MovieChat Forums > The Ace of Hearts (1923) Discussion > Music: ripoff?

Music: ripoff?

posted 14 years ago by lor_
4 replies | jump to latest

Many have commented on how much they admire Vivek Maddala's music for the TCM edition of this film. To the contrary, he constantly was reworking a very familiar Nino Rota theme from The Godfather -not exact imitation but way too close for comfort. To my mind it was strictly a ripoff, and I don't understand how folks judging a music competition could have missed this.

"Three quarters of what is said here can be completely discounted as the raving of imbeciles" - Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire (1958)

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] heberald26 11 years ago

I totally noticed the Godfather music piece, I'm not sure but I think the Godfather 2 THE IMMIGRANT cue is the one that seems to be in this film.

It's a little distracting watching this and have cues that remind me of The Godfather.

[–] pery-1 11 years ago

I found it OK, but somewhat repetitious like most modern scores, rather than true variety to reflect the action as in most original scoring. It added to the meditative feel of this overly slow paced film.

[–] JackBluegrass 9 years ago

26-year-old Vivek Maddala's score for this movie actually appears original to me.

The Young Film Composers Competition in 2000 for the opportunity to score that 1921 silent film brought 200 entries from composers throughout the U.S. That's according to the special features video on the TCM/Warner Archives DVD of the film. Maddala was among the three finalists, judged by experienced present-day film scorers.

If Vivek ripped off Rota's - or anyone else's scoring - working professional scorers would catch that and reject Maddala's entry.

Ultimately, professionals said that Maddala won and assigned him "the wall-to-wall" musical/sound effect score. The chairman of the judging committee clearly tells us the specific difficulties a scorer faces in providing all background sound for a now-classic feature film of that length.

Maddala met that challenge at age 26. We'll be hearing his work up on the big screen in future.

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