They Shall Have Music

“They Shall Have Music” (1939) is an odd but endearing mixture of juvenile delinquency drama and classical music. It’s a Samuel Goldwyn production and watching it, one can see the footprints of two 1937 films, his own production of “Dead End” and Universal’s monster hit “100 Men and a Girl.”

“Dead End” had been a huge hit for Goldwyn, and he was eager to replicate its success.  Ever since his big budget musical smorgasbord “The Goldwyn Follies” (1938), Goldwyn had wanted to put the violinist Jascha Heifetz, considered one of the century’s finest musicians, in the movies, but couldn’t find the right project.

I’m just surmising here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Goldwyn examined the grosses of “100 Men and a Girl”, which deals with Deanna Durbin and her ceaseless attempts to have Leopold Stokowski conduct an orchestra of musicians put out of work by the Depression. What could work for Stokowski could easily work for Heifetz.

Put Heifetz in a slum setting with underprivileged youth, include lots of classical music and watch the profits roll in.

Alas, “They Shall Have Music” was roasted by the critics and proved one of Goldwyn’s biggest bombs. It’s schmaltz, to be sure, but the music is wonderful and like so many movies of the era, it moves along and there’s lots of memorable sequences to make this well worth watching.

The film is centered on a music school for slum children, run by Professor Lawson (Walter Brennan) and his daughter Ann (Andrea Leeds, one year before her self-imposed retirement from films). The school is constantly scraping for money, and is continually one step ahead of the creditors, especially Mr. Flowers (Porter Hall, at his most obnoxious).

 

Frankie (Gene Reynolds) is basically a good kid who discovers the power of music when he finds some discarded tickets to a Heifetz concert. Thinking Heifetz is some sort of magician, instead he’s transfixed by the sight and sound of Heifetz performing the “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” by Saint-Saens. For those of us who are film music fans, we get the added pleasure of seeing Alfred Newman play the conductor in this piece, and he looks very natty in his white-trousered conductor threads.

 

Frankie finds a violin in his basement and takes lesson at the Lawson’s school. But the school is on the brink of foreclosure, and Frankie hatches the idea of having Heifetz perform at the school’s concert. With the determination of Deanna Durbin stalking Stokowski, Frankie, through a series of adventures, attracts the attention of Heifetz to the concert.

Playing a similar idealistic role in “Dead End” Joel McCrea is back as the love interest to Ann. I’m very fond of Joel McCrea, but this may be one of his most colorless roles. He can’t do a thing with it, and it’s not his fault.

Marjorie Main plays Frankie’s mom, and she’s a far different mother than her shattering scene in “Dead End.” Frankie runs away from his abusive father, but his mom is very supportive of her son.

 

Porter Hall is at his most despicable here, even more so than shooting Gary Cooper’s Wild Bill Hickok in the back in “The Plainsman” (1936). In “They Shall Have Music” Hall tries to take back the kid’s instruments, even as they are onstage for the concert! He doesn’t even wait for the concert to be over. The scenes leading up to the concert are very entertaining, as the neighborhood mothers stand firm in front of the school’s entrance, blocking the police and re-possessors from entering the building.

For Heifetz fans, the film is a joy. He gets five solos in the film, and it’s a pleasure to watch a film like this with minimal cutting so we can concentrate on the music. The finale finds him performing the final movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto accompanied by the school orchestra. Said orchestra members are played by The Pete Meremblum California Junior Symphony Orchestra, a group made up of young musicians. I have a dim memory of reading somewhere that, outside of his film duties, Alfred Newman was one of the orchestra’s conductors, but I can’t find the citation in any of my books. .

 

 Heifetz was no stranger to Hollywood. An earlier Hollywood connection was his 1928 marriage to actress Florence Vidor, ex-wife of the director King Vidor. Later, on he would commission glorious violin concertos from Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklos Rozsa.

Alfred Newman was nominated for his music director duties here in the Best Score category. It was one of Newman’s four nominations that year. His other nomination in the Best Score category was for “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and in the Best Original Score category he was nominated for “The Rains Came” and “Wuthering Heights.”

I think the Best Score category was for scores that were adaptations of pre-existing music, but that doesn’t explain the nomination for the Hunchback or Korngold’s nomination for “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex”, both of which are substantially original scores. To further muddy the waters, Aaron Copland’s score for “Of Mice and Men” was nominated twice, once in both categories. Strange are the ways of the Academy Awards. (Newman lost that year to “Stagecoach” in the Best Score category).

I watched “They Shall Have Music” on a VHS tape, and with the news that the Samuel Goldwyn film catalog will be released on DVD and Blu Ray next year, this film may be one I would gladly update for. It’s corny, to be sure, but its heart is in the right place and the music can’t be beat. Just lower your expectations if you’re a Joel McCrea fan.

Stars and Stripes Forever

After watching a spectacular fireworks display at the local park, and still experiencing a patriotic high, it seemed appropriate to pull out my VHS copy of “Stars and Stripes Forever” (1952), Twentieth Century Fox’s Technicolor tribute to march composer John Philip Sousa. There’s only the modicum of a plot, but the performances are so likeable and the music is so great, that I forgave the lack of story and dramatic incident.

Admittedly, I don’t know too much about the real life of Sousa, but if there’s no real drama regarding his life, then I’m fine with not making up conflict and letting us instead enjoy the music and period trappings.

Clifton Webb stars as John Philip Sousa and he’s great as always. I can watch him in anything. We usually think of Webb as the caustic, snobbish type, but he can also be remarkably subtle and moving.

A few weeks ago I watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, “Titanic” (1953) where he and Barbara Stanwyck most believably play a long-time married couple watching their marriage unraveling and his betrayal that their son is not Webb’s. The scenes with Webb and son on the sinking deck (hardly giving anything away here, folks) are very moving. Webb accomplishes so much with so little.

In “Stars and Stripes Forever” Webb enjoys wedded bliss with his wife (Ruth Hussey) and three children. Perhaps there’s not enough Sousa and too much footage given over to a romance between sousaphone inventor Willie Little (Robert Wagner) and dancer Lilly Becker (Debra Paget), but they are both so beguiling and charming in this that I didn’t care. In fact, it may be the most likable performance from Wagner I’ve ever seen. He’s almost like a stalker in his attempts to play under Sousa, but he’s so upfront about it and so eager to be in the presence of the great man that I rooted for him the entire time.

(I do know enough about Sousa’s life that he himself invented the sousaphone and not some guy named Willie Little. But then how else is Willie going to ingratiate himself with Sousa than by telling him about his invention of the sousaphone? It’s a great scene and Webb’s befuddlement is a joy to behold.)

There’s also a very amusing scene where Sousa is leading the United States Marine Band at a White House function hosted by the 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison.

The receiving line is taking too long and a presidential aide asks Sousa to play something livelier to move the line along. Sousa plays his famous march “Semper Fidelis” and President Harrison is pleased that the music’s quick tempo makes those in the receiving line move much faster. (They should play that march at the receiving lines at some wedding receptions I’ve been to.)

I’ve always had an interest in U.S. presidents and can’t recall another film where Harrison was portrayed. If anyone knows of any other films featuring Benjamin Harrison, I’d love to hear about it.

Arguably the best studio orchestra in the 1950s was the Twentieth Century Fox one and with Music Director Alfred Newman leading the orchestra you know that the famous Sousa marches are going to be given a first-rate treatment. Many of Sousa’s most famous marches are performed and they can get the blood flowing in a corpse.

For the Olympics buffs out there, the film’s orchestrations are provided by Leo Arnaud, whose own Olympic fanfare is as well-known as any Sousa march.

The Sousa band not only played his marches, but other compositions as well. We get robust performances of “Turkey in the Straw”, the “Light Cavalry Overture”, “Dixie” and a stupendous choral performance of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Fox choral director Ken Darby is responsible for the latter, and when Newman and Darby teamed up you knew one’s ears would be burning with pleasure for the length of the movie.

There’s a lot of musical talent here and if one of the film music labels ever released the tracks it would make a wonderful album of American music.

Speaking of musical talent, Debra Paget as showgirl Lily Becker has a terrific number called “When It’s Springtime in New York” and also dances to Sousa’s “Washington Post” march. She’s a wonderful dancer and it’s too bad she didn’t have the opportunity to do more musicals. I always wondered about that.

Fox was known for their musicals starring blondes like Alice Faye, Betty Grable, June Haver and Marilyn Monroe. Did Zanuck not want to top line a brunette in one of the studio’s musicals? I know musicals were slowly easing their way out in popularity in the 1950s, but I still would have loved to have seen Debra Paget in more musicals.

In addition to the music, the film benefits from the glorious Technicolor that Fox lavished on their musicals. Even in my slightly faded VHS copy of the film, the colors burst through.

Director of “Stars and Stripes Forever” is Henry Koster, a great favorite of mine. He directed many a movie I’m very fond and many of them are what some people might pejoratively call “nice movies.”

Not from me, though. There’s a lot of heart and humanity in Koster’s films but with the treacle held back. I think he’s incredibly underrated and anyone who schedules a Henry Koster Film Festival would earn the happy gratitude of the attending audience.

I wrote about Koster before in my look at “The Robe” (1953) – I know, shoot me, but I love it. One can’t go wrong with any of these titles: two Deanna Durbin films “First Love” (1939) and “Spring Parade” (1940); “The Bishop’s Wife” (1947); “Come to the Stable” (1949); “Harvey” (1950); and “A Man Called Peter” (1955). There’s many others in his neglected filmography.

If memory serves, “Stars and Stripes Forever” was due to be released on DVD about five years ago, but it never happened. Since “The Egyptian” (1954) was announced for release at about the same time, and it’s finally coming out this month on DVD on the specialty Twilight Time label, I’m hoping that we will soon see “Stars and Stripes Forever” on DVD. It’s a movie to be enjoyed over and over again, not just on the Fourth of July, but all year long.

The Robe

I finally got around to watching the new DVD of “The Robe” (1953) and was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I’ve always liked the film, mainly due to the glorious Alfred Newman score, but always found it more than a bit plodding and talky.

But Twentieth Century Fox put a ton of money into restoring this historically significant movie (the first Cinemascope offering) for DVD and Blu-Ray release, and the results look spectacular. I felt like I was watching it for the first time and the two hour and 10 minute running time just flew by. I was captivated from beginning to end, even while recognizing its faults.

“The Robe” details the effect the title garment - the robe Jesus was wearing when he was crucified - has on the Roman centurion Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton) who led the crucifixion. Thanks to the Robe and the early Christians he meets on his journey, he is converted to Christianity and returns to Rome, under the rule of the depraved Caligula (Jay Robinson).

“The Robe” was based on a huge best seller written by Lloyd C. Douglas, a Protestant minister whose books often contained spiritual themes, such as “Magnificent Obsession” and “Green Light.” The novel really struck a chord with World War II audiences, with its message of faith and trust in mankind.

The movie follows the book’s core incidents, though much was obviously left out.

There is much to enjoy while watching “The Robe” but, sadly, the acting is not one of them. Richard Burton earned his second of seven Academy Award nominations and this was one nomination that was not deserved. His magnificent speaking voice is pretty monotone throughout and his facial grimacing and contorting when faced with the magic properties of The Robe are pretty embarrassing now. Jean Simmons who plays Diana, who fell in love with Marcellus when they were children, isn’t given much to do though she looks as beautiful as ever and has a good scene where she denounces Caligula before the gathered Roman court.

Acting chops go to, no kidding, Victor Mature, as the Greek slave Demetrius. Always a very likable actor, Mature gives one of his best performances as the anger-filled slave who sees his life transformed by the events at Calvary.

The other standout performance is Jay Robinson’s gloriously fruity Caligula. Caligula was the maddest of all Roman emperors and Robinson is a joy to watch in each scene. He’s even loonier in the film’s sequel, “Demetrius and the Gladiators” (1954), where he thinks the Robe will give him magic powers.

The film is happily loaded with familiar faces: Dean Jagger as one of the first Christians; Michael Rennie as Peter; Torin Thatcher plays Burton’s father, a Senator who pleads with his son not to incur Caligula’s wrath; Richard Boone makes the most pensive Pontius Pilate imaginable; 1950s science fiction hero Jeff Morrow engages in a pretty good sword duel with Burton; Dr. Pretorius himself, Ernest Thesiger, plays the wise Tiberius; future General Burkhalter Leon Askin plays a slimy tradesman; and an uncredited Michael Ansara plays Judas with great theatricality, aided by some impressive thunder and lightning effects. Also uncredited is Mae Marsh, former leading lady to D.W. Griffin, as the woman who assists Demetrius after he is beaten by the Romans.

For a director unused to the widescreen process, Henry Koster does a good job of positioning his actors within the wide Cinemascope frame, especially in the Calvary sequence and the scene where Burton and other early Christians stage a raid on a Roman prison to rescue Demetrius

Koster will likely never earn praise for his style, but he directed many movies I’m very fond of. There’s always a great deal of warmth that shine from his films. Unlike the stereotypical tyrannical director, I always get the impression that Koster liked people, imperfections and all. He directed several of my favorite Deanna Durbin films, including “First Love” (1939); “Spring Parade” (1940); and “It Started with Eve” (1941). Two of his best loved films that remain popular today are “The Bishop’s Wife” (1947) and “Harvey” (1950). His name also appears on the charming “Come to the Stable” (1949) and the John Philip Sousa biography “Stars and Stripes Forever” (1952). Good movies all, and I think Fox entrusted him with “The Robe” due to the humanity he brought to his projects.

(Koster was also lucky enough to be married to uber-cutie Peggy Moran, a starlet best remembered today for her heroine turn in “The Mummy’s Hand.” (1940). If I was married to Peggy Moran, I’d celebrate humanity too.)

The best part of “The Robe” is the exquisite musical score of Alfred Newman. It’s one of the most famous scores in movie history, and was one of the first scores to have its excerpts re-recorded for LP back in the early 1950s. The score, re-issued several times over the years on LP, cassette tape and DVD, has rarely been out of print. Quite an achievement.

It’s a magnificent score, filled with beauty, lyricism, tenderness and excitement. So many highlights I can’t begin to list them all, but I always liked the exquisite treatment of the love theme as Marcellus’ boat leaves the Roman dock for Palestine and Diana looks at him from the pier. Ironically the film’s most famous theme, the glorious “Hallelujah” chorus at the end, was likely not Newman’s but composed by Austrian composer Ernst Toch for the 1939 film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

Toch was a well-known composer in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s who fled his country during the rise of Nazism. He settled in Hollywood where he taught, composed symphonies and also wrote musical scores for movies. Newman was incredibly busy in 1939 and by necessity farmed out portions of his scores to ghostwriters (a common practice then and now). There’s pretty strong documentation that Toch, not Newman, composed the Hallelujah chorus in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in the scene where Quasimodo swings from the bell tower to rescue Esmeralda from hanging.

Newman liked it and re-used it in his Academy Award-winning score for “The Song of Bernadette” (1944), but it’s given its most lavish treatment for the final scene of “The Robe.” In the 1950s, no other studio orchestra could match the 20th Century Fox Orchestra and Chorus, and they really do the piece justice. We’re talking goose bumps here.

Careful listeners can also hear it played faintly during the climatic scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) when George Bailey is running and yelling through snowy Bedford Falls on his way home.

“The Robe” was a massive hit for Fox, and resulted in a very entertaining sequel the next year called “Demetrius and the Gladiators.” Victor Mature was back, as was Michael Rennie’s Peter and Jay Robinson’s Caligula. They’re joined by Susan Hayward (as Messalina), Debra Paget, Ernest Borgnine, Anne Bancroft, Barry Jones (as Claudius) and a pre-Blacula William Marshall.

In one of the great injustices in Oscar history, Alfred Newman’s score for “The Robe” was not nominated for Best Score. (See, “Dark Knight” fans, the Oscars have long been known for head-scratching omissions). Composer Franz Waxman was so incensed at this that he resigned from the Academy in protest. The following year when he was given the assignment of “Demetrius and the Gladiators”, he re-used several of Newman’s themes in key scenes and the two shared a title card on the film.

Gerry, the guy I rent movies from in Westmont, Westmont Movie Classics (over 15,000 titles!) tells me “The Robe” is one of his most popular titles, renting out pretty much every weekend. He purchased extra copies to meet demand. More than 50 years later, “The Robe” still continues to entertain and inspire.

Born to Dance; Speedy

“Born to Dance” (1936) is oodles of fun to watch, 105 minutes of terrific Cole Porter songs, dancing, comedy and luscious production design in the best M-G-M style. There’s a lot of exuberance on display here, which translates into good will for the audience.

Eleanor Powell was one of the great female dancers in the movies, and she’s shown to her best advantage here. The final number is a little ditty called “Swingin’ the Jinx Away” set on the deck of a mock battleship. It runs more than 10 minutes along, boasts seemingly a hundred or so extras, but Powell commands center stage and is amazing to watch. She sports a huge grin throughout the whole number, and golly, I think she means it. In her numbers she looks like she’s having the time of her life as she taps away. With other dancers, sometimes the smiles look forced, like Ray McDonald in the “Hoe Down” number from “Babes on Broadway” (1941). But dancers like Powell and Rita Hayworth seem to attain a special glow when dancing and it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Equally enjoyable is James Stewart in one of his first movies. He exhibits a pleasant singing voice as he croons “Easy to Love” to Powell and joins the cast and crew in the exuberant “Hey, Babe, Hey” number. He kicks up his heels in the number, and appears astonished, and pleased with himself, that he’s keeping up with professional dancers like Powell and Buddy Ebsen.

The trailer on the DVD is interesting, because it highlights selections from the Porter score, but does not highlight the song that has stood the test of time, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Not the swinging version known thanks to Frank Sinatra, the song here is sung at a more languid tempo by Virginia Bruce. I love the look she gives Stewart as she finishes the song, a long lingering close up of her over a champagne glass. That inviting look says more than pages of dialogue could.

“Born to Dance” is probably the best sounding of the 1930s M-G-M musicals, thanks to Alfred Newman’s musical direction. He was freelancing at this point in his career before deciding on a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox in the late 1930s. It’s fun to think what he could have bought to M-G-M, but with Lennie Hayton, Johnny Green, Conrad Salinger and others in the future, the M-G-M musical was in more than capable hands. But there’s no denying the extra oomph that Newman brings here.

There’s a riotous scene after the “Easy to Love” number when a suspicious cop (Reginald Gardiner) spies Powell dancing while Stewart air conducts the orchestra. Gardiner stops the proceedings, holds up his hands, and then proceeds to air conduct the music in a manner befitting a symphony conductor, with the music taking on the flavor of a vast symphony. Gardiner’s facial expressions are priceless here, and his great mop of hair is flying every which way as he conducts the music to an ever faster pitch.

The scene must have been popular with audiences, since the next year in the delightful Astaire musical “A Damsel in Distress” he does a similar scene, only this time with grand opera.

Any movie with Raymond Walburn as a dimwitted admiral is OK with me. There’s also an astonishing number Virginia Bruce called “Love Me, Love Me Pekingese” which has to be seen to be believed, and I mean in a good way. This love song to her favorite pooch, with accompanying approval from the lads of the U.S. Navy, is one of the many highlights of this most enjoyable movie.

Rating for “Born to Dance”: Three stars.

I also watched “Speedy” (1928), Harold Lloyd’s last silent feature, and a wonderful time capsule of a movie. Filmed on location in New York, there’s a marvelous sequence where Harold takes his girlfriend (Ann Christy) to the Coney Island amusement park for a day. It looks like a wonderful place to spend the day. I’ve heard relatives speak of the fun they used to have at Chicago’s version of Coney Island, Riverview, and think it must have been something like the Coney Island on display here.

There’s a fun cameo by Babe Ruth too, as cabbie Harold gives The Babe a cab ride from Hell. What fun to see a true baseball legend.

“Speedy” ends with a big chase scene and while it doesn’t contain the laughs and thrills that Harold gave us in “Girl Shy” (1924) or “For Heaven’s Sake” (1926) it still astonishes us with its stunt work, especially since it was filmed on actual New York streets. No soundstage work here.

What I like about a lot of Harold’s movies is he knows how to leave us laughing. Many of his films have a final scene or image that gives the audience one final laugh, sending us out on a grinning high. “Speedy” is no exception and its last image is one of Harold’s best.

Rating for “Speedy”: Three stars.

Son of Fury

“Son of Fury” (1942) is a rousing adventure film in the best tradition of Hollywood’s Golden Age. It was a real treat to re-discover it as part of the new DVD collection of Tyrone Power films.

Set in the latter half of the 18th Century, “Son of Fury” tells the story of Benjamin Blake (Roddy McDowell) who is cheated out of his inheritance by his uncle (a sneering George Sanders) who makes Benjamin his bond servant. Roddy grows up to be Tyrone Power, who escapes to the South Seas where he finds a treasure bed of pearls and an even greater treasure (Gene Tierney in a sarong). Newly wealthy, he returns to England to reclaim his estate.

There’s nary a wasted moment in the film, which clocks in at 98 minutes. It’s wonderfully escapist movie viewing, and shows why Tyrone Power was 20th Century Fox’s prime male box office star. As I’ve noted before, he always looks good in costume pictures, though I suspect he was somewhat disdainful of them. (Power’s best performance is in the harrowing “Nightmare Alley” (1947) with Power as a carny worker turned scam artist. It’s a wonderful film but was a huge box office bust, so 20th Century Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck put Power back in the adventure films which were consistently successful.)

Like so many classics from the 1930s and 1940s, the supporting cast is exceptionally strong. Just take a look at this who’s who of Golden Age character actors who appear in “Son of Fury”: Elsa Lanchester, John Carradine, Harry Davenport, Dudley Digges (who steals every scene he’s in as the lawyer Bartholomew Pratt), Halliwell Hobbes, Arthur Hohl, Pedro de Cordova, Lester Matthews, Dennis Hoey (Inspector Lestrade from the Universal Sherlock Holmes films) and as a judge, Robert Greig. A few postings ago I wrote about Greig’s butler role in “Trouble in Paradise” so it was nice to see him in a different role than his typical servant portrayal.

The film also marks the final screen appearance of Frances Farmer in the supporting role of Sander’s daughter who Benjamin has a romance with. Farmer was one of the most promising actresses of her generation, until alcoholism and mental health issues put a halt to her career.

In the other female role, Gene Tierney is about as Polynesian as I am, but she’s so gorgeous we don’t mind. Many of the South Seas scenes are accompanied by another lush Alfred Newman score, with one of those unforgettable island melodies that he seemingly wrote in his sleep.

When the film was released in 1942, the South Seas scenes were sepia tinted. (Much like the Caribbean scenes in Errol Flynn’s “The Sea Hawk” two years previously). When the film was successfully re-issued over the years the sepia tints were gone. I was hoping when the DVD was announced that the sepia tinting would be re-instated but it was not to be. That’s OK, because the transfer on the film is exquisite.

The film was directed by John Cromwell (father of the actor James Cromwell) and he’s woefully underrated as a director. I was looking at his filmography and I was surprised to see how many of his films are really first rate. My favorite film of his is the sublime 1937 version of “The Prisoner of Zenda” with Ronald Colman and Madeline Carroll. It’s a shame that these two films are his only entries in the swashbuckling field, as these films show he was able to bring out the best in this type of material.

Rating for “Son of Fury”: Three stars.

Captain from Castile

I’ve always enjoyed “Captain from Castile” (1947) even while recognizing its faults. It’s lavish, yet kind of slow-moving, and lacking in physical action. On the plus side, it’s never boring, gorgeous to look and the score is to die for.

“Captain from Castile” was a big production for 20th Century Fox. Reportedly in production for more than three years, it tells the tale of Cortez’s conquest of Mexico. But he really doesn’t conquer it in the movie. After two hours and 20 minutes, the movie ends with the Spanish army massed to conquer the Aztec nation. So no big battle scenes here, unfortunately.

Tyrone Power stars as Pedro de Vargas, a Castilian nobleman who runs afoul of the Spanish Inquisition, must leave Spain and heads to the New World to seek fame and fortune. He brings along a peasant girl, Catana, played in her film debut by Jean Peters, who is hopelessly in love with him. He joins the Cortez expedition, and Cesar Romero gives probably his best-ever performance as the fortune-hunting Cortez. With his mischievous grin, you can understand why men were willing to travel halfway around the world to a mysterious new world to stake their fortunes.

Fox shot the movie in Mexico, and the Technicolor cameras do a splendid job of capturing the magnificence of the country. In two scenes we can see in the background volcanoes belching huge whorls of black smoke in the air.

And then there’s the score. Sometimes a musical score for a movie can be so grand it becomes foreground music, not background music, and becomes the guiding force of a film, moreso than the actor, director, cinematography, etc.

Anyone who has ever seen “Captain from Castile” knows what I’m talking about.

Alfred Newman’s score for “Captain” is one of the jewels in film music, a symphonic masterpiece brimming with passion, excitement, romance and adventure.

The score’s most famous piece, the “Conquest March”, is heard in all its glory in the final five minutes. The USC marching band adopted the piece as its signature tune, so thousands of people are familiar with it even though they may not associate it with the film. I’ve heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform the piece live and it gave me goosebumps.

Catana’s melody is an inspired creation, and covers the romantic scenes with a fine sheen. Glenn Erickson, a critic I greatly respect (www.dvdsavant.com), also loves the score save for Catana’s theme, which he describes as “weird.” I think weird is too harsh a word, but I think I know what he means. It’s not a traditional love theme, and when it’s played in the high registers of the strings, as here, it has an ethereal quality, as if Catana is a ghost or a memory, instead of a simple peasant girl. But the melody is so gorgeous we don’t mind. It’s almost as if Newman was placing her on a higher plane, like a Castilian Virgin Mary, a la his vision scenes for “The Song of Bernadette” for which Newman won a well-deserved Oscar in 1943.


My favorite part of the film is the first 45 minutes set in Spain. Most of action takes place here, what with the Inquisition, a prison escape and a horseback chase through the countryside. Thrilling stuff.

The DVD transfer is fine, though these first 45 minutes seem a little dark to me. I’m not familiar with how the film originally looked, and though many of the scenes take place at night or in prison cells, I think it could be brightened up a bit.

Enamored of the movie as a mere youth after seeing it on television, I went to the library to read the book on which it was based. Samuel Shellabarger was a very popular writer of historical fiction decades ago, though his work is rarely revived today. It’s too bad, because the man had a God-given gift for story telling.

The second half of the book is full of marvelous, blood-thirsty action. If memory serves, all the battle scenes fall in the second half, and at one point Catana is captured by the Aztecs and strapped naked atop a temple ready for a human sacrifice. The Spanish attack and Pedro rescues Catana and carries her naked self down the temple steps, arrows flying about and Pedro and his comrades slashing their way through the enemy. That scene made quite an impression on me, and I would love to see that on screen someday. Perhaps a remake is in order? But please, keep Hans Zimmer away.

Despite its flaws, “Captain from Castile” remains splendid entertainment. I look forward to seeing - and hearing it - again.

Rating for “Captain from Castile”: Three stars.