Woodstock, New York. When Elmer Bernstein’s agent called him about writing the score for Todd Haynes’s “Far From Heaven,” he admitted that there was a problem: the film had already been given a temporary score, which Mr. Bernstein would have to listen to as he watched. “I won’t look at a film with a temporary score,” […]
It took its time getting here, but the best movie of the year has finally arrived. Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven is a throwback to the obsolete genre once called the “women’s picture”, and to the films of consummate melodramatist Douglas Sirk. Haynes uses the plot of Sirk’s great 1955 weepie All That Heaven Allows […]
Elmer Bernstein Does It the Old-Fashioned Way, in Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven
Far From Heaven takes place in a world of happy homemakers, successful TV marketing executives and chirpy, well-adjusted siblings-in short, it takes place in the ’50s, an era when black people knew their place and homosexuality was something you just didn’t talk about. Director Todd Haynes’ previous feature was Safe, with Julianne Moore as a […]
Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) was a big, voluptuous, tear-jerking romancer about a well-off widow (Jane Wyman) falling for her hunky, much younger gardener (Rock Hudson). So what’s the problem? Ask her grown-up children who were aghast at this coupling as were all of her viperous friends and local society in general. Todd […]
Prepare yourself for an unashamed beauty such as modern movies seldom yield to. Float on a swooning score by Elmer Bernstein, that essential movie composer of the 1950s. Be ready for a wide-screen composition of four women on a suburban lawn of Kelly green, and the gorgeous clash of their billowing skirts, in rose pink, […]
10th Annual San Louis Obispo Film Festival Anniversary Salutes Academy Award-winning Composer
Elmer Bernstein received the King Vidor Memorial Award for lifetime achievement at a black-tie gala ceremony Sunday, October 27th, 2002 at the historic Fremont Theatre in San Luis Obispo. As part of the evening’s festivities, a screening of “To Kill a Mockingbird” followed the award presentation. The festival, headed by Mary Harris, also presented a […]
Special 80th Birthday Celebration Features a Surprise "Encore"
Elmer Bernstein, who was invited by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to conduct a program of his own compositions at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday, October 9, 2002, had quite a surprise awaiting him following his scheduled encore of “The Great Escape.” […]
The career of the Oscar-winning composer Elmer Bernstein spans seven decades and stretches from his classic scores for The Magnificent Seven, The Man With the Golden Arm and To Kill a Mockingbird to his recent work on Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. Here he looks back on his apprenticeship during Hollywood’s golden age and recalls […]
Fifty years and 200 film scores later, Elmer Bernstein has turned 80. “I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been able to do many different things — big splashy costume-dramas and Westerns have kept life interesting.” On October 9 two Royals — the Albert Hall and the Philharmonic — combine to welcome ‘the man with the golden […]
Think Hollywood. Think glamour. Think Los Angeles. Sun-bleached skies, silicon-pumped hotties and stars on every street corner. Now scrap that. Think Warwick. Sleepy. English. Provincial. For it is here, in a 14th-century cottage decorated like your gran’s, that Rough Cut meets a movie legend. The greatest living film composer, a contender for the all-time title: Elmer Bernstein. […]
Elmer Bernstein, composer of film music, and Emilie, his daughter, orchestrator Elmer Bernstein, 80, has scored over 200 films and TV programmes. Perhaps best known for his music for The Magnificent Seven, he received an Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie, plus 13 nominations, and has a star on Hollywood Boulevard. On October 9 he conducts […]
The third Woodstock Film Festival began Wednesday evening with an Arlo Guthrie concert at UPAC in Kingston and continues through Sunday, September 22, closing with Far From Heaven, the last film before the festival’s final awards ceremony. That the festival is even showing the yet-to-be-released film speaks volumes about the niche the local event has […]
Todd Haynes’ fourth feature, “Far From Heaven,” is an accomplished marriage of elaborate style and content. Appropriating the look and language of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas down to the finest detail, Haynes deftly employs the genre’s Hollywood artificiality to examine racism, homosexuality and the sacrifices of women in a middle-class society based on perfect appearances. […]
As a four-year-old, I’m told, I used to climb up on to a chair and play records on our wind-up machine. My father collected opera and jazz recordings. My earliest musical memories are a mixture of Enrico Caruso, Louis Armstrong and a very popular song, La Paloma, which apparently I used to sing around the house. […]
The Fall Program Features a Rare Viewing of James Jones' Adapation of "Some Came Running," Scored By Bernstein
On Sunday, October 6th, the National Film Theatre will honor Elmer Bernstein with a screening of the 1958 film, “Some Came Running,” and post-screening Q&A with Bernstein and protégé, British composer Cynthia Millar. […]