Have You Ever...............

As I'm sitting here this evening, pondering what to write about on my blog, the idea snuck into my subconscience and settled there, making periodic jabs at me until I recognized it. This is a situation I've been in many times and I always marvel at it.

My husband was in the dining room watching some old western movie. I'm in the office. The rooms are on the same floor, but not visible to each other. I find myself listening to the music playing in the background of the movie. It's easier to do when you can't see the pictures. Before the electronic world evolved, producers used music to capture the "mood" of a scene. Old movies are filled with elaboratly composed songs - some even with words - and fabulous symphonic pieces. The notes roar or creep into the background, only to sneak away, unnoticed, when the acting takes center stage. Imagine being a studio musician and being given a movie score to perform. How disjointed and odd it must have been to perform without knowing the context of the scene where it would be used. How much music and song wound up on the cutting room floor. What talented musicians went unrecognized for their unbelievable performances in so many movies.

The next time there's an older movie on, listen to what's going on in the background, without watching the screne.

On another note - no pun intended - Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, was the only movie (ever?) of his to be filmed without the use of background music. If you've seen it, I'm willing to bet that you never noticed. The lack of background noise in many of the scenes adds to the movie's overall eerieness. Once I learned this information, the next time I watched the movie I felt it was even more powerful, and the filming even more "deliberate". Super creepy.

Honestly, I'm not a movie watcher, so this commentary/observation is rather ironic coming from me. What do you think?