Classical Music and Cinema: Wagner and Apocalypse Now
I'm going to be writing occasional short pieces on classical music in cinema for Salon97.org. The first one explores the use of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" in Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
In his 1979 review of Apocalypse Now, Roger Ebert called the scene above “simply the greatest movie battle scene ever filmed.” I’m with him on that one and not because of its pacing, photography or that you could watch it 15 times in a row and not bore once. Try muting the sound and it’s still great cinema. Now turn it back up and the music takes a great battle scene and gives it another life–as historical double entendre and a microcosm for the film’s thoughts on war itself. In a hail of strings we all recognize, the triumphant arrival of our military becomes a ironic anti-climax, a white horse dragging a chariot piled with corpses.