Selenite-blogging, essay 4 of 5 blog entries
on First Men in the Moon (1964)
on First Men in the Moon (1964)
Part One: A
Salute to Laurie Johnson
The great movie composers inevitably seem to get associated
with one particular score—the one that would play behind them when they accept
a Lifetime Achievement Award or receive an MBE from the Queen.
For Max Steiner, it would be Gone With the Wind (1939).
For Victor Young, The Quiet Man
(1952). For Bernard Herrmann, Psycho (1960).
Composer of the wonderful score of First Men in the Moon (1964), Laurie Johnson is forever tagged as
the composer of The Avengers TV
theme, the music that must have played behind him when he was awarded the MBE
(Member of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to music in
2014. It’s one of the great TV themes.
But there’s much more to Laurie Johnson than just The Avengers, case in point being his
very fine score for First Men in the Moon. As the film moves from Victoriana to the
weirdness of life insider the moon’s caverns, the music grows increasingly
strange. In this first clip, the
Selenites are introduced with a blast of dissonance which drops into a
syncopation at the 26 second mark, effectively suggesting the movement of
the Selenites along the cave passageways.
Then a piercing high-pitched Selenite theme abruptly appears,
eerily meshing keyboard with strings. Staccato brass echo the melody. From this point, whenever the Selenites approach, the theme returns.
Surprisingly, First
Men in the Moon only contains one traditional Harryhausen monster
scene. The giant mooncalf provides this
one opportunity for a chase and attack.
Naturally, the mooncalf gets his own theme, both ponderous and
relentless, echoing the beast’s size and threat.
In one of the film’s most visually opulent scenes, designed
by Harryhausen to suggest the magnificent sets of She (1935) and A Matter of
Life and Death (1945), the scientist Joseph Cavor mounts a seemingly
endless staircase that leads upward toward the throne of the Selenite ruler,
the Grand Lunar. In this clip, Johnson’s
staircase theme begins at 1:26, striking an almost religious note that
appropriately reflects the look of awe on Cavor’s face.
Now 88 years old, Laurie Johnson is one of the few members
of the First Men in the Moon crew
still with us. Over the years, he has
scored more than 400 films and television episodes. Classically trained, he enjoyed adding experimental new
sounds (like the synthesized Selenite theme) to traditional orchestral arrangements.
You can hear his adventurousness in First
Men in the Moon as he moves from Gustav Holst-style themes for Victorian
England to a discreet background of electronica ever-murmuring behind the
Selenites. It’s a magnificent piece of
work.
Part Two: My Three Favorite Scores to Harryhausen
Movies
 |
| Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom) at the organ in Mysterious Island (1961). |
Considering how the Charles Schneer/Ray Harryhausen movies
tend to coast on second-tier directors and actors, I’m always amazed that they so
often invested in the very finest music composers. In return, Schneer and Harryhausen received
scores that amplified the production values and technical effects, making the evocation of their fantasy worlds both more believable and dramatic. A great score helps a lot!
For my three favorites scores to Harryhausen movies, it may appear that I’m picking one
score apiece from three composers in order to avoid simply picking three
Bernard Herrmann scores. After all,
Herrmann’s musical reputation is stellar and ever-growing, and I have four excellent
Herrmann scores to choose from (The
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, The Three
Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island,
and Jason and the Argonauts). Also, I could be criticized for leaving out a
fourth major composer—Miklos Rosza—who worked on the Harryhausen movie The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. But my selections really are my personal three favorites—the
other Herrmann-scored movies would be in fourth through sixth place and, as for
the Rosza score, I think it’s far from his best.
My favorite of the Bernard Herrmann scores is his
wonderfully varied work on Mysterious
Island. It’s got swirling
hurricane-evoking action music to launch the adventure, a set of moody quiet
themes for the mysterious island, and quirky set pieces for each of the
monsters. This selection—Elena/The
Shadow/The Bird—begins with a delicate character piece for the young heroine, followed
by some very Vertigo-esque
forebodings, then (best of all) simultaneously comic and threatening music to
accompany the attack of a giant flightless bird.
The film composer Jerome Moross is justifiably most famous
for his classic western score to The Big
Country (1958). But—perhaps because
I heard it first—my heart belongs to his music for The Valley of Gwangi, Harryhausen’s grand dino-western. This clip begins with introductory themes and
then hits its stride at the 1:20 mark with one of the finest of all expansive
western melodies. It’s everything I want
a western score to be.
And third favorite?
Why that’s First Men in the Moon,
of course! Composer Laurie Johnson, a
friend and occasional assistant to Bernard Herrmann, seized the opportunity to
do his own variation on a Herrmann-type score and he did the master proud.
Reference Sources
Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin
Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton
The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells
© 2015 Lee Price
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