All fans remember the opening scene in "Breakfast at Tiffany's": in the early morning, There is no one on Fifth Avenue in New York. Dressed in a black evening gown and a fake jewelry necklace around her neck, Holly Golettley stood alone in front of the Tiffany jewelry store. With his cheeks pressed against the window, his hands carrying a brown paper bag, he ate croissant bread and drank hot coffee while looking at everything in the jewelry store with envious eyes...
It is one of the most memorable classic scenes in the history of world cinema, and it represents the most moving moment in Audrey Hepburn's acting career. About 40 years later, Columbia Studios made a biopic called Audrey Hepburn Biography of the First Half of My Life, which opened with this scene when Hepburn performed "Breakfast at Tiffany's.".
Like Hepburn's performance, Henry Mansini's "Moon River" for the film is a classic of the classics. For more than half a century, Moon River became more popular and popular than the film itself. Mancini composed different versions of the song, which became the theme music throughout the film.
A star-shaped medal inscribed with the name of Henry Mancini on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
<h1>Take jazz to the end</h1>
Henry Mancini is perhaps the most well-known songwriter in Hollywood history. His most illustrious career was closely associated with Audrey Hepburn. The moving melodies that flow with retro mood perfectly set off Hepburn's enduring screen image.
Mancini's musical style is derived from the Big Band Swing of the 1930s and 1940s. He has said that his contribution was to introduce the popular jazz style into the mainstream film scores of the time, which brought him 4 Oscars and 20 Grammy Awards, and he became the first person in film history to make a lot of use of jazz styles for scoring.
In the 1950s, Hollywood was still dominated by symphonic soundtracks, and the obscure Henry Mancini had his first major career opportunity: playing the soundtrack for two biographical films by jazz legends Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. This allowed him, who was already good at jazz and had worked as a piano player and arranger for Glenn Miller's band. He then wrote music for renowned director Orson Wells' new film Touch of Evil.
These three installments brought him to prominence in Hollywood and attracted the attention of Blake Edwards, a young director who was only two years older than him, and Mancini's first foreem for Edwards was two high-rated television series, Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky. Lucky), which began a three-decade collaboration between the two.
The former tells the story of a detective named Pete Gunn (a genre tv series that later endured in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States). The theme song blends the improvisationality, swing and femininity of pop music in jazz, while cleverly using orchestral music to create a suspenseful tension. Mancini's mix-and-match style of big swing jazz, pop tunes, and traditional orchestral music has also become a model for countless later films of similar themes to imitate.
The soundtrack also symbolizes the gradual maturity of Mancini's creation. Mancini has made a series of fruitful explorations of how jazz can better express theatrical effects. For example, in terms of instrumentation, in addition to traditional jazz instruments such as trumpets and trombones, composers have also boldly adopted instruments such as marimbas, basses, electric guitars, and pianos, making the sound effects richer and fully expressing the texture of the picture, opening up space for better shaping characters, setting off emotions and assisting narratives.
Mr. Lucky tells the story of a gambler nicknamed Mr. Lucky. Mancini's theme song for the play successfully blends jazz and pop, sounding gorgeous and romantic, lazy and relaxed. These two theme songs also won Mancini two Grammy Awards.
Soon after, Edwards and Mansini met Audrey Hepburn and co-created the classic that had been the pinnacle of their careers: Breakfast at Tiffany's.
<h1>Unlockable melody</h1>
In the film, Hepburn sits in front of the night window, holding a guitar, pouring out his dreams, and singing the touching tune... The combination of music and picture was pushed to a climax, and countless audiences fell for it. From this film onwards, Mancini and Hepburn became another golden pair.
Breakfast at Tiffany kicked off Mansini's dreamy 60s. During this period, his major works included:
He scored Edwards' "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Victor/Victoria," which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score, and his theme song of the same name, "Days of Wine and Roses," which he composed for the former, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
In "It's Hard to Say Goodbye when You Meet", Mancini incorporates more classical music elements and styles on the basis of jazz and popular tunes, and uses instruments such as woodwinds, violins, and accordions to add color to the entire soundtrack. Acoustic music even features classical-style piano sketches and romantic string fragments; the sweet and delicate vocal chorus that composers do best is unforgettable.
On the other hand, he became Hepburn's royal soundtrackist during this period. Following Breakfast at Tiffany," he scored two other Hepburn films, Charade and Two for the Road.
Footage from Hattelli
In addition, Mansini of this period had two important works: he wrote unforgettable, fascinating and exotic music for the African adventure film Hatari!, starring Western legend John Wayne. In this score, Mancini made a bolder attempt to blend jazz, orchestral music and Indigenous African rhythms, and in the animated series Pink Panther, Mancini's playful, witty, and popular theme song composed using typical jazz-cut rhythms is still widely circulated around the world.
In the hearts of many fans and music fans, Henry Mancini's most memorable works are still those enduring film songs: "Moon River", "Days of Alcohol and Roses", "Sweetheart", "Sweetheart Tree", "Mystery of the Mystery"... Lyrical tunes that flow with an urban atmosphere, or sweet or sentimental, are immortal masterpieces that are difficult to replicate.
These famous scores of Mancini in the '60s shine with the songs in them. It was he who pioneered the extensive use of human voices in film scores. His film love songs, which like to use gentle male and female mixed choruses to create a meticulous and elegant texture, are unique in the field of Hollywood film music in the 60s.
After the 1970s, Mancini still maintained a strong creative energy, among which the more famous soundtracks include "The Great Waldo Pepper", "The Great Waldo Pepper", "The Thorn Birds", "Lifeforce", "The Great Mouse Detective" and so on.
In fact, his historical contribution was not just the introduction of jazz and vocal singing into the film soundtrack. The following deeds are also worth remembering: because of his persistence, Hollywood improved the film recording equipment, so that film music entered the era of "multi-track recording"; because of his insistence, television companies could not cut off the end of a TV series for any reason, because then the audience could listen to all the music created for the TV series.