Courtney Howard // Film Critic
Director Martin Scorsese has turned many a music hit into an iconic cinematic moment. “Then He Kissed Me,” “The House of the Rising Sun,” “Gimme Shelter”; It’s difficult not to hear these songs and remember where and when he utilized them to their greatest propulsive power. Music has always played a strong role in many of his pictures, becoming synonymous with his stunning visuals.
Scorsese’s use of soundtrack and score is once again on full display in KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. The film tells the story of a WWI veteran (Leonardo DiCaprio), who’s roped into a monstrous scheme by his power-hungry uncle (Robert De Niro) to defraud the Osage Nation and rob his Osage wife (Lily Gladstone) of her head rights. At the film’s recent virtual press conference, he credited song pacing for inspiring his approach conducting a scene’s aesthetics.
“The boxing scenes in RAGING BULL are like the ballet scene in THE RED SHOES, where everything is seen and felt from inside the ring, inside the fighter’s head, the way everything is felt and seen inside the dancer’s head, Moira Shearer’s, in RED SHOES. The covering of The Band singing “The Weight” in THE LAST WALTZ, doing it in the studio was very much according to the music, to the different bars of music and how a camera would move, et cetera.”
Occasionally he’ll play music on set to help rehearse a scene’s camera movements and dramatic crescendos.
“In the case of GOODFELLAS, number of times the end of “Layla,” for example, was played back as we’re doing the camera moves. Ultimately the movie is more like I’m trying to get to the movie being a piece of music. That’s why I do these music films at the same time. I’m trying to get to the pacing and rhythm of something that can be played.”
He also loves to study films with their sound muted to understand their storytelling methods.
“Very often, if a film is playing on TCM, I take the sound off and I just watch. It’s living with me. I live with it. And if it’s a Hitchcock or it’s a Ford, I’m looking, and I can tell there’s a musical rhythm to the pacing of the camera (the size of the people in the frame), the editing, and camera movement. I could feel it. That’s how I exist, in a sense.”
The octogenarian auteur believes music augments a scene’s rhythms especially in the post-production process.
“It’s really about getting the pace of music. And that’s done very, very carefully on set, but also even more carefully in the editing. That’s why this picture is more like, somebody pointed out recently, like [Maurice Ravel’s] “Bolero,” where it starts slower and moves slowly and in circles and then gets more and more intense, and suddenly goes more and more until it explodes.
I couldn’t verbalize the way I am now, but I felt it in the shoot and in the edit. And a lot of the music that kept pushing me was what [music supervisor] Robbie Robertson had put together, particularly that bass note that he was playing when Ernest drops [Mollie] off for the first time at her house. She looks at him, she turns, and all of a sudden you hear [mimics bass line in guitar]. I said, “I wanted something dangerous and fleshy. And sexy, but dangerous.” That beat took us all the way through.”
As for how they came up with the soundtrack for the film, it all came down to Robertson’s impeccable curation.
“He sent me some [hymn] and I could pick the music from Harry Smith’s anthology of folk music, all this sort of thing. One particular piece called the “Indian War Whoop” by Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers was very important. “Bulldoze Blues” by Henry Thomas, which became “Going Up The Country” by Canned Heat. Dark As The Night, Blind Willie Johnson, with the flames. Emmett Miller singing “Lovesick Blues,” which became the great “Lovesick Blues” by Hank Williams later on, but this was the first. So all that’s in there, but the drive of the movie is what Robbie put down, and we pulled it through that way.”
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is now playing in theaters.
