his nemesis to the priest character like the drunken monkey you describe, for whom the chosen actor as you say was perfectly cast. We are not to surmise that Mozart was anything like that, but to witness Salieri's subjective, spiteful portrait of him which exaggerated some of the real Mozart's occasional crassness and toilet humour (he felt a freer spirit than the average bending courtier of his time). As far as his effortlessness at composing is concerned, it is known that he revised 1st finished drafts rarely if at all; that is not only due to genius, but also because he couldn't afford the time; he accepted as many simultaneous commissions as possible in order to live the expensive lifestyle he and - more so - his wife, coveted. Compared to other composers his age, he lived very extravagantly. His age is also indicative of the speed with which he composed, having completed almost 700 works before he hit 36 (understandable when you look at his scores which are 10-notes a page - but what notes!...). I don't want to say much more under the eagle eyes of the Viennese moderators who would be expert, suffice to say that the bibliography is replete with great composers' attestations to Mozart's composing facility (Brahms, Busoni, Tschaikovsky, etc.), but I don't think any of them meant that Mozart did not work on his art; merely that he didn't have to work as much (if as hard) as the rest of them, something that I agree could have been exaggerated as most comparisons are made with the laborious Beethoven. At least that is my take on this...

    @Paul: These are the kind of liberties directors take that I don't mind. Tschaikovsky could not play piano like that in his dreams, but that is a welcome stretch. Trevor I think would have his task carved out for him having to score a scene with a temp-track like that! However, with Hans' help I feel he has a good chance...
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     hmmm....  that's all I have to say.

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    no I did realize something. You're absolutely right.

    Mozart DID jump up and down on furniture like a chimp, he did compose everything instantaneously with no work and was a constantly annoying asshole to everyone whose music he ridiculed, Salieri did poison him despite all historical evidence not indicating that,  everything in this wonderful film was beautiful.  It did have lots of  pretty pictures though of course they were not of Vienna or Salzburg.  They were Prague which Milos had to film in.  But never mind that.  It is a perfect representation of Mozart, BECAUSE - as I did not realize UNTIL THIS THREAD - I need to shift my own concepts into the intuited (and certainly false)  mindset of Salieri.  Whose VIEWPOINT makes all this perfectly true.  Even though ALL OF MUSICAL HISTORY CONTRADICTS IT AND THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR ANYTHING DEPICTED IN THE FILM.  AND WATCHING AN ACTOR PORTRAYING MOZART LIKE A CHIMP IS A BIT IRRITATING.  Never mind any of that.  My mistake!   

    I stand corrected.

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    Actually there were some scenes shot in Budapest as well (I walked down some of the same streets), give the guy a break, he could not afford to film the thing in Vienna... Also, Salieri never poisoned Mozart in the film either; however he did commission the Requiem for the purposes of dramatic effect (as opposed to have the Viennese Count introduced late in the film for historical accuracy). The movie depicts Salieri's own warped opinion of Mozart, the joker who composed effortlessly  - IF that was really Salieri's opinion of him... It's supposed to suspend disbelief, but I suppose turning the genius into a clown was just too much for you, even if it was all in poor old Salieri's mind... I would still recommend the Shostakovich film to you, but stay away from Ken Russell's Liszt or Mahler to avoid further grief!...
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     sorry Errikos I got a little carried away there.  Thanks for that reference. 
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    I would ask, why make a film about a composer to begin with?  Or why make a film about any great artist?  I think a film about the trials and tribulations of some nameless beat cop somewhere would be more interesting than a biopic about a genius.  Think about it for a second, you're all composers, how would a movie about your life transpire?  How do you think a film about, say, Albert Einstein, Van Gogh, or Shakespeare would play out.  Unless you're a big fan you'd probably pass.  Unfortunately, films about art geniuses have to be, 'embellished' so to speak, to attract a distributor.  It's funny how you don't have to do a whole lot of embellishing when it comes to capturing the life of some loser serial killer for a film.  There has to be something to pull a paying audience in.   

     

    William mentioned that somebody like Kubrick should have done a subject like Mozart or Beethoven.  To be honest William, I don't think Kubrick would have touched it with a ten foot pole.  He tried touching Napoleon, a vastly more dynamic life than even the most gregarious composer, and he gave up. It took him about 20 years but he finally gave up.  Could you imagine Mozart through Tim Burton’s eyes? 

     

    I think Amadeus is one of the most misunderstood films of film history.  After viewing it, most people conclude, "so Mozart was an obnoxious immature little punk.  Hmmm! I didn't know that."  As Erik pointed out, Amadeus is about Salieri and not about Mozart.  Basically, Amadeus is about a pious composer who renounces his faith in God.  That's it.  The root of Salieri's jealousy is his belief that God chose, "this creature" called Mozart to be his instrument of beauty instead of him (Salieri). 

     

    In reality, the jealousy was probably the other way around but for a different reason.  If my music history serves me correctly, at the time, German composers had to fight and claw for respect in their own homelands because nobility favored Italian composers.  Why? Because they were... well, Italian.  It's known that Salieri was hired over Mozart for some teaching assignments and Mozart was constantly in financial need.  In fact in some cases, if Mozart knew Salieri applied to the same post he was considering, he wouldn't apply.  I could see some jealousy being sparked there but not for Salieri's musical prowess that's for sure.

     

    The funny thing is that when I read the title to this thread I thought you were talking about movies made about bad composers [:P]  Now there's an idea.  If it worked for Ed Wood, why not?    

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    Mozart, Beethoven and Debussy are dead... and me, I don't feel so good right now [H]
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    At all costs stay away from that Coco Chanel / Stravinsky movie; it takes the cake for the worst composer movie ever in the history of all universes, past and future... I think Ed Wood's illegitimate son directed it.
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    I recently ordered the DVD 'Bruckner's Decision'. 

    I can't comment on the quality yet because it's on its way, but the reviews on Amazon were favorable for the most part. 


    As for Amadeus, I never liked the way Mozart was depicted either.

    It's of course the Mozart seen through the eyes of Salieri, but still, the overall image of Mozart which lingers in the minds of most people having seen the movie becomes one of a giggling idiot, which Mozart was not. 
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    I think that the main point of Amadeus is that the director tried to mould the story into a re-telling of Cain and Abel with Salieri jealous of Mozart's gifts from god. Whether he was right to do so is up for debate.
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    I do like Foremans 'Amadeus'. True, the depiction of Mozart can not be accurate the way it is done. It is, and irritatingly so, focused on highlighting a very childish behaviour (it's actually the Mozart of the 'Bäsle'-letters). And true, there are many historical errors (there is an articel somewhere in a musicologist-journal listing the worst of them). But then there is this cinematic/artistic quality of really good cinema. And what I most like about the movie is the way it highlights Mozart's music. Remember the scene where Salieri describes the Adagio of the Gran Partita? An unforgettable moment and I bet this gave many people an understanding of Mozart who before didn't care at all about classical music. In my opinion the music is in a very good way the actual star of the movie. There is a scene where Mozart comes late to his own music - to me this is significant: it's not about the person (who is admittedly depictured in a ridiculously one-sided way) but about the music. However there is one point I really don't like about it and that's the way Salieri is treated as a composer. He's depicted as heavily inferior, a composer who has to be grateful for the slightest idea, creating utterly insignificant music as the little piano piece later on ridiculed by Mozart. His music is only there to demonstrate the tremendous superiority of Mozart. That really doesn't do his music any justice
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    There is a Tristan and Isolde movie that was released recently. That would quite possibly be the worst assignment as a composer, or perhaps the easiest if you just rip the original overture and arias but like that would happen. To compose film music for the guy that pretty much invented all the conventions the great film composers took their cues would be daunting. I suppose I could check IDMB but these things always end bad with the wrong composer doing the wrong thing because the director just doesn't understand the rather complex issue at hand when dealing in underscoring a movie with such ties to the great composers. My guess is a Rabin meets Early 2000 Zimmer fiasco with pedal tone madness, I do feel that the director should think more about the music in these cases and if at all possible, use music that was around at the time. An abled orchestrator could tie in any loose material but I think the music should really be a collection of pieces from the era at hand than a thru composed poorly written score that hints at some obvious themes that makes no impression on the laymen and just makes the more knowledgable film viewer shudder.