MovieChat Forums > Raintree County (1957) Discussion > Musical Score doesn't seem too good.

Musical Score doesn't seem too good.


Yet Johnny Green received an Academy Award Nomination. Is it just an example of the MGM publicity department cracking it up to recoup some of the money they spent on the movie?

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[deleted]

I agree. There were some very annoying syrupy overly dramatic music segments that brought down entire scenes. Pity, because I think the movie as a whole is not that bad.


voting history: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=629013

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You should really see this in the light of the late 1950s. The score is dated, but really not bad for its day.

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The score is often called Johnny Green's masterpiece. It's very highly regarded.

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It did seem overblown and schmaltzy at times, but to me it was rather effective in the scenes where Liz Taylor's character's mask of sanity is cracking. By the way, I didn't much care for the title song that for some reason seems to be pretty highly regarded.

I'm here, Mr. Man, I can not tell no lie and I'll be right here 'till the day I die

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[deleted]

If something is dated it is by definition bad.

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"Not bad for its day"?

The 1930s through 1950s was the golden age of movie scores. There were film composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa, Jerome Moross, Hugo Friedhofer, and Bernard Herrmann. There has been no one in their league in the past half century. Occasionally there is a movie score today that is "not bad for its day".

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I felt it was pretentious that this movie has an "Overture" at the beginning. I can see having one if it is a musical, and they are introducing all the themes, but in this case I thought it was as though it was trying to be on par with "Gone With the Wind" or something. During the movie, I felt there was some effective use of music (foreboding and discordant, when Suzanna tells him about the fire), but sometimes it was downright distracting (like when Johnny and Nell are talking by the brook, after he comes back to Raintree County with Suzanna.

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The score is appropriate for the subject matter and its time (not the Civil War, the '50s!). Big, fat, lavish scores were the thing then, and I also think they were trying to approximate the histrionic score of GWTW, which they didn't. I also don't get why TCM plays overtures, entre-d'actes or whatever they are, and exit music. Does anyone really care? And it's weird they don't show end credits. Nowadays end credits go on for about 15 minutes and it's legally required, even if they speed up the crawl to about 2 seconds.

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TCM shows/plays the overtures, intermissions, exit music because that's how those movie were originally shown in theatres. That's one of TCM's things-showing the movies as they were presented originally and many people get a kick out of having the music included-especially since that was cut for most TV showings. As for end credits-many older films don't have them. People under long term contracts to movie studios weren't necessarily entitled to on screen credit in those days. If the movie had end credits originally then TCM shows them-again, as originally seen in theatres.
"Raintree County" had an overture since it was a big budget reserved seat attraction when originally released. The comparison to "Gone With the Wind" is apt since this was hoped to be another GWTW. But it wasn't. At all. It got bad reviews and broke even at the box office.

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All movies from the thirties to the sixties ended with a cast list, but 99 per cent of DVDs do not include it. Do the DVD companies save a lot of money by cutting the twenty second title? SAG should demand substantial compensation every time actors' credits are excised.

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All movies from the thirties to the sixties ended with a cast list

As a universal statement, that just isn't true. Many did, some didn't. Some put the cast list at the beginning (e.g., if it was a "prestige" production and they wanted the look of a theater playbill). Big roadshow releases like this one may have sold a souvenir program and thereby felt excused from providing the same details within the movie. All this was in the process of being codified (and put in place by negotiations), but it's surprising how abruptly some older movies ended.

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I agree. The pieces are not bad per se, but much of it doesn't quite seem to fit.
---
I hear his theme music, he's around here somewhere...

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The music score may have been the best part -- although the score has more to do with the dreamy aspirations of the 1950s than the Civil War.

The movie is very mediocre, though. The best scene is Monty and Elizabeth at the burned out mansion.

--
LBJ's mistress tells all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdviZbk-XI&;


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[deleted]

the score and film itself are nothing special IMO

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