🎬 #58 The Lost Art Of The Overture.
🎬 #58 The Lost Art Of The Overture.
Films aren’t just the words on the page of the script brought to life exactly as intended. They’re bigger than that. The result of the original intention magnified and exploded in a brilliant way. I especially love when films reach for being something grander more like a performance - a ‘show’ or event in a way. They build anticipation through music and sound, even before the ‘story’ begins.
Two very famous examples of this follows in this week’s two films.
Massive films that you all know, but I’m not going to talk about anything other than the opening minutes where you might argue nothing happens but everything really does.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: DR ZHIVAGO
1965 Dir David Lean
I don’t need to talk about what makes this a great film - or why Lean is a fantastic filmmaker - everyone knows that. But what I especially love about the ‘Overture’ is that he dedicates 4 minutes and 33 seconds of run time to it.
Maurice Jarre’s music ringing out over a painting of birch trees by Maciek Piotrowski, with the words ‘Overture’ emblazoned boldly across it is a startling way to open a film. Not only is this an encapsulation of the entire film in a way - a kind of contracted story told purely in score, it also makes us feel like something important is about to be seen. In a similar way to how they play music in cinemas before the film begins. Lean boils up our excitement, and gives us a taster of the emotions we’re about to go through.
It sets the stage for the story and gets us primed for the journey ahead. Imagine being in the audience when the curtains go back and instead of being plunged right into the story - the filmmaker instead, wants you to soak in the atmosphere. Like warming up before exercise, this is a vital part of the film. Lean is priming our senses in these 4 mins to get us loose and ready to watch his film, to set the tone, literally.
TL;DR why should I spend 3 hrs 20 mins of my precious life watching this? Lean’s film complete with epic overture, rightly so, works in a way that’s closer to music than film - sweeping us up and along and through history.
*Available for a small rental fee for free on HBO Max and for a small rental fee on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play and YouTube in the US, as well as the UK.
Fact: Lean took a 14 year break from filmmaking after the release.
FILM TWO: 2001: A Space Odyssey.
1968 Dir Stanley Kubrick
Lean and Kubrick might have been in competition for the longest Overture - Kubrick’s intro to 2001 comes in at 4 mins 32 seconds, 1 second less than Lean. But the impact here is more about anticipation and drama. It establishes all this mostly through a black screen with Ligeti’s atmospheres playing over it, before blending into Also Sprach Zarathrustra - Strauss’ now famous tone poem.
A tone poem is suitable, because once again Kubrick’s film functions more like music than traditional narrative film. It takes us up in its vast emotional power and never lets go and he uses these opening minutes to prep us for what lies ahead.
By beginning on the unknown of blackness - the mystery and unsettling themes of what it means to have life are established even before a single image is shown. There is a sense of scale, vastness, power all from the music alone. Kubrick also included a modern redesign of the MGM logo which is still one of the coolest versions yet to be produced.
TL;DR why should I spend 2hrs 29minutes of my precious life watching this? The intro alone is as powerful a 4 mins of cinema as you’re ever likely to see - even before the film begins in earnest.
*Available for a small rental fee for free on HBO Max and for a small rental fee on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play and YouTube in the US, as well as the UK.
Fact: Kubrick had an entire original score composed before scrapping it. He’d used the classical pieces of music as placeholder before realising they were much more powerful than anything he could have had composed.