Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Unforgiven: Claudia’s Theme

By Lennie Niehaus
 


 

I posted this, because my son asked me to. He loves the music; I do, too. I was going to say that we have “unfortunately” not yet seen the movie together, but had we done so, it would mean that he would be much older than he already is, and that would really be unfortunate! He’s been growing up much too fast for his mama and me, to begin with.

Thanks to blackstone1977.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love classical guitar. It sounds a bit like some of the music from the "Man With No Name" movies.

Nicholas said...

You know what, T, I’ll bet you’re on to something.

I’m not very familiar with the Leone trilogy, or with Eastwood’s other early Westerns (though of course, I know Ennio Morricone’s theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), and truth be told, I don’t care for Eastwood’s early movie acting. There’s underplaying, and then there’s catatonia.

But he grew.

And although he must have directed 20 pictures prior to Unforgiven, he waited until that one, to dedicate it to his teachers, Leone and Siegel (“To Sergio and Don”). With David Webb Peoples’ script in hand, and having put together that cast, especially Gene Hackman, Eastwood clearly knew that this was going to be something special, unlike anything he had previously done.

And probably no director of his generation has a more sophisticated understanding of music. With the foregoing in mind, it wouldn’t surprise me if he told Lennie Niehaus to do something that would evoke that early work.

On my way home this morning, after walking my son to school, the last guitar verse of the basic Unforgiven theme was nagging at me, as leading to another song. It took me half the day to recall it, but I think it inspired the theme song to Don Juan De Marco.