The 1960s were the golden age of European cinema. In particular, the French New Wave movement not only gave birth to a group of great directors who had a far-reaching impact on future generations, but also gave birth to a group of excellent film scorers. One of the representatives is Georges Delerue.
Some critics believe that Delerue created the most romantic film music in the history of world cinema. Le Figaro called him "Mozart in the cinema".
Georges Deleru
His creative career began during the "New Wave" period, with early classics including Godard's Contempt, Walluffard's The Gunsling Pianist and Jules and Jim, and the soundtrack to the classic film Love Hiroshima. In addition, "The Wife's Distress", "Leo Tracking" and "Sun Moon Jingzhong" are also representative works that cannot be ignored in his early scoring career.
Delerue's scoring career can be divided into the French period and the Hollywood period. His works usually have a strong "French flair". The typical orchestral music with a faint mournful bass lays out an unusual "local color", like a tender lament about youth.
His melodic lines are always warm, but always let people smell a hint of sadness in the enthusiastic notes; his melodies are always exquisite, subtle and introverted, light and poetic, sincere and elegant, quietly soothing the listener's heart.
Drelu and Truffaut
His French period was closely associated with the two leaders of the New Wave, Truffaut and Godard.
Drelu is the perfect partner for Truffaut, and fans and music fans won't forget the swinging piano tune played by Aznavu in "The Gunshot Pianist", the elegant calmness in "Jules and Jim", and the moving ensemble in "The Last Subway". The soundtrack of "Day and Night" is the pinnacle of perfection, and de Lélu in the seventies composed the most moving music for this gentle tragedy at the end of his French career.
He and Truffaut are a "natural pair". On one occasion, Delerue played his "planned" soundtrack on a phone call thousands of miles away, hoping to gain Truffaut's approval. Truffaut listened on the phone and flipped through some books on the history of cinema. Within 30 seconds, he acknowledged the soundtrack and hung up the phone.
Stills from "Day and Night"
Apparently, there was an unspoken tacit understanding between Truffaut and Drelu. Truffaut didn't need to listen to the entire soundtrack or engage in lengthy discussions. For Truffaut, every film has to be a logical whole, and the music has to run through it perfectly, and Drelu does it, even without meeting.
As for de L'Oru's collaboration with Godard, the most famous case is Contempt. Godard poured the strongest emotional color into the film and gave the film a very deep metaphor. At the same time, it is also a movie about how to make a movie.
Deleru composed less than twenty minutes of music for the film. Although short, it contains two major themes and a number of variations, which Godard constantly replays throughout the film, rendering the tragic intensity of the romance of the film's script writers Pohr and Miyu. The music is so closely linked to the plot that at the end of the film, Delerue's score becomes a repetitive "minimalist segment", symbolizing the relentless events that control the characters' behavior.
Stills from "Contempt"
Contempt represents Godard's extraordinary achievement and is one of Deleru's finest works.
After Contempt, Deleru ventured into Hollywood with the prestige of a "New Wave" soundtrack master, trying to replicate his successful experience in Europe to the United States. In 1979, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for the soundtrack to Sunset Bridge.
He still wrote a lot of high-quality music in Hollywood, but those films rarely made it to the top box office. Among them, it is worth mentioning the best works: "Qionglou Old Dream Story", "Silkwood Incident", "God's Daughter", "Salvador", "Field Platoon", "Midsummer Love", "Love Is Deeper Than Sisters", "Steel Magnolia" and so on.
These soundtracks are all soaked in the unique French aesthetic of Deleru. His orchestral music always takes the small to the big, and goes deep into the most abundant place of the heart to swim, meditate, chant alone, and drink. His notes are elegant and delicate, with a thick local atmosphere and a warm soft feeling, so he always likes to compose music for less eye-catching emotional dramas.
In 1989, in his later years, Delerue returned to his homeland to score the French film The French Revolution. The film is not much mentioned today, but Deleru's soundtrack has become a sought-after commodity. The soundtrack album was released in Canada in a limited edition of 550 copies, making it one of the rarest soundtrack albums in the world.
Few soundtrack artists have spent their entire lives weaving beautiful melodies like Delery. The "Mozart in the cinema" attaches more importance to melody than most soundtrackists, and his music pays attention to elegant layout, and the notes reveal the composer's most authentic emotions.
Delerue wrote scores for more than two hundred films in his lifetime, and his fans often find the fact that the individual soundtracks he gives to each film seem to be part of a "masterpiece." Because many of his soundtracks will feel somewhat similar when they first listen to them (of course, this is also related to his relatively single choice of film themes). He likes to repeat some of the theme melodies he loves in different works.
Stills from "Love in Hiroshima"
However, the variations that Delerue composed for these theme melodies are unique. Although he learned from himself again and again, the vitality and beauty embodied in it still deeply affected the audience.
For a time, de L'Oreux's music was markedly commercial, and with such a large output of works, it was inevitable that some second-rate works would be produced (this was also evident in the Italian score master Morricone). However, as music critic Wheeler Dixon put it: "Drelu has shown an unwavering and unique appreciation and has achieved excellence in his best works." He was a romantic man, with one foot in the early twentieth century and the other firmly striding forward. ”
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