In March of 1947, Kubrick had done a feature in Look about Aqueduct Race Track. True to form, he focused more on spectators than the horses. In the pictures we see men in hats and overcoats, trackside, studying the racing form. Kubrick snapped a standing crowd multiple times, watching them follow the horses as they went by. He found a middle-aged woman, looking on intently, finger on her nose, racing form in her hand, a beaded oval purse hanging from her arm. In the aftermath of the races, Kubrick caught the men sweeping up the garbage of racing forms and losing tickets. In his collection of Kubrick’s photos for Look, Rainer Crone said of the feature, “Kubrick’s portrayal of a day at the track reveals a keen sense of individual pathos as well as the potential for mass hysteria that a public event on this scale could generate.”36
Kubrick chose the racetrack as the setting for his next film, The Killing (1956). This high-tension crime caper was based on a novel called Clean Break by Lionel White. Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) devises a plot to steal two million dollars from a racetrack. To do this he assembles a team who will split the money after the heist. Johnny plans to take his share of the money and marry his girlfriend, Fay (Colleen Gray). His team consists of a betting teller, a cop, a sharp-shooter, the bartender at the track, and a wrestler. The men successfully steal the money, but the plan goes awry when the teller’s scheming wife (who found out about the plan from her callow husband) enlists her lover, Val, to steal the money after the heist is complete. Everyone ends up dead except for Johnny, who tries to take the money and escape with Fay. Fate intervenes, and the money ends up literally scattered to the winds.
Synopsis and Score Description for The Killing
The score for The Killing overall has something in common with Killer’s Kiss, namely the use of semi-improvised popular music to represent a shady character. As mentioned above, in Killer’s Kiss, Latin jazz accompanies the appearances of the villain, Vince Rapallo. In The Killing, jazz and swing represent the scheming wife, Sherry Peatty, and her lover Val. One of Fried’s cues for the film is called “Val’s Mambo.” Bernd Schultheis suggested that in both films, jazz represents the element of conspiracy.37 In Killer’s Kiss and The Killing, it’s unclear how much of this music is actually heard by the characters, although fluctuations in volume suggest that the music may be playing perhaps on a radio in the background or behind a closed door.
There are many more musical cues in this film than in the previous, especially because there isn’t a signature tune like “Once” to make up the bulk of the score. There is a main musical theme of The Killing, and it is what Gerald Fried called his trademark: “a rhythmic clash of confrontation. I had half the orchestra playing a four figure. The other half of the orchestra played a three figure.” So over a steady four pattern in the bass drum and timpani, the strings and brass have their rhythmic clash. In this simplified version of the theme, the first violins are on the treble staff, and the trombones are on the bass staff.
Example 1.9. The Killing opening credits.
The sonic discord between the three and the four patterns builds tension, and that, says Fried, “is what Stanley loved about that movie, you know. It had people on the edge of their chair from the beginning of the movie to the end.”38 Once the initial conflict of the opening theme resolves somewhat, the snare drum provides cadences under the woodwinds, who play a low repetitive melody. Muted brass horn calls with the snare rolls create a pseudo-militaristic sound. While the credits play on-screen, horses and their jockeys ride to the starting gate. As they pause, waiting for the start of the race, Fried ends the musical cue on a dissonant chord. The bell rings, the gate opens, and the horses run out. For a moment, we hear only the announcer and the sound of the horses running, but then those sounds fade into the background as a voiceover starts:
At exactly 3:45 on that Saturday afternoon in the last week of September, Marvin Unger was perhaps the only one among the hundred thousand people at the track who felt no thrill at the running of the fifth race. He was totally disinterested in horse racing, and held a life-long contempt for gambling. . . .
The man on-screen, Unger, will turn out to be a peripheral character in the story, although he does set the plot into motion. Low underscore, a fragment of the original theme, accompanies Unger giving both the betting teller and the bartender secret written messages about a clandestine meeting. Then we cut to patrolman Randy Kennan meeting a loan shark at a bar. Jazz piano provides the soundtrack for this meeting. Kennan can’t pay his debts, but promises that he’ll be flush with cash soon. The scene ends, and the jazz piano stops. The next scene takes place with Johnny Clay, “perhaps the most important thread in the unfinished fabric,” the voiceover explains. Upon his appearance, the main theme re-appears in a slower, more pensive version as he explains to Fay who will make up the team for the heist. The music softens as Fay and Johnny talk about the last five years they’ve been apart during Johnny’s incarceration. The same slow version of the opening theme moves upward into the string section and the high woodwinds. Played this way, the cue takes on the character of a love theme, albeit a dark and pensive one.
Example 1.10. Johnny’s Theme.
The tension returns when the track bartender, Mike O’Reilly, visits the bedside of his sick wife. As he pulls out the note Unger slipped him at the track, there’s a driving theme accented by dissonant stopped brass mocking the racing fanfare.
Example 1.11. Mock Racing.
When the teller, George Peatty, returns home to his wife, Sherry, we hear a jazzy song playing in the background. The music continues as Sherry goes to see Val, her lover, and plays as the scene fades to black. When we rejoin Sherry and Val, the jazz music is replaced by ominous underscore when Sherry mentions that George is going to be part of a heist at the racetrack. The cue Fried called “George, That’s How” begins with a repeating figure in the low strings:
Example 1.12. “George, That’s How.”
Fried added short gestures in the horns, trumpets, piano, and percussion that enhance the tension of the cue. Sherry initially plans to take George’s share of the money, but Val thinks he might be able to steal it all.
At the meet-up with Johnny, George, Mike, Kennan, and Unger, there is no underscore as the men discuss the plan. But when they hear a noise, Fried’s score reflects their suspicion with a high pizzicato note. The music, sinister and questioning, continues as the boys accuse George of telling his wife about the plan. Later, when George and Sherry are both home, the music again is the improvised jazz that seems to be Sherry’s signature. The music swells as the scene—with George and Sherry kissing—fades to black. Kubrick and Fried forgo underscore in the ensuing two scenes: Johnny asks the wrestler, Maurice, to provide a distraction at the track and Johnny hires the sharp-shooter, Nikki.
After meeting with Nikki, Johnny drives to a motel and asks for a room for the week. Ominous dissonant chords with snare rolls play as Johnny puts a bag in the drawer and locks the room. In the next scene, Sherry walks out of her bedroom to find George drinking coffee in the kitchen. Her actions are accompanied by a meandering line in the clarinet:
Example 1.13. Sherry Gets Up.
Once the music stops, the only sound is the ticking of a clock, echoing George’s nervousness. He is anxious, Sherry correctly guesses, because it is the day of the heist.
At the track, Fried’s dissonant fanfare in the muted brass plays as we see Red Lightning, the horse favored to win the race. Johnny talks to Unger before he leaves for the track. Under their discussion is a version of the main theme, which gradually becomes tenser, louder, higher, and more elaborately orchestrated. The cue continues through the next scene as Johnny makes arrangements with the man at the motel. By the time Johnny stashes a shotgun in a box of flowers, the theme is bellowing in the brass section. Instead of continuing the gradual crescendo, Fried occasionally pulls back, giving us momentary respite from the heavy tension, but never quite breaking it either. The score does not stop; it just recedes into the lower parts of the
orchestra, under the dialogue. Fried manages to keep the audience anxious, without having the score unduly intrude on the action. The underscore only disappears when Kubrick cuts to the first race.
Unger shows up at the track—unexpectedly—and Fried’s score re-appears with a driving rhythm and tremolos in the winds. Rising four-note figures, played by different instruments, accompany patrolman Kennan’s drive to the track. When he stops the police car under the open window—from which Johnny will throw the stolen cash—the brass plays a final dissonant fanfare and briefly falls silent. Similar music, drawing upon elements of the original main theme, appears under scenes in which Maurice takes his place at the track to start his diversion and as Nikki drives to the track.
After Nikki shoots Red Lightning, we jump backward in time a few hours. Johnny is on his way to the track. The racing fanfare plays, as do some new elements in the high strings. Fried includes the rising four-note figures as well. The result is a relentlessly forward-moving cue, one that continues to grow in both tension and complexity. Johnny’s preparations for the robbery (putting on a mask, getting the gun) and the immediate aftermath, are accompanied by snare rolls, but the actual robbery is unaccompanied by the score. The brass play loudly as Johnny makes his escape from the track.
When Kennan, O’Reilly, and Peatty meet up afterward, they listen to the radio and jazz music begins to play after a news bulletin about the heist. It plays as Val enters, looking for the money. George shoots Val, setting off a shootout after which only George is left alive, although wounded. Meanwhile, Johnny retrieves the duffle bag full of cash from the motel, the score more dissonant and driving than ever. Johnny sees George stumble out of the apartment, wounded, so he drives away, intending to keep the money. As Johnny stashes the loot in an old suitcase, the opening musical conflict of three versus four appears. The jazz music re-appears as George returns home to find Sherry waiting for Val and packing her suitcase. George shoots her and then dies himself.
The rising figures in the orchestra play under the establishing shot of the airport. Due to airline rules, Johnny and Fay are forced to check the bag full of money, instead of carrying it in the cabin. As they wait outside to board their plane, a runaway dog causes Johnny’s suitcase to fall off a luggage cart. The money spills out and is blown away by the turbines of the surrounding planes. Johnny and Fay nervously return to the airport while the three versus four conflict music of the opening plays. This time, the tempo is a bit slower, almost halting, as Fay and Johnny realize they are going to be caught. They try to get a taxi but cannot, and two plainclothes policemen draw their guns and advance on Johnny as “The End” appears on-screen.
This score is Fried’s densest score yet. There is a cue for nearly every scene. True to form, Kubrick and Fried chose to provide music for the tensest parts of the narrative, but left it out during the race, the actual robbery, and Maurice’s diversion (which is basically a wrestling match). Composer Bernd Schultheis observed that the score “is built in modules and can therefore easily be adjusted to the dramatic needs and cutting sequences. It outlines the action superficially and sometimes, to increase the tension, grows beyond the confines of the images.”39 Fried’s cues, constructed in multiple sections, allowed him flexibility to use bits and pieces throughout the film in order to suit whatever each scene required.
Synopsis and Score Description for Paths of Glory
The final collaboration between Kubrick and Fried was Paths of Glory. What Kubrick does with the sound and music in this film represents what some may see as a turning point in his development. The sound aspect of this film is extremely important. As in other Kubrick films, there are moments where there is no musical underscore at all, and in those moments the sounds take center stage. The sound of gunfire, of artillery, of footsteps: these are the sounds of war. But there are also moments of music and their scarcity speaks volumes of meaning. The opening credits are accompanied by an orchestral version of La Marseillaise.40 Fried has added some snare rolls to this version of the anthem to give it a distinctive military flavor. The song is not allowed to resolve as it was written, but instead ends on dissonant chords that give the listener the sense that something isn’t quite right.
When the film begins, a voiceover explains some historical background on World War I, but underneath this voiceover, Fried has taken the opening phrases of La Marseillaise and altered them to form dissonant, distorted versions of the original music, wordlessly commenting on the nature of this conflict.
French General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) asks fellow general Mireau (George Macready) if his troops can take a position called the German Ant Hill. Mireau first argues this is impossible until Broulard dangles the possibility of a promotion in front of him. Mireau agrees to try it. He asks Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) to engage his men in this battle. Dax believes that it will be a difficult assignment, if it is possible at all, but follows orders, bravely leading his men. When the men cannot advance, Mireau claims the men are cowards and orders that the soldiers be urged on by friendly fire. The order is refused and the surviving men retreat. Mireau, angry at the outcome, demands that one hundred men die in front of a firing squad for cowardice. Broulard convinces him that three men will do. Colonel Dax—who was a civilian lawyer before the war—defends the three men in court, although he is not allowed to enter much evidence in their defense. Despite Dax’s efforts and the testimony of the men, the three soldiers are killed by the firing squad.
For most of the film, if there is music at all, it is percussive in nature. Gerald Fried’s longest cue in the film underscores the scene of the night patrol. Lieutenant Roget, who spends most of his time drunk, takes two men with him on patrol and sends one ahead to scout. When the man does not return, Roget becomes anxious and wants to leave. Assuming the scout is dead, and fearing enemy fire, Roget throws a grenade that ends up killing his own man. There are a few important musical gestures in this segment. One features steady hits on a bass drum. A second is a four-note motif intended for a dampened timpani, although Fried said that he ended up changing the instrumentation to a tuned tom-tom because he was not able to find a timpani in Munich—where the score was recorded—that could play the highest note in the motif.
Example 1.14. The timpani of the Night Patrol.
This motif grows in intensity, as the last note—the high A—becomes three notes, then more. The third motif is a tick tock cue very similar to the one heard in Fear and Desire, this time played by a timpani.
Example 1.15. Night Patrol Tick Tock.
On the soundtrack to the film, the resemblance to the earlier cue is not as obvious, but on a compilation album of themes from Kubrick’s films (made by the Prague Philharmonic), the similarity is eerie. There is something elemental about this cue and the one from Fear and Desire that for Fried must have symbolized the fear of war, a fear that encroaches relentlessly upon one’s sanity.
As the men on the night patrol grow more anxious, the timpani part changes slightly and also becomes twice as fast. A fourth musical element of the scene are rolls on the snare drum (there are actually two snares, one with snares on and one with them off), which are added to the cue, while the percussion of weapons—guns, grenades, and explosions—seamlessly becomes part of the texture. Corporal Paris, the third man in the night patrol, continues looking for the missing man after Roget retreats. The cue ends with a shot of the dead body of the missing member of the night patrol. The startling discovery is accompanied by a jarring roll on a hanging cymbal. The cue is very effective, although the Prague recording reveals unheard instruments and musical gestures that one can easily miss in the film.
In Paths of Glory, scenes with dialogue, in particular, are given no underscore, although there are two exceptions. At the beginning of the film, General Mireau walks through the trench, stopping to ask different soldiers if they are “ready to kill more Germans.” While he walks, rolls on the snare drum accompany his movements. When he stops to speak, the drum stops as well. And the
n there is the scene of the conversation between Colonel Dax and Major General Broulard. Dax has come to Broulard’s house to plead once again for the lives of his men. While they speak, waltzes from a party at Broulard’s house are heard softly in the background. Here the Johann Strauss waltz Künsterleben (“Artist’s Life”), from 1867, forms a stark contrast between the cruel percussion of the battlefield and the opulent surroundings of the commanding officers. We see General Broulard dancing at his party while we know that the men are sleeping in the trenches, cold, filthy, and scared. Kubrick does not explicitly make this comparison by cutting between the two scenes, but it is not a far stretch to realize how different the life of a solider is as opposed to the life of the general.
The execution scene features the bass and snare drum, playing an unceasing cadence that begins as the condemned men walk to the execution and continues through to the priest’s final blessing. It stops just before Lieutenant Roget calls “Ready, aim, fire!” There is one more important musical moment in the film, and it is an extremely powerful and emotional one. It was an invention of the screenwriters (although there was some disagreement about who should take credit for the final decision). After the execution, Colonel Dax returns to the men and finds them in a café, watching some entertainment. A young German woman is there, her face wet with tears, humiliated and scared as the host asks her to sing. She begins singing “The Faithful Hussar.” The German folk song, likely dating from the early nineteenth century, speaks of a faithful soldier who travels only to return home when he hears that the woman he loves is sick. There are two musical phrases in the tune. The first phrase consists of the pick-up measure (the first measure is not a complete three beats), three full measures, and the first note of the fourth measure. The first two lines of each verse are sung to this phrase. The second phrase is actually made up of a repeated smaller phrase (starting in the middle of m. 4 and repeating in the middle of m. 8); the last two lines of the verse are meant to be repeated in this second phrase.
Listening to Stanley Kubrick Page 4