[University of Michigan, 2008]
Composers have been breaking molds and setting new precedents for
centuries, creating music that is reflective of the social, cultural and
political ideologies of its time. In
1955, Leonard Rosenman broke molds of tonality in Hollywood studio era film
music, composing a score for Rebel
Without a Cause that was radically different from other film scores of its
time. Not only is this score
revolutionary in its compositional style, but it also traces the film's
narrative as well as accentuates the characters' tensions and anxieties
extremely well.
As heard thus far from class movie screenings, many film scores of
the Hollywood studio era were heavily influenced by nineteenth-century Romantic
European composers. In 1942, Max Steiner's lush orchestration in Casablanca made for a quintessential
Romantic sound. Four years later, Humoresque featured the works of Wagner
and Dvorak. Dimitri Tiomkin, composer of
Shadow of a Doubt, went as far as
thanking Brahms, Strauss, and Wagner—all great Romantic composers—for his
Academy Award in 1954.
Other Hollywood studio era film scores, such as Shall We Dance, Of Mice and
Men and On the Waterfront, were
drawn from contemporary forms of early twentieth-century American music, from
jazz and ragtime to Copland's new American sound. But the music of Rebel Without A Cause brought a brand
new musical element to cinema—twelve-tone music. Rosenman, who studied with Schoenberg himself[1],
merged this head-turning concept with the complex rhythms of Stravinsky, the
lyricism of the great romantics and the jazzy feel of Gershwin's score for Shall We Dance to create a film score
unlike anything anyone had heard before.
This music fits with the narrative extremely well. Jim Stork, played
by James Dean, is a rebellious teenager who struggles to find his place in the
world. Rebel Without a Cause traces his first day at a new school as he
meets a girl (Judy, played by Natalie Wood), faces a seemingly unavoidable
challenge, and struggles to deal with the consequences of that challenge. Just
as Rosenman resists the compositional methods of many Hollywood studio era
films (tonality), Jim defies his parents by drinking alcohol, accepting dares
atop dangerous cliffs, and running away from home. Atonal music, which has no
tonal center, lacks harmonic direction and might leave listeners feeling
uneasy. Jim, likewise, has no sense of his own identity (center), and no amount
of guidance (harmonic direction) from his parents seems to help him. After
numerous moves, he still doesn't feel quite at home: "If I had one day
when I didn’t' have to be all confused…if I felt like I belonged
someplace…"
Rosenman's score, following patterns of atonality, incorporates a
great deal of dissonance. An example of this is found in the knife scene. Jim
and his faithful follower Plato (played by Sal Mineo) are standing outside the
planetarium, in hiding from the school bullies.
Just as they are
discovered, the cue begins with a jazzy saxophone solo. A large group of kids appear, and pulsing,
dissonant chords are heard in irregular beats, evocative of Stravinsky's
complex rhythms in The Rite of Spring. These
chords add distinct suspense and a sense of foreboding to the scene. The jazzy saxophone returns as the group of
kids, led by Buzz (played by Corey Allen) walk to Jim's car and lean against
it. The saxophone complements well the
seductive, teasing looks that Judy shoots toward Jim. The music wanders around
restlessly as Jim and the kids
exchange looks, and Jim shifts uncertainly as he watches. Suddenly a low phrase of staccato notes is
heard, and one can see that Buzz—looking down at Jim's tire—has an idea. The
music, reflecting the obvious tension in the air ("Relax, man"),
ascends nervously in pitch, and at the end of a dramatic crescendo lands on a
dissonant chord just as Buzz flips open a switchblade. It remains anxious and
unstable while Buzz runs the blade across the surface of Jim's tire, and as he
stabs it, the strings descend in alignment with the deflating tire as air
quickly escapes. Immediately, however, the strings escalate frantically as the
tension increases even more and the pressure for Jim to take action is elevated
to a new extreme. High staccato brass notes are heard, and suspended dissonance
is held by the brass as the group watches Jim, waiting for him to retaliate.
This musical instability continues, and just as the music has no tonal
direction, no one is quite sure what Jim is going to do. Snare drums are heard as he walks toward
Buzz, calling to mind a march into battle.
This foreshadows the violent clash that is about to occur between Buzz
and Jim. As the kids cluck at Jim, the
brass very softly ascends in unstable intervals. Jim glances around at the
group of kids, and when his gaze finally lands on Judy, the music is
momentarily soft and lyrical. As he speaks to her, the strings play a gentle
melody, discerning the harsh dissonance of the rest of the group from the
kindness of this one girl. With a snide remark, however, the music resumes its
harsh quality and Buzz makes the first move.
The dialogue building up to the knife fight is accompanied by an
unstable melody in the strings and more pulsing, staccato horns. As Buzz corners Jim next to the telescope,
the strings play a high, suspenseful tremolo.
Buzz continues to provoke Jim, and the strings sits on this high tremolo
while everyone watches intently, waiting for Jim to take action. Buzz again
calls Jim a chicken, and with the strike of the timpani, Jim angrily switches
the knife open and the fight begins. The
music persists
anxiously as the boys take stabs at one another, the brass maintaining
dissonance and suspense. Frantic flutes
execute high, whirling passages amid syncopated horn blares, sharp and staccato
to signify the spontaneous jabbing motion of the knives. With Buzz's momentous
jab at Jim, a whirling flute passage flies quickly up and down the scale as Jim
pulls away just in time. The music escalates in intensity with more whirling
flutes as Jim is knocked down and Pluto rushes toward Buzz with a chain. The strike of the timpani coincides with
Pluto's fall, but the music immediately picks back up again. As Buzz tosses his knife back and forth
between his two hands, the orchestra ascends in pitch and lands on a high,
suspenseful flute tremolo. The music cuts off with a staccato chord just as Jim
knocks Buzz's knife out of his hand. Silence ensues as Jim grabs Buzz and puts
a knife to his neck, and remains for the remainder of the scene. The music's
end signifies the end of the knife fight, and it appears that Jim has won. But
the final harmony of the cue fails to bring the music to a harmonic close, and
soon it is decided that the confrontation, like the music's tonality, is not
resolved.
Rosenman once described the music of Rebel Without a Cause as having "a lot of jazz in it….like a
twelve-tone type of jazz."[2] But his score is more than just Serialism and
jazz. The opening credits of the film
feature a jazzy saxophone solo. Jarring, irregular pulses are heard
during the knife
fight. Romantic orchestration, including
strings and even the harp (ascending glissandos as the teenagers play in the
vacant pool), persist throughout the film. Rosenman incorporates several
musical trends in his score, following in the footstep of Gershwin, Stravinsky
and Schoenberg. Yet his music is
maintains dissonance and instability; even with the words "your lips are
soft" from Judy—a normally romantic moment calling for romantic music—the
music is dissonant and unstable.
Rosenman blends twelve-tone music, jazz, romanticism, and
irregular rhythms. The result of the blend, in addition to accurately following
the emotions of the narrative, is a revolutionary score. He looks above and beyond turning to
romanticism as a musical model (using instead a combination of styles), while
other scores of the Hollywood studio-era "emulate [romantic] formal and
stylistic techniques."[3]
Schoenberg's serialism is often called the emancipation of tonality, but
Rosenman's score for Rebel Without a
Cause provided for yet another musical revolution, this time in cinematic
scores: the emancipation of romanticism.
[3] Carol Flinn, "The Most Romantic Art of All: Music in the
Classical Hollywood Cinema," Cinema
Journal 29, no. 4 (1990): 35.
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