First off, sorry about the horribly wonky quality of the still. It was taken in a hurry, under less than optimum circumstances.
Secondly, hey, I didn’t know this was gonna be a series! Here’s the inadvertent part 1.
So I’m sitting around the house thinking I ought to get to the gym but I keep hearing the wind whistling against my living room windows and thinking, “Hell, no, I’m not going out there,” so I put on TCM, which is showing Boy’s Night Out, a 1962 ostensible sex comedy directed by Michael Gordon and starring Kim Novak, James Garner, Howard Duff, and a bunch of others, including Oskar Homolka, William Bendix and Cary Grant’s mom, Jessie Royce Landis. These items are largely worth watching precisely because of these casts, and also the insane set design (art directors here were George W. Davis and Hans Peters), and of course the “unenlightened” attitudes and all that. The set up here is that Novak plays a sociology grad student who decides to do a “study” of certain male sexual attitudes by setting up a flat wherein she “entertains” three married men and one bachelor, of course withholding her sexual favors from them all, because, you know, she’s just writing a paper, for God’s sake. Guess who plays the bachelor with whom she falls in love? (Not to mention her thesis advisor? Or the bartender who gives the reciprocating bachelor sage advice?)
Anyway, to make herself more attractive, Novak’s brainiac Cathy “has” to play dumb, so when Howard Duff’s Doug comes over, she, after repelling his carnal advances of course, asks, “How about some music?” to which he of course assents—he HAS to!—and then she puts the platter on the stereo, which promptly malfunctions (she of course rigged the hi-fi to go screwy), enabling him to feel very manly by fixing it. What’s most interesting is not the scenario per se but rather the choice of music that Novak’s character offers Doug.
“Which would you like?” she asks. “The ‘Love/Death’ theme from Tristan or the Romeo and Juliet overture?”
Doug, no doubt feeling, um, blue, shoots back,“Play the ‘Love/Death.’ I’m in a ‘Love/Death’ mood.”
And so, she puts on the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which is of course the inspiration for Bernard Herrman’s “Scene d’amour” music from Vertigo, the recent appropriation of which made Ms. Novak extremely agitated, and which I wasn’t too crazy about either. Is nothing sacred, indeed.
Kim is sacred.
Michael Gordon, BTW, is Joseph Gordon Levitt’s maternal grandfather.
I love Kim Novak, but the only reason anyone here might take her complaint seriously is because The Artist didn’t use the score very well. As I mentioned in the original Artist thread, no one complained of artistic rape when Desplachin used the score in A Christmas Tale. Noah Baumbach still gets a lot of love, even though he scored his second film with a theme from Jules and Jim. Worst of all, where is Chris Marker to protest Cameron Crowe’s ill-advised lift from La Jetee in his latest film? Novak achieved immortality with Vertigo, but she didn’t write the damn score, and no one really will think less of that performance because some idiot sampled it for his new film. I’m not exactly sure why she feels so violated.
I wonder if Jacqueline Bisset had any issues with the DAY FOR NIGHT music that turned up in FANTASTIC MR. FOX.
Well, the biggest irony is that Herrmann himself was fond of sampling and recycling his own scores, incessantly pillaging his back catalogue of radio music especially. We needn’t think any the less of him for that.
Still to see The Artist, but I can’t conceive of any justification for cramming a late-fifties score into a late-twenties story, so I suspect the grounds for true attacking it are esthetic rather than moral… but I’m trying to maintain an open mind until I see the thing.
“I’m not exactly sure why she feels so violated.”
Try to imagine being Kim Novak, Joel.
I’ll ask Jackie the next time I see her here in L.A. (which is fairly frequently.)
Desplachin is as overrated as the Coens.
Am I the first to mention Marty using Delerue’s “Contempt” score in “Casino”?
No, you’re not.
I believe James Horner’s music for the airlock crescendo of ‘Aliens’ has been heard in a great many trailers since. Also, ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ lifts one of the songs from Disney’s similarly-vulpine ‘Robin Hood’.
As long as we’re keeping score in this department, “The Truman Show” includes excerpts from Philip Glass’s “Mishima” score.
Wasn’t Glass allowed to retain copyright of his ‘Mishima’ score, in return for a reduced salary? I think he’s happy to licence it (also in ‘Watchmen’, as well as an old UK railways commercial).
Speaking of Kim and Vertigo, one of my favorite movie jokes of all time appeared way back in Première – it was one of those roundup articles, so I don’t know who actually concocted it (and I’m paraphrasing it below:
The latest video reissue of Vertigo features the little-known original ending, which Hitchcock trimmed off at the last minute. It features Jimmy Stewart hollering down at Kim Novak from the top of the tower, “Awwww, now what’d you wanna go and do THAT for?!!”
Well, the ‘foreign censorship’ ending to ‘Vertigo’, which Hitch really did have to shoot, might be even worse…
Personally, I think Kim Novak is entitled to be a spectator of Vertigo just like anyone else, and respond to boorish and stupid appropriations of elements from it. Aesthetically speaking, the term rape seemed appropriate to me; it’s how I felt when I heard it.
I was literally, physically raped by ‘The Artist’. Aesthetically speaking, Hazanavicius tied me down to a table and shoved his cock in my mouth. I’m not even fucking kidding.
Aesthetically speaking, the term Sonderbehandlung seemed appropriate to me; it’s how I felt when I heard it.
I cannot believe that, days later, we are still dignifying the notion that the awkward and inappropriate co-opting of Bernard Herrmann’s score has anything to do with Kim Novak being raped. Perhaps she’s at a point in her life when she can get a pass on saying such absurd things, but none of the rest of us has a similar excuse. Hazanavicius’s poor decision has absolutely zero to do with rape.
I think you underestimate this film’s shocking, transgressive power to violate the viewer. Nobody expects The New French Extremism.
It won’t be long before “raping Kim Novak” replaces “jumping the shark” and “nuking the fridge”.
As in “People seem to find Lenny Kravitz fun and original, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s spent his entire career raping Kim Novak”? You may be onto something there, Professor.
I felt raped when I heard that Will Smith song that samples the Clash. Aesthetically, at least.
Just so long as I can keep using the phrase “aesthetic apartheid” to describe Truffaut’s opinion of John Huston, or Donald Richie’s relegating of animation to the back, Rosa Parks-style, in his otherwise-recommended book ‘A Hundred Years Of Japanese Film’.
I think that would be fine. You could also say that Melissa McCarthy so completely ran off with BRIDESMAIDS that Kristen Wiig should have issued an Amber Alert.
“I’m in a Love/Death mood.”
This made me think of Dudley Moore in BEDAZZLED, nattering on about Brrrrrrrrrrrahms to Eleanor Bron.
So THE ARTIST won Best Musical Score at the Golden Globes. Do we have to report another rape?
Actually, VERTIGO’s score reuses part of Herrman’s score for THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. I also noticed on TCM the same day BOYS NIGHT OUT was playing that Herrman’s score for JOY IN THE MORNING, a horrendous stinker of a romantic drama starring Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimieux, borrows part of the VERTIGO score.
The music for the flying scene in Out of Africa sounds very similar to part of Barry’s score for Hanover Street. He and Hermann constantly steal from themselves.
…and one of the worst offenders is Nino Rota
I wish this was the worst thing about THE ARTIST. It would’ve been a *lot* less irritating.
Gee, I thought this was the worst thing by far about THE ARTIST.
The worst offender may be Techine’s composer, Philippe Sarde, who has frequently re-used his main themes without even altering the orchestration (not that it wasn’t fun to hear the theme from one of his French scores pop up as the theme from the female-killer-robot movie Eve of Destruction).
I was raped when I saw the remake of CAPE FEAR and heard Marty reusing HERRMANN’S ENTIRE SCORE! And then again when Van Sant remade PSYCHO and reused HERRMANN’S ENTIRE SCORE!
And has anyone watched FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN and yelled, “OMG! That’s ‘Storming The Castle’ from GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN! I’ve been raped!!!”
Jesus H. Christ, get a grip, people. Cues get reused all the time.
Wow, great blog.Really looking forward to read more.
dj furniture
Some Came Running: DJ Kim Novak, part 2