‘North By Northwest’ with live music
Richard Kaufman once worked for Alfred Hitchcock — his violin was part of John Williams’ soundtrack for “Family Plot,” the master’s final film — so he’ll feel a personal responsibility while presenting Bernard Herrmann’s score for “North by Northwest” live for San Francisco audiences this weekend while the classic itself is projected on the big screen.
“I remember seeing Hitchcock driving into the Universal lot each day we were recording,” Kaufman said by phone from his home in the Los Angeles area. “He was sitting in his black Cadillac being driven in. It was weird seeing Alfred Hitchcock driving by you every day.”
“North by Northwest,” conducted by Kaufman, whose violin can also be heard on the soundtrack of such classic films as “Jaws,” “Close Encounters” and “Animal House,” kicks off the San Francisco Symphony’s 2017-18 season of classic film accompanied by live music.
The series will also feature “Home Alone” (Dec. 16-17, 20), “West Side Story” (Feb. 1-3), Tim Burton’s “Batman” (April 4-5) and “Amadeus” (April 6-7).
Kaufman, who was head of music at MGM’s film and television department in the 1980s and now is in his 12th season with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert series “CSO at the Movies” as well as in his 27th season as Principal Pops Conductor of Pacific Symphony, said the challenge is to be rigorously faithful to Herrmann’s iconic score.
“His orchestration skills, and the way he uses the sounds of the orchestra — especially the strings and the woodwinds — is absolutely amazing,” Kaufman said. “In ‘North By Northwest,’ the orchestration has five clarinets; two of them are bass clarinets. It has two harps. And he combines these sounds — it’s like a great painter with a palette of every possible color, and then he not only uses those colors, he invents his own colors.”
One could make a case for Herrmann as the greatest film composer in history — or at least the one with the most interesting career arc. He composed the score for Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” at the beginning of his career, and Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” at the end. “North By Northwest” was in the middle of his career, when his work with Hitchcock became the stuff of legend. Included in that oeuvre is the haunting score of “Vertigo” and, of course, the distinctive score of “Psycho.”
“There’s this famous story where Hitchcock said he didn’t want any music with the shower scene,” Kaufman said, referring to “Psycho.” “Hitchcock went off to London and Bernard Herrmann said, ‘Well, I have another idea,’ and he recorded it — the famous
squeak squeak squeak — and Hitchcock came back and looked at it and his comment to Herrmann was ‘Well, of course you’re right.’ ”
There’s one point, however, in “North By Northwest” when you won’t hear a peep out of Kaufman or the Symphony: the famous crop duster scene.
“A great composer should know not only where music should go, but more importantly, where it shouldn’t go,” said Kaufman, who attributed the quote to the late composer Elmer Bernstein. “One of the great decisions in ‘North By Northwest’ was the scene in the field with the crop duster. Nine minutes, and not one note of music.”
At Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. (415) 864-6000. www.sfsymphony.org A Day of Silents: Imagine a world virtually without men. Or, imagine one where men loving each other doesn’t automatically cause a stir.
As the Saturday, Dec. 2, lineup for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s annual A Day of Silents demonstrates, these worlds were envisioned decades before #MeToo and same-sex marriage Supreme Court rulings.
J.G. Blystone’s 1924 comedy “The Last Man on Earth” is set in 1954, where a virus called “masculitis” has wiped out the male population — except for one hermit, Elmer. Should he be permitted to live? He gets his opportunity in a boxing match on the floor of the U.S. Senate (all 100 senators being, of course, women).
Much more serious is William Dieterle’s 1928 German film “Sex in Chains.” Luridly titled, it’s actually about a young newlywed couple who are separated when the husband (Dieterle, who was also a leading man at the time) is wrongly convicted of manslaughter. Once in prison, his homosexuality is awakened by a fellow inmate.
Also on the schedule is “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” (Germany, 1926), billed as the first feature-length animated film; “Tol’able David,” film pioneer Henry King’s 1921 tale of revenge in Appalachia; “The Rat,” a British box-office success in 1925 that made Ivor Novello — later to star in Hitchcock’s first thriller, “The Lodger” — a star; and “Lady Windmere’s Fan,” future comedy master Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 adaptation of an Oscar Wilde play, starring a very young Ronald Colman.
As always, these silent films have plenty of sound. Each film is accompanied by some fabulous live music.
“The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” 10 a.m.; “The Last Man on Earth,” noon; “Tol’able David,” 2 p.m.; “The Rat,” 4:30 p.m.; “Lady Windmere’s Fan,” 7 p.m.; “Sex in Chains,” 9:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2, at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F. (415) 621-6120. www.silentfilm.org