It is time to look at my favourite genre, science fiction, and its equally popular but lesser understood cousin, science fantasy—or space fantasy, as I’ve recently taken to calling it. We are reaching a certain point in our cinematic development where a distinction is sorely needed, mainly because newer productions have upped the stakes in terms of storytelling and scientific accuracy. If Isaac Asimov were still alive, he would probably be tearing up right about now.

The thing is… when I ask people what sort of science fiction they like, they often bring up the ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek’ franchises. But here’s the problem. Only one of the two qualifies as literal science fiction, and to better understand where I’m going with this, I need to take you back to the origin of the term itself: science fiction is ‘fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.’

‘LOST IN SPACE’ (2018), ©LEGENDARY TELEVISION/NETFLIX

Therefore, of the two above, only ‘Star Trek’ undoubtedly qualifies as sci-fi, since it imagines a possible future that might actually happen someday in terms of technological advancement. The science is also an integral part of the story, while Star Wars happened ‘a long time ago’ and ‘in a galaxy far away’—thus qualifying as a space fantasy, which doesn’t rely on an imagined future nor does it stay loyal to science as it imagines incredible worlds.

Space Fantasy: More Dream Than Theory

Breath-taking sights, cool-looking gizmos, fiery lasers, and eye-popping visual effects; giant spaceships, slender fighters, and extraordinary alien creatures; and an overarching sense that we, humans, are but a speck in the eye of the universe—tiny beings, yet always at the centre of a heroic adventure. That’s what space fantasy somehow always ends up being about.

‘Star Wars’ (1977, and still going)

George Lucas’s single most ambitious project didn’t just birth this terrific subgenre, it also revolutionized the special effects industry in cinema and brought the magic of space back into the national conversation. It began with the eponymous 1977 film, later retitled ‘Episode IV: A New Hope’—as the name suggests, the fourth in a series that Mr Lucas had been trying to make and consistently struggling with budget and special effects requirements. The story was simply ahead of its time.

It was followed by ‘Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back’ (1980) and ‘Episode VI: Return of the Jedi’ (1983), with Luke Skywalker’s overarching quest largely shaped by the director’s fondness of mythological theories proposed by Joseph Campbell—most of them were encompassed in ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’. To this day, ‘Star Wars’ is among the finest examples for the revered mythologist’s study of the hero’s journey and the stages one must go through in order to ascend and return, stronger than before and able to vanquish his foes.

‘STAR WARS: EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE’ (1977), ©LUCASFILM/20TH CENTURY FOX

The films were so popular that more productions, both live action and animated, followed. About a decade later, Lucas was able to produce the first three features in his original collection: ‘Episode I: The Phantom Menace’ (1999), ‘Episode II: Attack of the Clones’ (2002), and ‘Episode III: Revenge of the Sith’ (2005), which ultimately reveals Darth Vader’s complicated origins.

By securing merchandizing rights at a time when studios weren’t yet embracing such potential, George Lucas found a way to monetize and further popularize his Star Wars brand and beloved characters, granting silver screen immortality to actors like Harrison Ford, Carrie Fischer, and Mark Hamill. Sequels followed after Lucas sold his rights to Disney, bringing out talents such as John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Daisy Ridley centre-stage. From there, the franchise kept growing with spinoffs and prequels—worth mentioning here are ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ (2018) and ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ (2016).

‘The Mandalorian’ (2019) is a Disney+ darling, and there are at least three more series currently in development, of which one is entirely dedicated to Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano. I’ll be honest. As long as Jon Favreau and J.J. Abrams continue to be involved in one form or another, I reckon there will be plenty more to be milked from this intergalactic cow.

‘THE MANDALORIAN’ (2019), ©LUCASFILM/WALT DISNEY STUDIOS

‘The Fifth Element’ (1997)

Luc Besson created a timeless work of cinema with this futuristic epic starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, and Gary Oldman. It made history with its daring production design and bold costume and makeup choices. It even featured opera music by Plavalaguna, the enchanting alien diva voiced by renowned Albanian soprano Inva Mula, along with natural and fantasy motifs—the four elements with Leeloo as the enigmatic fifth, imagined alien species, and ‘magical science’ solutions represent the backbone of ‘The Fifth Element’.

‘THE FIFTH ELEMENT’ (1997), ©COLUMBIA PICTURES/GAUMONT

‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ (2017)

Luc Besson’s second foray into the futuristic realm didn’t exactly smash box office expectations, but it dreamed big and it went there. Based on the comic books by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières, ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ follows Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline as they fight to save Alpha, a space station of the 28^th century where beings from different planets live together in a constant exchange of culture and knowledge. Liberal use of visual effects, fantastical alien creatures, and ‘magical science’ via fancy-looking gadgets and multiple ecosystems crammed into a single space-floating station are central to the story.

‘VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS’ (2017), ©EUROPACORP

‘John Carter’ (2012)

Disney’s lesser loved attempt at space was based on a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, titled ‘A Princess of Mars’. Much like ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’, ‘John Carter’ didn’t exactly knock most viewers’ socks off, though it did develop a kind fandom over the years. Academy Award recipient Andrew Stanton delivers a charming hero’s quest here with a Civil War vet protagonist who ends up on Mars, where he faces fascinating foes and saves a gorgeous princess. It is pretty much the silicone mould of space fantasy.

‘JOHN CARTER’ (2012), ©WALT DISNEY STUDIOS

‘Avatar’ (2009)

By imagining an alien species inhabiting the moon Pandora, James Cameron’s visual masterpiece goes farther in detail than others before it. The special effects are visually arresting, and the manic attention to detail within production and character design—not to mention world-building—left me, personally, speechless. The film does tread closer to the ‘magical’ side of cinema, but its Academy Awards for Cinematography, Visual Effects, and Art Direction were absolutely well-deserved. Viewers are soon to be treated to a sequel, too, after years of working to develop new technology for filming performance capture scenes underwater, which were necessary to bring Cameron’s story to life.

‘AVATAR’ (2009), ©20TH CENTURY FOX

Science Fiction: The Soft and Hard Kind

Unlike its pretty-looking cousin, a possible future is always at the centre of the story with science fiction. Yes, we bounce from one planet to another, and yes, we meet new alien species along the way, but all works of sci-fi draw more from Arthur C. Clarke than from Ursula K. LeGuin, in a world-building sense. The science used can be soft, mellow, or hard—the latter being a unicorn of this genre, truth be told, but regardless of accuracy, it is always central to the story and its world architecture.

‘Star Trek’ (1966, and also still going)

There is only one other creator within the cinematic realm that is as loved and revered as George Lucas, and that’s Gene Rodenberry, responsible for the resoundingly influential Star Trek universe. Its premise is simple. In the distant future, multi-species crews of the United Federation of Planets travel across galaxies on missions of peaceful exploration—the aim is ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’. And so, a plethora of ‘what if’ scenarios are imagined. Most of the science used, such as the warp drive or the transporter, is soft science and purely, dreamy theoretical, yet it helps shape the entire narrative.

‘STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES’ (1966-1969), ©PARAMOUNT TELEVISION

The Star Trek franchise stuck mostly to the small screen at first, with the original ‘Star Trek’ series running from 1966 to 1969. It was a roaring success that gifted pop culture with unforgettable characters and memorable lines, quickly growing into a massive phenomenon that spanned movies and animated series, as well. ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ was an even bigger hit, enjoying season after season on television from 1987 until 1994, followed by additional spinoffs such as ‘Deep Space Nine’ (1993-1999) and ‘Enterprise’ (2005).

With J.J. Abrams at the helm, Rodenberry’s cosmos was rebooted through the Kelvin timeline in 2009, bringing Leonard Nimoy’s Spock back into the past to reset and reshape the destinies of Captain Kirk and the rest of the original series’ protagonists—here played by Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and Anton Yelchin. Streamers have since picked up several series, including ‘Discovery’ (2017) and ‘Picard’ (2020).

‘STAR TREK’ (2009), ©PARAMOUNT PICTURES

‘Firefly’ (2002-2003) & ‘Serenity’ (2005)

Joss Whedon’s project brought the incomparable talents of Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, and Alan Tudyk to the small screen while also blending the grittiness of the western genre into science fiction in a way that just… made sense. Despite its hybrid nature and undeserved cancellation, the show tried honourably to use real science—one of the few who bothered at the time, actually, and that’s part of what made it so popular.

‘Serenity’ was meant to tie up loose ends after Whedon secured funding for the feature, but ‘Firefly’ retains a loyal following to this day, and for good reason. I’ll sneak some praise here for other cult classics based in outer space: ‘Babylon 5’ (1993-1998), ‘Farscape’ (1999-2003), and ‘Battlestar Galactica’ (2004-2009), which deserve love for their boldness and often surprising character complexity.

‘FIREFLY’ (2002-2003), ©20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION

From ‘Alien’ (1979) to ‘Prometheus’ (2012)

No one will ever forget the alien xenomorph bursting out of John Hurt’s chest in Ridley Scott’s legendary feature film. No one. But beyond the shock value, the frighteningly beautiful character design by H.R. Giger, the Academy Award-winning visual effects, and Sigourney Weaver’s illustrious performance, ‘Alien’ and its sequels were pretty good at imagining a possible future for humanity.

Yes, there could be life out there, and yes, contact might get everyone killed. More than three decades after the first ‘Alien movie’, Mr Scott took his story deeper into the realm of ‘what if’ with ‘Prometheus’, the prequel that sought to answer a greater question regarding humanity’s own starting point: what if Earth isn’t our point of origin, after all?

‘ALIEN’ (1979), ©BRANDYWINE PRODUCTIONS/20TH CENTURY FOX

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)

Arthur C. Clarke’s most popular novel was developed concurrently with Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film, the latter considered one of cinema’s greatest feats of science fiction—ambitious and remarkable in its execution. Some of the multiple themes explored within this epic space adventure include the perils of artificial intelligence, the dangers of nuclear warfare, and the risks of technological advancement. We are capable of incredible things as a species, said both Mr Clarke and Mr Kubrick, but we are also capable of terrible things.

‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’ (1968), ©METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER (MGM)

‘Interstellar’ (2014)

As far as space exploration movies go, Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre is at the top of my list for science fiction cinema. It’s a work of art and science somehow finding common ground to propose a possible future, where man must travel through a wormhole in order to secure humanity’s survival. An ambitious tale to tell through breath-taking performances from Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, ‘Interstellar’ puts the theory of black holes acting as wormholes to the test.

The result is mind-boggling, particularly through its simulation of a Gargantua, which rendered even esteemed astrophysicist Kip Thorne (whose mathematics made the simulation possible to begin with) speechless! While there is so much we still don’t know about our universe, one thing is clear: our minds are able to transcend it, already.

‘INTERSTELLAR’ (2014), ©PARAMOUNT PICTURES/WARNER BROS.

‘The Expanse’ (2015)

Since Amazon’s exceptional science fiction series based on James S.A. Corey’s novels first streamed, HBO and Netflix have taken their own cracks at tackling the genre in an episodic structure—worth noting ‘Altered Carbon’ (2018), ‘Nightflyers’ (2019), and ‘Raised by Wolves’ (2020), mainly for their ambition of blending possible futures into fantastic, science-based (mostly!) storytelling. Alas, none reach the astounding levels ‘The Expanse’, and I’m confident in this statement for two reasons:

First, it’s the science. For obvious reasons, the protomolecule, while essential to the plot, is pure fantasy. So are the juice injections that help the human body withstand multiple-G speeds and the Epstein drive which allows for interplanetary travel—while neither is necessarily impossible, even theories fail to explain them.

‘THE EXPANSE’ (2015), ©AMAZON PRIME VIDEO/SYFY

Yet almost everything in the series is dedicated to scientific realism, and it offers an incredible foundation to build on. Space is a cruel mistress, and its varied living conditions, from the void’s lack thereof to Earth’s thriving atmosphere, show viewers the different ways in which humans might be able to survive in the future beyond our planet.

Second, creators Mark Fergus, Hawk Osby, Daniel Abraham, and Ty Franck manage to weave these scientifically-accurate realities into what I shall gladly describe as a ‘Game of Thrones in Space’, thus expanding on this possible future by studying mankind’s societal and political evolution over the span of four centuries, without skimping on the violence and intrigue. Our nature is both exploratory and destructive, and ‘The Expanse’ holds a mirror up to us in a genuinely startling fashion.

‘THE EXPANSE’ (2015), ©AMAZON PRIME VIDEO/SYFY

Of all the titles listed above, ‘The Expanse’ and ‘Interstellar’ represent a pivotal point in science fiction through their ability to convey an astoundingly coherent and potential hereafter for our species. I can only dare hope that upcoming film and TV productions will pay similar attention to the hard science upon which our very existence is built. While I will always love an epic space fantasy done right, it is truly an unforgettable experience to look at a movie or a TV series and realize that we might someday actually get that far. That our world can be bigger. Much bigger.

The ‘60s brought changes in culture and style that affected even the world of film music. The sound of the symphonic score established in the ‘30s by the likes of Max Steiner was going out of fashion, being instead replaced by experimental music, jazz- and rock-oriented rhythms, and pop tunes. Composers like John Barry, Ennio Morricone and Jerry Goldsmith were strongly influencing the cinematic sound of the decade and what the studios would request from their directors.

The following selection includes some of the most famous rejected scores of the ‘60s, underlining the strong creative differences between directors, composers and studios, which ultimately influenced the outcome of each production.

‘EL CID’ MOVIE POSTER

El Cid (1961)

Miklós Rózsa
Mario Nascimbene

Directed by Anthony Mann and produced by Samuel Bronston, El Cid is a 1961 epic historical drama film that is based on the life of the Castilian knight Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, called ‘El Cid’, who sets upon defending Christian Spain against the Moors.

Samuel Bronston had just finished his epic film King of Kings (1961), and decided to materialise his life-long dream of bringing the story of El Cid to the big screen. MGM had partially financed King of Kings, which meant they had a say in every major decision. Wanting more freedom and control over this new epic, Bronston produced El Cid with his own company, Samuel Bronston Productions, in association with the Italian company Dear Film Produzione. This meant that in order to receive financial assistance from the Italian government, certain compromises had to be made, such as Bronston having to employ a certain number of Italian artists and technicians to work on the project. As such, despite wanting to hire Miklós Rozsa, with whom he had worked on A King of Kings, Bronston went ahead and hired the Italian composer Mario Nascimbene. This collaboration, however, would be short-lived, as Bronston’s requirements would infuriate the composer. Nascimbene writes:

Bronston called me and asked me to score EL CID, which was being shot by Anthony Mann. I read the screenplay first, and they told me to write some dance themes only. The music had to accompany a kind of fighting dance for scenes taking place on the beach, so I wrote some cues for tympani, with a rather brutal, violent rhythm, without any real melody. Director Mann liked what I had written and shot his scenes, using the cues as background. Then, when shooting EL CID was about halfway, I was asked to come to Malaga to discuss the score itself. Samuel Bronston met me there when I arrived, showed me a pile of records of Massenet’s ‘El Cid’ and told me: “This is the music for the film”. Apparently I had to sort of “adapt” Massenet’s music for the film. Samuel Bronston behaved in an offensive way, and I told him that I am used to discussing the score with a director, and with him only. So I returned to Rome, where I tore up the contract already made.

This outcome worked wonderfully for Bronston, who managed to hire his first choice, Miklós Rózsa. It is speculated that the producer never intended for the score to be an adaptation of Jules Massenet’s opera to begin with, but it was merely a sure-fire plot to get Nascimbene to back out of the picture.

Be that as it may, Bronston did go to great lengths to get Rózsa to score his picture, even managing to get him out of a pre-existing contract with MGM to score Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Mutiny would end up being scored by another MGM in-house composer, Bronislau Kaper. As a concession to their co-producers, another Italian composer’s name (Carlo Savina) appeared on the credits as co-composer on the picture, but only on the Italian prints.

Bronston flew Rózsa and his family to Madrid for the whole summer and offered him a lovely house for him to work from and the same weekly living expenses the producer himself was getting. Besides Spain itself being a huge inspiration for the score of El Cid, the composer set out to research the history of El Cid and the Spanish music in the Medieval Ages. He turned to ninety-two-year-old Dr Ramón Menéndez Pidal, a Spanish philologist, historian and expert in El Cid, who introduced him to the twelfth-century musical poems of ‘La Cantigas de Santa Maria’. Furthermore, Rózsa studied Felipe Pedrell’s collection of Spanish folksongs, which the musicologist had compiled throughout his life. The composer spent a month of intense study, analysing these two very different sources after which he began working on translating what he had learned into the new score.

Despite Rózsa’s seamless collaboration with Bronston, the composer was shocked to realize, during the premiere of El Cid, that the director and his sound editor had chopped and binned some of Rózsa’s cues in favour of the film’s sound design. As a result, Rózsa cancelled his publicity tour, stating that, ‘I could not talk about music which nobody was going to hear.’

The above issues notwithstanding, the film was a commercial success earning more than four times its production cost of $6.25 million and garnered three Academy Award nominations including Best Art Direction, Best Film Score and Best Song. El Cid would be Milós Rózsa’s last epic score.

‘HATARI!’ MOVIE POSTER

Hatari! (1962)

Henry Mancini
Hoagy Carmichael

Hatari! is a 1962 American adventure romantic comedy film directed by Howard Hawks. It portrays a group of professional game catchers in Africa who entrap wild animals and sell them to zoos before a female wildlife photographer disrupts their ways.

Hawks was planning on hiring his long-time collaborator, Dmitri Tiomkin, to write the score for the picture. The director’s only requirement was for Tiomkin to completely leave out the string and woodwind sections and instead use authentic African instruments. Thinking Hawks was joking, the conservative composer showed the director a score that included strings. This misunderstanding would lead to them parting ways and the pair would never work together again.

HOAGY CARMICHAEL’S SKECTH FOR ‘HATARI!’

The director then turned to prolific singer-songwriter Hoagy Carmichael who played Cricket in the director’s 1944 picture, To Have and Have Not, after Hawks had discovered the musician at a party. Hawks wanted to work with someone who had never scored a picture before and had no preconceived notions of what a score is supposed to sound like. And although the director was happy at first with Carmichael’s material, they ended up disagreeing on the direction of the music and Hawks had to turn to another composer yet again.

As it turned out, the third time was the charm as the director’s next choice, Henry Mancini, would go on to score Hatari!. Mancini did end up using violins in his music, however, he masterfully entwined them with tribal rhythms and an array of native instruments that Hawks had brought back with him from Africa. Mancini would use instruments such as the thumb piano, shell gourds and giant pea pods to score the animal scenes. Among the shot material was a scene that Hawks was contemplating on cutting out, but asked Mancini to have a look at it regardless. The scene featured Anna Maria D’Alessandro (Elsa Martinelli) taking three small elephants to a watering hole to bathe them. The composer loved the scene and immediately knew what to do with it. He superimposed an E-flat clarinet over an electric calliope (the only one in the world at that time), and the result would give birth to one of cinema’s most memorable themes, ‘Baby Elephant Walk’. The composer recalled:

[…] As the little elephants went down to the water, there was a shot of them from behind. Their little backsides were definitely in rhythm with something. […] it reminded me of something. I though, Yeah, they’re walking eight to the bar, and that brought something to mind, an old Will Bradley boogie-woogie number called “Down the Road a Piece”, a hit record in the old days, with Ray McKinley on drums and Freddie Slack on piano. Those little elephants were definitely walking boogie-woogie, eight to the bar. I wrote “Baby Elephant Walk” as a result.

Interestingly, the next track after ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ on the soundtrack recording is ‘Just for Tonight’, which was Hoagy Carmichael’s reworking of ‘A Perfect Paris Night’ and the only material retained from his work in the film. Luckily, all of Carmichael’s recorded music, as well as the written score were preserved and are archived at Indiana University.

‘TORN CURTAIN’ MOVIE POSTER

Torn Curtain (1966)

John Addison
Bernard Herrmann

Torn Curtain is a 1966 Cold War political thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. …of an American scientist (Paul Newman) who is secretly a double agent who publicly defects to East Germany to discover Soviet nuclear secrets.

By that time, the celebrated director had enthralled audiences worldwide with masterpieces such as Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). However, following the box office failure of Marnie (1964), Hitchcock started to doubt himself as his cinema was beginning to show its age. Universal Studios saw Hitch’s hesitation as an opportunity to get their claws into the film’s post-production. Lew Wasserman, the head of Universal, instructed Hitchcock to bring in a new sound to the picture and go for a pop-oriented score more in tune with the times.

Having previously successfully collaborated with Bernard Herrmann on eight of his pictures which constituted one of the greatest director-composer partnerships in the history of cinema, Hitchcock turned to the composer once again, this time with precise instructions in tune with the studio’s demands:

I am particularly concerned with the need to break away from the old-fashioned cued-in type music that we have been using for so long. […] The audience is very different from the one to which we used to cater; it is young, vigorous and demanding. It is this fact that has been recognized by almost all of the European filmmakers where they have sought to introduce a beat and a rhythm that is more in tune with the requirements of the aforesaid audience.

Herrmann was not crazy about the film but agreed to score it as by that time Hitchcock was his only regular source of feature film work. The independent-minded composer went ahead with music he thought was appropriate for the film. Granted, Hitchcock had asked Herrmann to sketch the music ‘in advance because we have an urgent problem of meeting a tax date’, so the composer had to come up with the cues blindly. When Hitchcock arrived at the Goldwyn Studios on 24 March 1966 for the first recording session, he was shocked to realize that Herrmann had gone against his wishes and wrote bold, unusual symphonic music using atypical orchestrations and an unorthodox line-up of instruments consisting of twelve flutes – doubling on piccolos, alto flutes and bass flutes – sixteen French horns, nine trombones, two tubas, double timpani, eight cellos and eight basses. He also composed music for the murder scene, even though Hitchcock had expressly requested be left without music.

The orchestra musicians were ecstatic about Herrmann’s score and gave him a standing ovation right after the recording. Hitchcock, however, was furious and dismissed the composer in front of everyone. The two never spoke again, ending a twelve-year-old collaboration.

A few days later, British composer John Addison was hired and flown to Los Angeles. Ironically, Addison’s replacement music wasn’t pop-oriented either and neither did it manage to salvage the picture which flopped.

Bernard Herrman’s score for Torn Curtain remains one of the best known ‘might have beens’ in the history of film music. And although it never ended up in the film, his music was released on CD no less than three times over the years.

‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’ MOVIE POSTER

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Classical compositions by various composers
Frank Cordell, Alex North

2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick’s magnum opus and is based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Sentinel. Kubrick worked together with Clarke on writing the script, which they completed in January 1966, which would eventually prompt Clarke to publish his science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

As was his custom, Kubrick used temporary music throughout his film in order to find the film’s pulse and to help carry the narrative. And thus, over the next two years, as the project was taking shape, he acquired multiple records of classical music, listened to countless hours of orchestral pieces and put together a temp track (temporary music used in a picture during production). Among his favourites were Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard Strauss’ tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (which became the movie’s signature track), a waltz by Frédéric Chopin, Johann Strauss’ The Blue Danube, Aram Khachaturian’s Gayene, and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Kubrick actually approached Orff and tried to persuade him to compose the score, however, Orff politely declined saying that this task was too large for his advanced age (the composer was seventy-one at the time).

Kubrick became convinced that his film didn’t need an original score as his carefully-curated selection of classical oeuvres would do the film justice. The MGM bosses, however, disagreed. They were adamant that a movie of such magnitude required an equally-great composer. And so, at the end of 1967, the director approached two composers – English composer Frank Cordell and well-established Hollywood composer Alex North (with whom Kubrick had worked on Spartacus (1960).

The collaboration with Cordell was stillborn, as at that time, Kubrick wasn’t very clear about what he wanted and instructed the composer to adapt Mahler’s Third Symphony. Cordell’s score got rejected and Kubrick then turned to Alex North.

Alex North recalls:

I was living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York (where Arthur Clarke was living) and got a phone call from Kubrick from London asking me of my availability to come over and do a score for 2001. He told me that I was the film composer he most respected, and he looked forward to working together. I was ecstatic at the idea of working with Kubrick again (Spartacus was an extremely exciting experience for me), as I regard Kubrick as the most gifted of the younger-generation directors, and that goes for the older as well. And to do a film score where there were about twenty-five minutes of dialogue and no sound effects! What a dreamy assignment, after Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, loaded with dialogue.

 I flew over to London for two days in early December to discuss music with Kubrick. He was direct and honest with me concerning his desire to retain some of the “temporary” music tracks which he had been using for the past years. I realized that he liked these tracks, but I couldn’t accept the idea of composing part of the score interpolated with other composers. I felt I could compose music that had the ingredients and essence of what Kubrick wanted and give it a consistency and homogeneity and contemporary feel. In any case, I returned to London December 24th [1967] to start work for recording on January 1, after having seen and discussed the first hour of film for scoring. Kubrick arranged a magnificent apartment for me on the Chelsea Embankment, and furnished me with all the things to make me happy: record player, tape machine, good records, etc. I worked day and night to meet the first recording date, but with the stress and strain, I came down with muscle spasms and back trouble. I had to go to the recording in an ambulance, and the man who helped me with the orchestration, Henry Brant, conducted while I was in the control room. Kubrick was present, in and out; he was pressured for time as well. He made very good suggestions, musically. I had written two sequences for the opening, and he was definitely favorable to one, which was my favorite as well. So I assumed all was going well, what with his participation and interest in the recording. But somehow I had the hunch that whatever I wrote to supplant Strauss’ Zarathustra would not satisfy Kubrick, even though I used the same structure but brought it up to date in idiom and dramatic punch. Also, how could I compete with Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from Midsummer Night’s Dream? Well, I thought I did pretty damned well in that respect.

In any case, after having composed and recorded over forty minutes of music in those two weeks, I waited around for the opportunity to look at the balance of the film, spot the music, etc. During that period I was rewriting some of the stuff that I was not completely satisfied with, and Kubrick even suggested over the phone certain changes that I could make in the subsequent recording. After eleven tense days of waiting to see more film in order to record in early February, I received word from Kubrick that no more score was necessary, that he was going to use breathing effects for the remainder of the film. It was all very strange, and I thought perhaps I would still be called upon to compose more music; I even suggested to Kubrick that I could do whatever necessary back in L.A. at the M-G-M studios. Nothing happened. I went to a screening in New York, and there were most of the “temporary” tracks.

In an interesting twist, North found out that his score had been rejected only during the film’s premiere in New York, an experience that, according to author Michael Benson, left him ‘shocked and humiliated’.

Thankfully, Alex North’s original score was brought to life in 1993 via a full recording conducted by Jerry Goldsmith.

As technology and storytelling evolved, the second half of the twentieth century brought forth a plethora of iconic films that changed the way we see and understand cinema today. Directors of a previous generation delivered their last masterpieces, bowing out gracefully as the new generation emerged with daring new concepts. Young actors we worship today as legends were only just getting started, and from 1961 until 1971, many of their performances made cinematic history.

1961: A New Era Begins

Let us begin with an artistic bang, as it’s ‘Viridiana’ (1961) by Luis Buñuel that marks his return to Spain from a lengthy exile after the 1936-1939 Civil War. The film is notorious for its alleged blasphemy—a crown of thorns tossed into the fire, a cross disguised as a switchblade, and a few other equally controversial elements. It led to the banning of its distribution by the Spanish dictatorship, with support from the Vatican. It’s the parody of ‘the Last Supper’ that drew the clerics’ ire, a medieval feast of fools in which the order of things is inverted. The scene itself is fundamental to forging the film’s merciless black humour.

‘VIRIDIANA’ (1961)

John Huston’s ‘The Misfits’ (1961) is a heart-breaking work of art, showing us Marilyn Monroe like never before. Her Roslyn ends up running into the desolate flatlands, a raw animal howl bursting from her throat and cutting through our souls as the line is blurred between the character and the real woman—it all comes spilling out: the foster homes, the sexual abuse, the divorces, the beatings, the miscarriages, the drugs… Two years later, Ms Monroe would be found dead. I see this particular scene as a foreshadowing of her epitaph, in a way. ‘The Misfits’ is also her last movie and her legacy, a condemnation of the public who kept staring but could never really see how capable an actress she truly was.

‘THE MISFITS’ (1961)

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ (1961) by Blake Edwards did not only present a mesmerizing Audrey Hepburn in an iconic role. Holly’s party could very well be the best party scene in movies—made up of easy, loping group shots following people from place to place. We start out small, with Holly’s agent telling stories about her to Paul, her new neighbour. Soon, more people arrive, and it gets crowded. They run out of booze, but a delivery boy brings more. The place becomes packed, wall-to-wall with guests, a couple making out in the shower. This is what people move to New York for, in the end, and it’s why they want out of a party once they’re there: proximity.

‘BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S’ (1961), ©JURROW-SHEPHERD

1962: Drama Like Never Before

When it comes to conspiracy thrillers, we cannot discuss proper paranoia without John Frankenheimer’s ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962), starring Frank Sinatra. The circular shot that takes over, eleven minutes into the film, is a surreal 360-degree moment that embodies the visceral fear of mind control. The nightmare scene begins with Sinatra’s Captain Marko seated with other soldiers on a dais at a ladies’ garden society meeting which transforms into huge blow-ups of Mao and Stalin, while a Chinese mind-control expert explains that these American soldiers are test subjects of brainwashing. It is rife with unsettling discontinuities, forcing viewers to alternate between horticulturalists and Communists. This sequence doesn’t just recount mind control. It visualizes it.

‘THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE’ (1962), ©M.C. PRODUCTIONS

‘Jules and Jim’ (1962) by François Truffaut is a romantic drama of the French New Wave whose ending brings tragedy and transcendence into a whole. Set in the era of the First World War, it chronicles the profound friendship between Oskar Werner’s Jules and Henri Serre’s Jim, both young intellectuals sharing an affection for Jeanne Moreau’s Catherine—the freewheeling beauty that bounces between them. She chooses to marry Jules, yet she doesn’t forsake Jim, either. Jules would rather tolerate their infidelity than lose either of them. This triangle eventually pushes Catherine to kill herself and Jim, forcing Jules to attend their funeral. After he watches their bodies slide into the crematorium furnace, we’d expect him to be most miserable. However, Jules walks out with a spring in his step. Yes, he lost the two people he loved most, but his existential ordeal is now over. He’s entitled to relief.

‘JULES AND JIM’ (1962), ©LES FILMS DU CARROSSE

Despite its light focus on battles and the mass movements of men, David Lean’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962) remains a strangely withdrawn film, an epic work of cinema whose lead, T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), dies in a motorcycle accident before the story properly begins to unfold. Mr Lean is visibly more concerned with the collapse of Lawrence’s project than with anything else. Our final view of Lawrence, for that matter, is also his, as he sits down in the jeep and is driven away, his face disappearing behind the dirty windshield. Ejected from the arena where he had hoped to emerge as extraordinary, Lawrence has become invisible.

‘LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’ (1962), ©HORIZON PICTURES

1963: A Year of Epic Cinema

You might remember ‘Cleopatra’ (1963) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz as the dazzling historical film that brought a stupendous Elizabeth Taylor onto the silver screen. Some might recount it’s also where she met her future fifth husband, Richard Burton. But ‘Cleopatra’ made a different kind of history, as Ms Taylor broke $1 million for her performance. Producer Walter Wanger had just lost Joan Collins to scheduling problems for the part, leaving him vulnerable to high demands. Taylor’s contract specified 10% of the film’s gross earnings, racking up a total of $2 million for her acting services alone. She also collected a fee from the use of Todd-AO, an anamorphic widescreen process developed by the late third husband, Michael Todd, which she insisted be used on ‘Cleopatra’.

‘CLEOPATRA’ (1963), ©TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

Luchino Visconti’s ‘The Leopard’ (1963) is but one example that showcases the visionary director’s ability to express complex ideas through visual imagery. While it apparently focuses on the patriarchal figure of Prince Fabrizio Salina, eloquently portrayed by Burt Lancaster, the film is more concerned with the changes of Italian society when power is passed from the older generation to the younger. The main representatives of the latter are Salina’s nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (Alain Delon) and Tancredi’s wife-to-be (Claudia Cardinale), whom we see embracing during the party sequence through the film’s final hour. In one astonishing shot, a distant view of them kissing is suddenly invaded by the line of dancers—the contrast between joy and the drabness of conformity gives this scene and the film itself a type of melancholy that is a staple of Visconti’s work.

‘THE LEOPARD’ (1963), ©TITANUS

‘The Great Escape’ (1963) by John Sturges is a venerated object of action cinema. Steve McQueen’s Virgil Hilts flees on a motorcycle with Nazis in hot pursuit. After so many minutes of camp prisoners tunnelling toward freedom, the open countryside becomes a beacon of hope. But high barbed fences threaten to thwart Hilts’ narrative of escape—until McQueen himself, the cool stunt daredevil, merges with the P.O.W. escapee and guns the bike’s engine before zooming up over the barrier. I can almost hear the audiences gasping inside a packed movie theatre when this key scene came on. This is the magic of movies, so often linked to the marvel of flight. It’s quite easy to understand why ‘The Great Escape’ is such a great moment in the history of film.

‘THE GREAT ESCAPE’ (1963), ©THE MIRISCH COMPANY

Alfred Hitchcock had already established himself as the master of suspense, yet ‘The Birds’ (1963) took things to a whole new level. The scene outside the schoolhouse is the most memorable. We are in Bodega Bay, and there have already been several attacks by the apparently crazed birds. Tippi Hedren’s Melanie Daniels is waiting for Veronica Cartwright’s Cathy to come out of class—she sits in the playground, elegantly smoking a cigarette with plenty on her mind, plenty enough that she doesn’t even notice the birds landing on the climbing frame behind her. When fluttering finally grips her focus, we’re given a camera swivel from her point of view to find the frame completely covered with birds. We know they will attack. This is a textbook example of building suspense in an apparent narrative dead spot, as all hell is about to break loose.

‘THE BIRDS’ (1963), ©ALFRED J. HITCHCOCK PRODUCTIONS

1965: Rules Change for Women and Action in Film

Russ Meyer’s ‘Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ (1965) brought forth the warrior queen in a format that had been abandoned by other creative mediums. Exotic dancer and martial-artist-turned-actress Tura Satana gained an impressive cult following after her performance as the fierce Varla, a masochist’s wet dream with sharp bangs, cat’s eye make-up, and a stunning hourglass figure wrapped in tight black denim.

While the top-grossing movie of that year portrayed saintly femininity in ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965), Ms Satana was kicking ass and taking names in the California desert, racing cars for kicks and cackling in the faces of men. She pioneered future female-led action flicks such as ‘Kill Bill’ (2003), ‘Alien’ (1979), and ‘The Terminator’ (1984). The way in which Varla, an unstoppable wolverine of a woman, pulls Tommy’s wrists back, presses the heel of her boot to his neck, then snaps his spine with a loud crack, manages to redefine the lead female in action films.

‘FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!’ (1965), ©EVE PRODUCTIONS

1966: New Western, Dystopia, and Hell’s Angels

‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966) by Sergio Leone is a film that insists on two kinds of people existing in the world. The director’s fondness for contrasting two types of shots—close-ups and long shots, finds its conclusion in the grey or blue of the two kinds of soldiers who move toward Eli Wallach’s Tuco and Clint Eastwood’s Blondie from afar. Leone easily turns grey soldiers to blue through a visual instrument of dust, cutting to Blondie and Tuco chained in a prison camp for having worn the wrong disguise in their chase for gold in the middle of a Civil War. Movies were invented for ideas such as this.

‘THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY’ (1966), ©CONSTANTIN FILM

Ray Bradbury’s writing is a paragon of exquisite science fiction. Few were able to transport his works onto the screen—few, among them being François Truffaut’s take on ‘Fahrenheit 451’ (1966). Its credits sequence stands out as a work of its own since Mr Truffaut thematically integrates it into his adaptation of the dystopian novel. Reading is banned in the world of ‘Fahrenheit 451’, and so the titles are spoken, not printed. We listen to the credits like the characters receive the programs they watch on TV. We see a series of photos like the picture-comics they gaze upon instead of reading books or newspapers.

‘FAHRENHEIT 451’ (1966), ©ANGLO ENTERPRISES

You’d think the low-budget biker movie craze started with ‘Easy Rider’ (1969), but Roger Corman’s ‘The Wild Angels’ (1966) was the true flame to light that fuse. It’s a quintessential guilty pleasure of that decade, starring Peter Fonda as Heavenly Blues, leader of a California chapter of Hell’s Angels. The transgressive script was penned by Peter Bogdanovich and Monte Hellman, and it features some interesting performances from Diane Ladd (Laura Dern’s mother), Dick Miller, and Nancy Sinatra.

1967: Here’s to You, Mrs Robinson

Aside from Arthur Penn’s ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) featuring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as the notorious outlaws, no other movie has rocked that year’s box-office as firmly as ‘The Graduate’ (1967), directed by Mike Nichols. It gives us a young Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, adrift after college and uninterested in a conventional career, who’s lured into an affair by Mrs Robinson, the family friend brilliantly portrayed by Anne Bancroft. Ben gets together with Mrs Robinson’s daughter, Elaine, and soon they fall in love. It breaks down when Elaine discovers his affair with her mother and gets engaged to another man. Even then, Ben refuses to back down as he frantically rushes into the church and basically steals the bride. They board a city bus, headed towards an unknown future. Their lives will never be the same again, and neither will the movies.

‘THE GRADUATE’ (1967), ©LAWRENCE TRUMAN PRODUCTIONS

1968: Of Zombies and Apes and MPAA Ratings

A lot happened in 1968. George A. Romero, the father of the cult horror, brought ‘Night of the Living Dead’ to theatres worldwide. It is rightly regarded as a film that made the entire genre enter its modern age, and it also anticipates the trend in more recent horror flicks toward an encouraged use of self-reflexivity. ‘Night of the Living Dead’ also offered one of the most famous lines in the horror department: ‘They’re coming to get you, Barbara!’.

In Franklin J. Schaffner’s ‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968), Charlton Heston is an astronaut stranded on a planet ruled by evolved races of apes. He can never be sure of anything here, and he learns that best in the final scene when he discovers a half-buried Statue of Liberty on a beach and realizes that all this time he was still on Earth. The ending forces viewers to put everything they’ve seen before into a new perspective—a trick that future sci-fi and horror filmmakers will gladly use again.

‘PLANET OF THE APES’ (1968), ©TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

In November 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America enacted its rating system as a response to the constantly eroding strictures of the old Hollywood Production Code from the 1930s. Despite being looser than its predecessor, the MPAA rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17) was viciously called out by Kirby Dick in his 2006 documentary, ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’. His claims focused on the lack of transparency in the board’s decision-making process, along with the fact that it was more hostile to explicit sexual content than extreme violence, stigmatizing gay sex more severely than heterosexual coupling.

This year also gave us ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, based on Arthur C. Clarke’s eponymous sci-fi novel. The premise of this cinematic oeuvre is that some unknown breed of beings has been observing life on Earth from the beginning, only intervening on rare occasions to encourage the evolution of human intelligence. The cut from flying bone to soaring spaceship in the subtitled ‘The Dawn of Man’ first chapter is a legendary cut in modern cinema, making a comment on the possibilities of human evolution that’s as incredibly condensed as a singularity in deep space.

‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’, ©METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER (MGM)

1969: ‘I’m Walkin’ Here!’

Dennis Hopper directed ‘Easy Rider’ (1969), which brings Peter Fonda back as a biker, alongside a young and enthralling Jack Nicholson. The success of this film convinced studios to take a chance on new ideas, new filmmakers, and new audiences, thus reducing the number of screenplay deaths in the fearsome ‘slush pile’.

But it was John Schlesinger’s ‘Midnight Cowboy’ (1969), starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, that made this year all the more memorable through its famous street-crossing line, as the petty criminal of the lower depths demands respect: Hoffman’s Rizzo stumbles onto a Manhattan street just as a taxi nearly runs him over, inciting him to slam his fist on the hood with such force that his cigarette drops from his lips. ‘I’m walkin’ here!’ he shouts, asserting his right to existence.

‘MIDNIGHT COWBOY’ (1969), ©JEROME HELLMAN PRODUCTIONS

1971: The Rise of Bruce Lee

In the United States, Bruce Lee had developed the Jeet Kune Do, ‘art of the intercepting fist’, a combination of Chinese wing chun, Korean taekwondo, and Western boxing and wrestling. Returning to Hong Kong, he put this mastery to good use, making a grand name for himself in Lo Wei’s ‘The Big Boss’ (1971). It is here that the legend of cinema’s dragon was born, as this was the first Chinese martial arts film that crossed over to Western audiences. Like many overnight successes, Mr Lee toiled for years before he became a star of the silver screen. He struggled with Hollywood’s Asian stereotypes, and the last drop was being passed over for a lead role in ‘Kung Fu’, the TV series that had David Carradine as a Shaolin Monk wandering through the American West.

‘THE BIG BOSS’ (1971), ©GOLDEN HARVEST FILMS

Mr Lee brokered a deal with Golden Harvest Films in Hong Kong, instead, and the rest became history. Audiences had never seen someone like Bruce Lee before: insolent, charismatic, fast like a panther and effortlessly cool, all-steel physique and whipcrack kicks and punches. He broke the mould and put the world on notice that Asians were more than Hollywood had made them out to be.