Three Movies, Six Dancers, One Perfect Song

Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 20 February 2008 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)

[Congressman Billybob]

The greatest single piece of dance music ever written is The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss. It appears at a critical point in three movies, all favorites of mine. In each case it demonstrates the emotional power of the right music at the right time in the plot.

The first movie is an obvious use. Yul Brynner dances with Ingrid Bergman toward the end of Anastasia to this waltz. This occurs at the point where he begins to see that the woman he was grooming to pretend to be the surviving Anastasia, might actually be that surviving member of the assassinated Romanov family.

This movie has been remade twice since 1956, once straight and once as, of all things, a cartoon. Why do any studios, producers and directors persist in remaking classic films that are already the best of type? Nothing good can come of it. Does anyone remember the remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho? I hope not.

Many films of many types use music to build the emotions and increase the meaning of the critical scenes. This is standard procedure in modern films. But Alfred Hitchcock was the first director to fully understand this point and to design the right music for all his films.

In the best use of music it is more than just chewing gum for the ears. Nor is it the cheap theatrics of music recognized as threatening is routinely used when someone is about to be dispatched with a machete, chain saw, or whatever.

The second use of The Blue Danube involves a pair of non-human dancers. Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001, a Space Odyssey, was deliberately edited by Kubrick to match the classical music which was his score. The film had minimal dialogue and used music to tell much of the story.

The scene with the waltz appears early in the film, as the Pan Am space shuttle is approaching the great wheel of the space station. As the perspective switches from a fixed point of reference, to inside the shuttle, to inside the space station, and back, The Blue Danube plays in the background. It is clear that this is in fact a dance, and that death is the consequence if the dance is not executed perfectly.

The final example is an obscure film by Baz Luhrmann in 1992, called Strictly Ballroom. This film is, at one time, a documentary about ballroom dancing, a wickedly funny comedy, a touching tragedy, a love story between a young boy and girl, and a story of a father and son reunited. As you might expect, in such a movie, The Blue Danube appears repeatedly.

It appears in a major key when the characters are first introduced, before dancer Scott Hastings, in the middle of a contest routine, breaks away from the traditional forms and begins dancing his “new steps.” At other points in the movie, the Danube appears in a minor key at disastrous turns before the final denouement.

If you have not seen this movie, I recommend that you catch it on the Independent Film Channel, or through your preferred purveyor of small but excellent films on DVD. Do that right away, before you forget.

Of course, most excellent films today use music well and not just as an afterthought. Here are two others in which the music is not merely background but a character in the play. The first is Waking Ned Devine, an Irish film from 1998, in which the breaking of a violin string is a critical turning point of the plot.

Then, there is Say Amen, Somebody, a 1982 documentary about the creation of gospel music singing. When you watch this film and reach the song lyric Jesus Dropped the Charges, I expect you to send an e-mail thanking me for the recommendation of an excellent film.

Well, so much for discussing music with mere words. Next week we go back to talking about politics with mere logic.

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About the Author: John Armor practiced law in the Supreme Court for 33 years. He now lives on the Eastern Continental Divide in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu

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[free-n-TX]

I recall another movie that has the Blue Danube Waltz as a sweet backdrop in the 1939(?) film “Goodbye Mr. Chips”. Robert Donat won for Best Actor, I believe he beat Clark Gable for “Gone with the Wind”. In the movie, the shy schoolmaster goes on a holiday and meets his future wife played by Greer Garson, they dance to this music in Vienna and then go their own ways, only to meet again on a steamship on the Danube. The saying goes that if you are in love, the water in the Danube appears to be blue, but if you are not in love, it is not. Greer Garson comments to her travelling companion on how blue the river is....

[good old days]

I was thinking about the same scene. Here is the clip:

Goodbye Mr. Chips