MovieChat Forums > Green Dolphin Street (1947) Discussion > Music Score

Music Score

posted 13 years ago by laxlon
2 replies | jump to latest

This is a big mess of a movie but you gotta love it anyway. Especially the music.

But I have a problem with the music score. It has one of the most beautiful themes ever written for a film yet the orchestrations of that theme I find very unsatisfying. I want to hear the main theme with sweeping violins and a full orchestra that make me visualize a magnificent clipper ship at full sail on a windy sea.

Instead, the opening credits are full of build-up then bombastic percussion of the main theme. And it is hardly heard again in a satisfactory way until almost the end of the film when it is played quietly with violins. Kind of a waste. Anyone else feel that way?

[–] SouthBandWatch 9 years ago

It has one of the most beautiful themes ever written for a film yet the orchestrations of that theme I find very unsatisfying. I want to hear the main theme with sweeping violins and a full orchestra that make me visualize a magnificent clipper ship at full sail on a windy sea.

I feel the same way about the score. I watched it for the fist time yesterday, and was disappointed the beautiful theme didn't play a larger part in the story telling. It was only toward the end when Marguerite was at the nunnery that I enjoyed the softly played score.

It is such a beautiful score I wish it had been treated as an integral part of the storyline, i.e. the theme from Wuthering Heights (1939).

[–] powley1 9 years ago

I adore the music to this film and love the way it is utilized and orchestrated in all the various scenarios -- especially when Donna Reed falls asleep on the beach and the tide comes in. I will never understand why the music is only remembered in a jazz rendition -- something not even alluded to in the film score ! The oriental flavouring is greatly done when Hart gets taken by the Chinese sales lady....then wakes up robbed and lost. Wonderful underscore !