tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-951262593421089659.post4749731102317691385..comments2023-10-08T04:00:47.050-07:00Comments on Monsterland Ohio: I Give You...Kong!Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17325879543402621973noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-951262593421089659.post-21333933460315161352009-12-01T13:21:20.954-08:002009-12-01T13:21:20.954-08:00Kong is unimaginable with out Steiner's score,...Kong is unimaginable with out Steiner's score, which was so powerful and revolutionary that Oscar Levant suggested that the film be advertised as "a concert of Max's music, with accompanying pictures". His use of lietmotifs set the style of designing a score that John Williams would use 40 years later in Star Wars; Steiner also worked with recording engineer Murray Spivack to actually change the pitch of sound effects to get them to better blend with the score. As you point out, Steiner also knew the value of silence...did you ever notice that there is NO MUSIC after the titles until they arrive at Skull Island? The music sneaks in subtly with the native drums, and continues to build as the nightmare unfolds. Ifukube actually builds on Steiner's work (everyone at Toho had seen Kong) and used many of Steiner's devices to build suspense.<br />Kong Executive Producer David O. Selznick understood that great music was going to be necessary to make the animated monsters convincingly (just as Harryhausen and Schneer did when they began using Bernard Herrmann), and when RKO balked at spending money on original music for Kong (they were going to use library tracks), Selznick gave Steiner $50,000 of his own money to insure that the score would be sufficiently impressive, and played by a large (for that time) orchestra. I think the picture would simply have died without it.<br />Archie WaughAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com