With a distinct twentieth-century classical sensibility, Elmer Bernstein has a taste for the bold and the dramatic. He is best know for his soundtracks for Westerns and action films such as "The Magnificent Seven," "True Grit," "The Shootist" and even 1999's...
[more]With a distinct twentieth-century classical sensibility, Elmer Bernstein has a taste for the bold and the dramatic. He is best know for his soundtracks for Westerns and action films such as "The Magnificent Seven," "True Grit," "The Shootist" and even 1999's summer extravaganza, "Wild Wild West"; but he also scored the screwball hits "Airplane!" "Meatballs," and "Stripes." This versatility may stem from Bernstein's taste for the ondes martenot, an electro-acoustic instrument with a droney, modern, almost theramin feel. The juxtaposition of the classical and the electronic allows Bernstein to score for a wide variety for films.
While Bernstein undoubtedly enjoys a certain signature, he is able to adapt his style to fit the film at hand. Take Martin Scorsese's "Age of Innocence," an adaptation of the book by Edith Wharton. The book no doubt speaks an irony that Scorsese unfortunately overlooked or chose to ignore. But given Scorsese's dramatic interpretation, Bernstein's score augments the austerity, the tragedy, the luxurious bent of the camera's lens, and the period piece's feel. Lyrical and waltz-like, the score speaks at once to the rigidity of the social order and to the passion that threatens that border. For his work on the film, Bernstein was nominated for an Academy Award (his eighth nomination). He only won once, for 1967's "Thoroughly Modern Millie."
The New York native graduated from the Julliard Institute before going on to write music for UN radio programs during the Second World War. An artist through and through, Bernstein was a dancer and an actor, in addition to his work as a composer. But film seduced him and he succumbed, composing his first scores for David Miller's "Saturday's Hero" in 1951. Later, Bernstein lent his dramatic sensibility to Hollywood's most famous mockingbird, "The Ten Commandments."
Bernstein continues to score, proving his versatility with the oddly modern sounds that run through his near-classical compositions. Besides Barry Sonnenfeld's "Wild Wild West," Bernstein once again teamed with Scorsese on "Bringing Out the Dead," and with Francis Ford Coppola on "The Rainmaker."
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